On January 26, 2017—prior to the official opening of the 2nd Annual Cancer Survivorship Symposium—cancer survivors, caregivers, patient advocates, family physicians, oncology providers, and others gathered in San Diego, California, to make connections, discuss survivorship issues, and get expert...
Anne Friedman Glauber, 63, co-founder of Let’s Win, an online community for persons affected by pancreatic cancer, recently passed away at her home in New York City, after a courageous battle with the disease. Ms. Glauber’s dedication to the organization (www.letswinpc.org) helped countless...
Geriatrician-oncologist Arti Hurria, MD, has been named Vice Provost for Clinical Faculty at City of Hope. “I spent most of my formative years at City of Hope and was very fortunate,” said Dr. Hurria, who’s been at the medical center for 10 years. “I had mentors who helped me along the way and...
A significant philanthropic gift from the Campbell family of Las Vegas, Nevada, will establish a new endowed Chair to honor City of Hope’s former Chief Medical Officer Alexandra M. Levine, MD, MACP. The recipient of the Deana and Steve Campbell Chief Clinical Officer’s Distinguished Chair, to be...
In April 2014, I was so sick with uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea and severe abdominal and chest pain that I had to be hospitalized for 5 days. As I was in my late 20s and in otherwise good health, there was no easy explanation for my symptoms. After I was released from the hospital, my...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, authors Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present a case study...
In the February 25, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post, in the article “‘Watch-and-Wait’ Strategy Does Not Compromise Survival in Selected Patients With Rectal Cancer,” a photo labeled Maxime van der Valk, MD, was incorrect. A photo of Dr. van der Valk is shown here. Dr. van der Valk is a study...
Since the mid-2000s, medication and illicit drug abuse in the United Sates has steadily increased, creating what has now been termed an “opioid epidemic.” In response, Congress and the Bush and Obama Administrations have launched intervention and regulatory proposals to help turn the troubling...
Patients with follicular lymphoma are clearly living longer without disease progression, but what clinician has had no patients progress? Michael Auerbach, MD, a hematologist/oncologist in private practice in Baltimore and Clinical Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University, may have these...
Discussant Heather L. McArthur, MD, MPH, Medical Director of Breast Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, called the plinabulin findings “provocative,” especially considering the substantial impact on durability of response. Specifically with the addition of plinabulin to docetaxel, ...
Study discussant Heather L. McArthur, MD, MPH, Medical Director of Breast Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, noted that human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination has been shown to prevent HPV-related malignancies and eradicate high-grade, HPV16-positive premalignant lesions....
When combined with chemotherapy, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 potentiated T-cell responsiveness and improved clinical outcomes in patients with advanced cervical cancer enrolled in the phase I/II CervISA study.1 The findings were reported at the 2017 ASCO-SITC Clinical...
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) has announced Gwen Nichols, MD, as its new Chief Medical Officer. A physician and scientific researcher, Dr. Nichols has dedicated her career to advancing cures for cancers through a unique combination of clinical, academic, and pharmaceutical experience. She...
There was no difference in the incidence of lymphedema at 18 months in breast cancer patients randomized to a physical therapy intervention with education materials compared with a control.1 Although poor adherence to the intervention may have been a factor, these results, described as “very...
Patients with metastatic colon cancer who exercise may live longer, according to an analysis of the CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial presented at the 2017 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 According to the authors, this is the first study to demonstrate an association between physical activity and...
“CALGB 80803 really helps move the field forward,” said press briefing moderator and ASCO spokesperson Nancy Baxter, MD, PhD, a surgeon from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. “PET [positron-emission tomography] scans may prove to be a valuable tool to help oncologists fine-tune...
In patients with resectable esophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer, positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging was used to assess response to induction chemotherapy. PET nonresponders were identified after the first few cycles and were switched to an alternate regimen. This strategy greatly ...
Partow Kebriaei, MD, Professor in the Department of Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, commented on the findings presented by Marty et al for The ASCO Post. “In this multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled study, the use of...
A key challenge in advancing immunotherapies is to understand mechanisms of response and resistance. Emerging research in this area—including evidence that early on-treatment biopsies can predict response—was discussed at the 2017 ASCO-SITC (Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer) Clinical...
Ann W. Silk, MD, of Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick, presented the day’s highlights and commented that the study by Hellmann et al shows the utility, and, in fact, the necessity, of developing a new means of estimating outcomes for patients treated with immunotherapies....
ASCO and the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO (CCF) have proudly announced the winners of ASCO's Special Awards, the Society's highest honors, and the CCF Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award. The recipients of these awards include researchers, patient advocates, and global oncology leaders...
Regular exercise appears to help mitigate the increased cardiovascular risk faced by women treated for breast cancer, according to a study scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 66th Annual Scientific Session (ACC.17). The study found that women with breast cancer who...
Diffuse infiltrating low-grade gliomas include oligodendrogliomas and astrocytomas and account for about 5% of all primary brain tumors. Treatment strategies for these low-grade gliomas in adults have recently changed, as detailed in a recent review in the Journal of Oncology Practice.1 The...
Cancer immunotherapy is about to get much more complicated. Just as oncologists are becoming familiar with checkpoint inhibitors and their growing indications, they will eventually be challenged with using them in novel combinations and in new tumor types. This will be the fruit that comes from...
