UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (UCLA) researchers Leonard Marks, MD, and Shyam Natarajan, PhD, will lead a $3.1 million research project grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health to advance the adoption of a promising new technology to treat men with prostate cancer. By helping to increase the ...
OBESE PATIENTS with metastatic melanoma who are treated with targeted or immune therapies live significantly longer than those with a normal body mass index (BMI), according to a study published in The Lancet Oncology of 1,918 patients in 6 independent clinical cohorts.1 This effect—referred to as ...
FEBRUARY 4 was World Cancer Day, which raises awareness for the millions of people worldwide facing unequal access to cancer detection, treatment, and care services. Oncology leaders, health-care professionals, and supporters across the world are pushing for urgent action to reduce the rate of...
As reported by Petrylak et al in JAMA Oncology, long-term follow-up of patients in a phase I study expansion cohort indicated enduring clinical benefit and maintained tolerability of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Study Details The study involved...
In a European phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dimopoulos et al found that pomalidomide (Pomalyst) plus low-dose dexamethasone produced responses in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma and renal impairment. Study Details In the study, 81 patients with ...
A family history of breast cancer continues to significantly increase chances of developing invasive breast tumors in women aged 65 years and older, according to research published by Braithwaite et al in JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings could impact mammography screening decisions later in...
In a phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Grill et al found that the addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to radiotherapy plus temozolomide (RT + TMZ) did not improve event-free survival in pediatric patients with newly diagnosed high-grade glioma. Study Details In the...
Temporary ovarian suppression during chemotherapy as a means of preserving ovarian function and fertility in young women with early breast cancer is controversial. An eagerly awaited meta-analysis including individual patient data from five randomized controlled trials found that the use of...
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) has announced a “Convergence 2.0” research initiative that awards $11 million to 7 multidisciplinary research teams to investigate immune system response to cancer. The multi-institutional teams were announced at SU2C’s Scientific Summit. Each team comprises experts in...
The BBVA Foundation awarded its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category to American immunologist James P. Allison, PhD, whose innovative research has almost single-handedly transformed cancer treatment. His seminal research in immunotherapy has paved the way for the development of ...
In a phase III noninferiority trial reported in The Lancet, Kudo et al found that first-line lenvatinib was noninferior to sorafenib in overall survival of patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma. Study Details In the open-label trial, 954 patients from 154 sites in 20 countries in...
Patients newly diagnosed with locally advanced pancreatic cancer who received induction therapy with nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane) and gemcitabine achieved a time to treatment failure and median progression-free survival that exceeded the protocol-specified target by more...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vogl et al found that the investigational oral selective exportin 1 (XPO1) inhibitor selinexor combined with dexamethasone produced responses in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. ...
In Clinical Cancer Advances 2018: ASCO’s Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer, which highlights the most impactful cancer research progress and the importance of federally funded research, ASCO recognized a type of adoptive cell immunotherapy—chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy—as...
AS REVIEWED in this issue of The ASCO Post, Patel and colleagues have presented data from the phase I JAVELIN study evaluating avelumab (Bavencio) in platinum-refractory patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma.1 The drug is active with durable responses when compared with historical...
A phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Traina et al showed activity of the androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) in triple-negative breast cancer expressing the androgen receptor (AR). Study Details The study involved 118 patients from 45 sites in seven...
ANOTHER TRIAL has validated that 1 year of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) remains the standard in HER2-positive breast cancer, but the margin of difference, compared with just 9 weeks of the drug, was slim, based on the findings of the phase III SOLD trial reported at the 2017 San Antonio Breast...
IN PREVIOUSLY treated patients with amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis, the chimeric fibril-reactive monoclonal antibody 11-1F4 (CAEL-101) produced organ responses in about two-thirds of patients in a phase Ia/b trial reported at the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting &...
THE NATIONAL COMPREHENSIVE Cancer Network® (NCCN®) Oncology Research Program in collaboration with Pfizer Global Medical Grants announced they have awarded funding to nine projects that use clinical care pathways to implement quality improvement initiatives along the continuum of care for...
BASED ON EFFICACY seen in the second-line setting for the treatment of metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, ramucirumab (Cyramza) was evaluated as first-line therapy in the international phase III RAINFALL trial. Although the study met its primary endpoint, with a 25%...
IN THE FIRST REPORT of the full cohort of CheckMate-142, nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) led to a 1-year overall survival rate of 85% in previously treated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have DNA mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instability–high...
City of Hope recently announced the appointments of four new scientists to its research faculty. Jianjun Chen, PhD, joins the staff as Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Systems Biology. Before joining the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Dr. Chen had been serving as...
The use of chemotherapy to treat women with early-stage breast cancer “declined markedly over time,” according to analysis of data from 2,926 women between the ages of 20 and 79. The trends documented “are remarkable for their steepness of decline, independent of clinical factors and despite no...
On August 1, 2017, the IDH2 inhibitor enasidenib (Idhifa) was granted regular approval for treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with an isocitrate dehydrogenase-2 (IDH2) mutation as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved...
