People with blood cancers living in rural areas are less likely to receive end-of-life hospice care compared to those living in metropolitan regions, according to a new study published by Hussaini et al in the journal Blood Advances. In this study, researchers identified significant disparities in...
On June 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized emergency use of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 to include use in children as young as 6 months of age. For the Moderna vaccine, the FDA amended the emergency...
In a phase II trial (HOVON141/VISION) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Arnon P. Kater, MD, PhD, and colleagues found a high rate of 12-month progression-free survival among patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) who stopped venetoclax/ibrutinib after achieving...
Michael J. Overman, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Smitha Krishnamurthi, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, review three abstracts, all of which enrolled patients with newly diagnosed RAS and BRAF wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer with left-sided primary tumors. The...
Optimizing oncology care in the United States will require making state-of-the-art care more accessible to all. Delivering quality, equitable cancer care is undoubtedly a challenge in a country as large, diverse, and disparate as the United States, but if it is to be achieved, it will entail the...
Androgen receptor (AR) signaling may affect response to BRAF/MEK inhibitor therapy in both male and female patients with melanoma, according to findings from a study published by Vellano et al in Nature. The report provides a new target to combat therapeutic resistance and one possible answer to...
In a prespecified analysis from the phase III monarchE trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Miguel Martín, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that the addition of adjuvant abemaciclib to endocrine therapy was associated with improved outcomes among women with high-risk hormone receptor–positive,...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in The Lancet Oncology, Gaebe et al found that stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) was associated with “equitable survival” compared with whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) in the first-line treatment of intracranial metastatic disease in patients with...
In a study reported in JAMA Network Open, Burgess et al found that the 2012 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) Grade D recommendation against prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening for all men appeared to be associated with ending of a trend of annual reductions in prostate...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by D’Agostino et al in the European Myeloma Network, a second revision (R2-ISS) of the Revised International Staging System (R-ISS) incorporates a risk scoring system that permits delineation of four prognostic risk groups in newly diagnosed multiple...
In a Canadian phase III trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Vesprini et al found that receipt of adjuvant breast radiotherapy in the supine position was associated with increased risk of moist desquamation of skin vs receipt in the prone position among large-breasted women with breast cancer. Study...
In a post hoc analysis from the phase III CROWN trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Benjamin J. Solomon, MBBS, PhD, and colleagues found that progression-free survival and the risk of central nervous system (CNS) progression were improved with lorlatinib vs crizotinib in previously...
In a study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Nimgaonkar et al found that less than half of patients with urothelial cancer who had received first-line platinum-based therapy underwent testing for FGFR alterations and that less than half of patients with susceptible alterations...
The tyrosine kinase inhibitor ponatinib and monoclonal antibody blinatumomab—which targets CD19 on leukemia cells—are highly effective as monotherapies for patients with Philadelphia chromosome–positive (Ph+) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The combination of the two therapies may provide an...
In the phase I/II MajesTEC-1 trial presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 8007) and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Philippe Moreau, MD, and colleagues found that the bispecific antibody teclistamab produced responses in nearly two-thirds of patients...
In a study presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 103) and simultaneously reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lipsyc-Sharf et al found that personalized circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) testing was successful in detecting measurable residual disease (MRD) prior to late clinical...
ASCO and the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) jointly released recommendations that address the lack of equity, diversity, and inclusion in cancer clinical trials. Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 their recommendations detail specific actions to engage the entire cancer ...
A new ASCO guideline update provides further recommendations on the use of biomarkers to guide decision-making on adjuvant endocrine therapy and chemotherapy in patients with early-stage breast cancer.1 The update includes clarification of the use of certain genomic tests, based on age or...
ASCO’s CancerLinQ® and Atropos Health announced a new collaboration that will provide oncology clinicians with the latest real-world evidence available to help inform personalized care and treatment of an individual patient. Atropos Health and CancerLinQ will work together to provide a “digital...
The Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation recently announced it will provide $25 million in new grant funding to expand or establish five Ralph Lauren cancer centers, aimed at reducing disparities in cancer care and access across underserved communities in the United States. The funding will benefit...
The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, which actively partners with scientists, research institutions, and philanthropic organizations around the world to accelerate research in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, recently announced that Ryan Schoenfeld, PhD, has been appointed...
Patients who underwent robotic-assisted radical cystectomy with intracorporeal diversion spent fewer days in the hospital and experienced fewer complications compared with those who underwent open radical cystectomy, according to data presented at the 2022 American Urological Association (AUA)...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center recently announced that Tong Joo (TJ) Gan, MD, FRCA (UK), has been named Division Head of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine. Dr. Gan will join MD Anderson’s faculty on September 1. Dr. Gan will lead a division composed of 117 faculty...
Tom and Kari Whitehead came to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) 10 years ago looking for a miracle. Their 6-year-old daughter, Emily, had relapsed in her battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), after many months of unsuccessful chemotherapy and a disease that had progressed so...
The Moroccan Cancer Society (MCS; Société Marocaine de Cancérologie/https://smc.ma) was created in 1992 by a group of Moroccan medical and radiation oncologists, surgeons, and pathologists who had led the field in the 1980s. To date, this scientific society has more than 350 members practicing in...