Richard ‘Rick’ Boulay, MDChief of Gynecologic Oncology Institution: Lehigh Valley Health Network Member since: 2016 Three years ago, Richard ‘Rick’ Boulay, MD, Chief of Gynecologic Oncology at Lehigh Valley Health Network, walked onto the stage at TEDx Lehigh River and confronted his audience...
A widely reported study found that cervical cancer mortality was higher and the racial disparity between black and white women greater than previously reported.1 The study omitted from the mortality estimates those women who had undergone hysterectomies, usually involving removal of the cervix....
The University of Nebraska community mourns the loss of dedicated community leader and volunteer Nancy E. Armitage of Omaha. She died February 27, 2017, from complications associated with pancreatic cancer. Nancy is remembered for the support and encouragement she offered to others over the years...
Cervical cancer mortality rates were significantly higher, particularly among black women, when national data were corrected to exclude women who have had hysterectomies. For black women, the cervical cancer mortality rate rose from 5.7 to 10.1 per 100,000 when corrected for hysterectomy, an...
Despite positive results in the phase II GALAXY-1 study, the addition of ganetespib to docetaxel in the phase III GALAXY-2 study did not improve overall survival or progression-free survival in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to data presented by Rathi Pillai,...
If you Google the search term “breast cancer,” about 155,000,000 results will pop up in .83 seconds. Add to that pamphlets, journal articles, and library shelves bending under the weight of books written about breast cancer. That’s a mind-bending amount of information to parse through for the...
Last year’s inaugural Cancer Survivorship Symposium stressed the importance of bringing together the fields of medical oncology and primary care to ensure a coordinated effort to help patients with cancer transition to long-term survivorship care. Building on that goal, the 2017 Cancer Survivorship ...
Speaking at the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, before the hold on pacritinib was lifted (in January 2017), Selina Luger, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, commented, “I think the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to revisit ...
Sandra J. Horning, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Development for Roche/Genentech, was named the 2017 recipient of the Duane Roth Memorial Award. The award was presented February 16 at the annual Industry/Academia Translational Oncology Symposium at the University ...
To summarize the lessons learned from the development of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted therapy, one only has to go back about 10 years, according to Frances A. Shepherd, MD, Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Professor of Medicine at ...
Three invited discussants explored the results of these recent immunotherapy studies in lung cancer as well as their potential clinical implications at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer. KEYNOTE-021 trial “Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is...
Allyson J. Ocean, MD, a pancreatic cancer specialist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, commented on these study findings. “While I applaud the authors for the data presented, the...
Although “treatment advances” and “precision medicine” are today’s buzz words in oncology, they don’t apply equally to all malignancies. For instance, median overall survival for newly diagnosed patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer has not improved much over the past 20 years, according to...
Formal discussant for the presentation of SWOG S9921 results, Susan F. Slovin, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, said there were some important points to understand about this “vintage” trial. “The trial was designed 20 years ago, and the view is...
Exercise and/or psychological therapy may work better than medications to reduce cancer-related fatigue and should be recommended first to patients, according to a Wilmot Cancer Institute-led study published by Mustian et al in JAMA Oncology. “If a [patient with cancer] is having trouble...
In 1978, Charles A. “Mickey” LeMaistre, MD, was named President of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. During his 18-year tenure, MD Anderson became a world leader in outpatient care for cancer patients and the nation’s largest ambulatory treatment and surgery programs in cancers....
Lisa Lange, ANP-BC, AOCN, of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, has been promoted to Vice President of the Clinical Trials Office. Ms. Lange brings 26 years of experience as a nurse and nurse practitioner, specializing in clinical oncology care and research. She has been with Karmanos for...
Three outstanding individuals have been honored with the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor Award. The Medal of Honor is awarded to those who have made the most valuable contributions and impact in saving more lives from cancer through basic research, clinical research, and cancer control....
There’s no getting around it: the practice of oncology can be inherently stressful. First, there’s the workload: compared to other medical specialists, oncologists see a larger number of patients and spend more time with them in face-to-face interactions. It’s not unusual for oncologists to work 60 ...
Researchers from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom, have completed the first-ever systematic review of cancer survivors’ experience of online and telephone telehealth interventions in cancer care, according to a recent study reported by Anna Cox,...
The two main classes of immune checkpoint inhibitors used to treat non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have essentially the same efficacy and toxicity profiles, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of 23 trials with a total of 5,899 patients.1 Results showed that about one-fifth of...
The KEYNOTE-028 results confirm that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is active in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and lay to rest safety concerns stemming from the higher risk of paraneoplastic syndromes in this disease, according to invited discussant, Leora Horn, MD, MSc, Clinical...
Elisabeth Heath, MD, FACP, of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been appointed Associate Center Director for Transitional Sciences, effective immediately. She will report to Gerold Bepler, MD, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of...
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) offers state-of-the-art information on all aspects of breast cancer biology, diagnosis, and treatment, drawing an international audience of more than 7,500 physicians, researchers, and other health-care professionals from over 90 countries. Through...
Understanding, anticipating, and managing the toxicities associated with immunotherapies for lung cancer are key to steps to safely using and achieving the most benefit from these new agents, according to Beth Eaby-Sandy, MSN, CRNP, OCN, a nurse practitioner at the University of Pennsylvania’s...
Treating patients with head and neck cancer with hyperfractionated twice-daily radiation therapy combined with chemotherapy may potentially reduce mortality, according to new research presented by Claire Petit, PhD, and colleagues at the 2017 European Cancer Congress (ECCO).1 The study included...