On July 11, 2017, blinatumomab (Blincyto) was approved for the treatment of relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in adults and children.1,2 Blinatumomab received accelerated approval in December 2014 for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome (Ph)-negative...
Holly G. Prigerson, PhD, Co-Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Research on End-of-Life Care, was born in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, where her father had been a resident. Her family moved to Long Island, first living in Islip, where Dr. Prigerson’s father practiced medicine...
A type of cancer that occurs in the lower stomach has been increasing among some Americans under the age of 50, even though in the general population, the incidence of all stomach cancers has been declining for decades. These findings were published by Anderson et al in the Journal of the National...
To ensure that clinicians stay apace and provide optimal patient care, three leading medical societies—the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), and the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP)—have updated their...
The final overall survival results of the phase III ASPIRE trial indicate significant improvement with carfilzomib (Kyprolis), lenalidomide (Revlimid), and dexamethasone (KRd) vs lenalidomide plus dexamethasone (Rd) in patients who had received one to three prior lines of therapy for multiple...
ROBERT W. DAY, MD, the longest-serving President and Director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the leader who brought into being its campus overlooking Seattle’s South Lake Union, died in his Seattle home on January 6, 2018 of lung cancer. He was 87. “It is a tragic loss for all of...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Sekhar and colleagues found that the increasing proportion of lymph node–positive disease associated with enhanced detection techniques has led to nodal stage migration in anal cancer, which may reduce prognostic discrimination on the basis of lymph...
Understanding what consciousness is, and why and how it evolved, is perhaps the greatest mystery known to science. With its 100 billion or so neurons and a processing rate of about 4 billion bits per second, the human brain is a miraculously complicated entity, much of which is still under...
Nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) led to a 1-year overall survival rate of 85% in previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer patients with DNA mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) tumors. These data were presented in the first report ...
Levine Cancer Institute (LCI) has announced a new Department of Supportive Oncology, helmed by palliative medicine pioneer Declan Walsh, MD. Under the leadership of Dr. Walsh, the new department will integrate its services throughout the Institute. The department includes cancer rehabilitation,...
FOR DAYS BEFORE HURRICANE HARVEY was expected to move toward Houston, Texas, on Sunday, August 27, 2017, after pummeling other cities in Texas and Louisiana, the leadership team at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson) in Houston strategized on how to ensure the...
On May 18, 2017, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who have disease progression during or following platinum-containing chemotherapy or within 12 months of neoadjuvant or adjuvant...
On May 26, 2017, ceritinib (Zykadia) was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved test.1,2 In 2014, the drug received ...
Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, has been elected to serve as the President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2019. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2018. Additionally, five members were...
Venetoclax (Venclexta) plus rituximab (Rituxan)—a non–chemotherapy-containing regimen—was superior to standard-of-care bendamustine plus rituximab for patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to a final analysis of the phase III MURANO study reported at...
Older patients with Hodgkin lymphoma typically do not fare as well as younger patients on standard regimens. A phase II study reported the best outcomes to date in older patients with Hodgkin lymphoma who were treated with sequential brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) before and after a regimen of...
The oncology community mourns the sudden passing of Jimmie C. Holland, MD, who died on December 24, 2017, at the age of 89. Dr. Holland’s achievements over her 40-year career are legend. They include the founding of the subspecialty of psycho-oncology, the establishment of a full-time Psychiatry...
A phase I/II trial has shown that the addition of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) to bendamustine is active in relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma. Study findings were reported in The Lancet Oncology by O’Connor et al. Study Details In the study, 64 patients with Hodgkin lymphoma and 1...
The most commonly used gene expression profile test used to help predict breast cancer recurrence may not be as cost-effective as once thought, say a team of researchers led by scientists from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Their study, published by Chandler et al in the Journal...
Increasing use of a potentially life-saving treatment for metastatic cancer is leaving too many vulnerable patients behind, according to a new study from Yale Cancer Center/Smilow Cancer Hospital published by Kann et al in JNCCN – Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The...
The phase III IMvigor211 trial showed no survival benefit for atezolizumab (Tecentriq) vs physician's choice of chemotherapy in platinum-treated locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma with programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression ≥ 5%. Findings were reported in The Lancet by...
The phase III ALTERNATIVE trial has shown progression-free survival benefit with the addition of lapatinib (Tykerb) to trastuzumab (Herceptin) and an aromatase inhibitor among postmenopausal women with HER2-positive, hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer. These findings were...
As reported by Scott J. Antonia, MD, PhD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine, an interim analysis of the phase III -PACIFIC trial showed improved progression-free survival with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) ...
As reported by Scott J. Antonia, MD, PhD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine, an interim analysis of the phase III -PACIFIC trial showed improved progression-free survival with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)...
On September 14, 2017, the microtubule inhibitor cabazitaxel (Jevtana) was approved at the lower dose of 20 mg/m2 every 3 weeks in combination with prednisone for treatment of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer previously treated with a docetaxel-containing regimen.1,2...
Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, has been elected to serve as the President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2019. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2018. Additionally, five members were...