In the single-center phase II TUXEDO-1 trial of patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, fam-trastuzumab-deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed efficacy in patients with active brain metastases, yielding intracranial responses in 73.3% of the population and a median progression-free survival of...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Eugenie Spiguel, MSN, ANP-BS, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on Ma Zi Ren...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the confluence of events that followed—including the rapid development of vaccines, the mixed messaging on mitigation efforts to prevent coronavirus infection, and the growing political polarization—helped spark public mistrust and skepticism toward science. This mistrust...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) recently announced the recipients of 2022 awards for both internal and external champions advancing NCCN’s mission and helping all people with cancer to live better lives. The annual awards include the Rodger Winn Award for expert judgment and...
It is estimated that globally, more than 600,000 women per year are diagnosed with cervical cancer, and more than 300,000 die annually of the disease.1 Many women continue to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at an advanced stage, with a high risk of recurrence. To date, the most effective...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Krishnansu S. Tewari, MD, of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology, University of California, Irvine, and colleagues, the phase III EMPOWER-Cervical1/GOG-3016/ENGOT-cx9 trial has shown improved overall survival with cemiplimab-rwlc vs...
Preliminary results of the basket BEGONIA trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd), paired with the immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab, has strong activity in advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer among patients not biomarker-selected for...
Invited discussant of the MONALEESA-3 trial, Mafalda Oliveira, MD, PhD, of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, commented: “I totally agree with the authors when they say these results are ‘impressive.’” Among all the phase III trials evaluating...
Since the introduction of trastuzumab in the late 1990s, overall survival for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has substantially improved. Median overall survival in the pivotal first-line trial was only 20.3 months in the chemotherapy arm, and 25.1 months in the...
In an updated analysis of the phase III MONALEESA-3 trial, which included postmenopausal patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer, first-line treatment with ribociclib plus fulvestrant added nearly 16 months of overall survival time vs fulvestrant...
Although overall cancer incidence and mortality are declining across all population groups, compared with White individuals, racial and ethnic minorities and other medically underserved populations continue to shoulder a disproportionate burden of cancer, according to the study results published in ...
Once-daily treatment with the oral JAK1/2 and ACVR1/ALK2 inhibitor momelotinib significantly improved outcomes of patients treated for myelofibrosis. Ruben Mesa, MD, FACP, and colleagues presented results of the MOMENTUM phase III randomized study, which evaluated momelotinib vs danazol in...
On June 9, Foundation Medicine, Inc., announced that it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for FoundationOne CDx to be used as a companion diagnostic for the two indications of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor entrectinib (Rozlytrek). As a companion diagnostic,...
In an analysis presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 8028) and simultaneously reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Thomas Martin, MD, and colleagues provided data from the 2-year follow-up of the pivotal CARTITUDE-1 trial of the anti–B-cell maturation agent (BCMA) chimeric...
In a study presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 2508) and simultaneously reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Naqash et al identified the incidence of major adverse cardiac events among patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors for cancer as captured in the serious...
In an analysis presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 7518) and simultaneously reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Michael Wang, MD, and colleagues provided data from the 3-year follow-up of the pivotal ZUMA-2 trial of the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy...
People with advanced cancer who communicated their symptoms weekly using an electronic survey had about one-third better physical function and over a 15% better control of their symptoms compared to those who were evaluated less frequently via in-person clinical visits, according to findings from a ...
Combinations of chemotherapy and immunotherapy showed activity in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, according to findings from a national, randomized clinical trial led and sponsored by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. The results of the small trial were presented by Padrón...
Researchers from the SWOG Cancer Research Network, a clinical trials group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), found that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of Medicaid insurance in 2014 was followed by a significant increase in the proportion of patients enrolling in SWOG trials...
Based on guidance from biomarker screening, patients with low-grade luminal A–type breast cancer aged 55 and older may need endocrine therapy alone following breast-conserving surgery and may be able to avoid radiation therapy entirely, according to new research findings presented by Timothy Joseph ...
Black and White patients treated with similar first-line therapies for advanced kidney cancer experienced similar outcomes, but different response rates, according to research from Fox Chase Cancer Center presented by Daniel Geynisman, MD, at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 4548). “This was...
Although women of African descent experience a higher incidence and mortality from triple-negative breast cancer than women of other races or ethnicities, research findings presented by Hall et al at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting showed that the magnitude of gene-specific risks of triple-negative...
In a new large study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society, findings showed that parental cancer is associated with a greater likelihood of family-level food insecurity, financial worry about housing costs and other monthly bills, and transportation barriers to medical care for children ...
Rarely, if ever, has one abstract presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting warranted its own session—but that happened with a small but mighty study from Memorial Sloan Kettering. In a study of patients with locally advanced mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) rectal cancer, 6 months of treatment with the ...
Stephanie Walker, a former nurse and current activist with the Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance, discusses findings from the BECOME project (Black Experience of Clinical Trials and Opportunities for Meaningful Engagement). They show that, even though Black patients comprise between 4% and 6% of...