Data from a new study showed that those who started to smoke at earlier ages have an elevated likelihood of dying from cancer. Those who began at the youngest ages (before age 10 years) had four times the cancer mortality rates in adulthood than those who had never smoked. However, individuals who...
On October 22, Oncopeptides announced its decision to withdraw melphalan flufenamide (Pepaxto), a first-in-class peptide-drug conjugate, from the market in the United States, following results from the phase III OCEAN study in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. The decision to...
The first indication I had stage IV lung cancer was a persistent cough during the beginning of the cold-and-flu season in the fall of 2013. I was 35 years old, never smoked, and in otherwise excellent health, so I ignored the cough for several months until I noticed my breathing had also become...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Siemens Healthineers recently announced the collaborative development of a global education program focused on enabling the implementation of consistent, high-quality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in radiation oncology. The program will...
Although overall cancer cases are declining, they are on the rise in older adolescents and young adults (AYAs). Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced the establishment of the Lisa and Scott Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers (the Stuart Center), expanding ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval of a new indication for the EGFR inhibitor cetuximab (Erbitux) in combination with encorafenib (Braftovi) for the treatment of adults with metastatic colorectal cancer and a BRAF V600E mutation, as detected by an FDA-approved test,...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and BostonGene Corporation recently announced a strategic alliance to advance the development and clinical integration of multiplatform biomarker signatures. Expands Upon Existing Collaborations The alliance brings together BostonGene’s innovative...
The number of deaths related to breast cancer are increasing at an alarming pace worldwide. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) 2020 report, approximately 2,088,849 new cases and 627,000 deaths related to breast cancer occurred in 2018.1 More than 55% of these deaths occurred in low- to ...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced a $25 million gift from Louis V. Gerstner, Jr, to create the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr Physician Scholars Program. Designed to support the innovative research of physician-scientists who are early in their career at MSK, the program will...
According to the National Cancer Institute, cases of colorectal cancer in patients younger than age 50 have grown by more than 50% since the 1990s. Cleveland Clinic has addressed this trend with the establishment of a center focused on the diagnosis, care, and research of young-onset colorectal...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center recently appointed Caroline Chung, MD, Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology and Diagnostic Radiology, the new Vice President and Chief Data Officer (CDO). As the institution’s first-ever CDO, Dr. Chung will be responsible for shaping MD...
The leading causes of mortality in the United States are cardiovascular disease (23%) and cancer (21%), accounting for more than 40% of total deaths reported.1,2 The increasing rise in health-care expenditures over the past several decades has driven the need for metrics to further evaluate the...
Deb Schrag, MD, FASCO, MPH, has been named the new Chair of the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Dr. Schrag has a deep familiarity with MSK, having previously spent 8 years at the institution as a physician and faculty member. She joins MSK from the...
The International association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), at its 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC), presented awards to clinicians and researchers who made significant contributions to the treatment of patients with lung cancer. The awards represent many major categories of lung ...
The Board of Directors of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) has announced the appointment of Kristin Richeimer, CAE, DES, to the position of Interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Ms. Richeimer joined the IASLC in 2010 as its first Director of Membership and brings ...
Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) recently appointed Michael Diaz, MD, to the position of President and Managing Physician, effective January 1, 2022. Dr. Diaz succeeds Lucio Gordan, MD, who has served in that position since 2018. Dr. Gordan will continue to practice as a...
Katherine E. Reeder-Hayes, MD, MBA, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses the timeliness of breast cancer care for Black women compared with non-Black women in North Carolina. Her data showed that greater geographic variation exists in the timeliness of breast cancer care...
Aakash Desai, MPH, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, talks about the urgent need for drug pricing reform, given the average expenditure of Medicare part D, and the ultimate out-of-pocket costs for patients with cancer. The promise of precision oncology will fail, says Dr. Desai, if we ...
Jenny Jing Xiang, MD, of Yale University School of Medicine, discusses a universal, standardized clinical trial prescreening protocol, which streamlined research recruitment and was associated with yearly increases in patient enrollment at the Veterans Administration (VA) Connecticut Cancer Center. ...
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses phase III results from the KEYNOTE-355 study of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, which improved overall survival vs chemotherapy alone in patients with previously untreated locally recurrent, inoperable, or metastatic...
Recently, Govind Persad, JD, PhD, of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, wrote an op-ed for The ASCO Post entitled “Oncology Care Remains Under Strain in the Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic.” On this episode of the podcast, Dr. Persad further discusses the challenges that patients with cancer...
Shannon Dean, MD, has joined St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as Chief Medical Information Officer at a key time in the hospital’s efforts to enhance the patient experience. Dr. Dean will help oversee the launch of the hospital’s new electronic health record, which is scheduled to go live in...
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening recommendations made by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in 2012 may have led to worse outcomes for insured patients with prostate cancer, according to data presented at the 2021 ASCO Quality Care Symposium.1 Findings from the retrospective...
New study results suggest that to maximize effects of digital support tools for cancer survivors, it is essential to personalize information and increase engagement efforts. The report, published by Leach et al in the journal Cancer, demonstrated significant improvement in the ability to manage...
Two new studies published in Nature Communications indicate that immunotherapy may benefit people with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare but serious complication of cancer that has spread to the brain and/or spinal cord. Approximately 5% to 8% of all patients with cancer develop leptomeningeal ...
The National Cancer Act of 1971 established a national priority to address the widely shared dread of a cancer diagnosis. The goal of the National Cancer Act was to strengthen the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to more effectively carry out the national effort against cancer. After the Act was...
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder defined by a specific phenotype and the presence of more than 5,000 clonal B cells in the peripheral blood.1 In the absence of this number of circulating cells, its soft-tissue/bone-marrow counterpart is semantically...
A large study from the United Kingdom has taken a deep dive into SARS–CoV-2 in the setting of cancer, yielding both concerning and encouraging findings about natural and vaccine-induced immunity. The study was presented at the Presidential Symposium during the European Society for Medical Oncology...
Individuals diagnosed with cancer who live in low-income and rural areas may face an increased risk of suicide compared with patients living in high-income and urban areas, according to a study published by Suk et al in JAMA Network Open. The research focused on determining whether the risks and...
New research published by Shaverdian et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network assessed patient satisfaction and preferences associated with telemedicine. Researchers found 45% of people with cancer undergoing radiotherapy preferred telemedicine, whereas 34% preferred...
Susana N. Banerjee, MBBS, PhD, of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, discusses phase I results that have generated interest in the combination of the RAF/MEK inhibitor VS-6766 and the FAK inhibitor defactinib for patients with recurrent low-grade serous ovarian cancer, a disease that typically ...
Susana N. Banerjee, MBBS, PhD, of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, discusses phase II results of the EORTC-1508 trial, the first study to combine an anti–PD-L1 antibody, atezolizumab, with bevacizumab and the COX1/2 inhibitor acetylsalicylic acid as treatment for patients with ovarian,...
Dieter Hörsch, MD, of Germany’s Central Clinic in Bad Berka, discusses phase III results from the SPINET trial, the largest prospective study to date of the somatostatin analog lanreotide autogel. The study suggests that this agent may prove to be an appropriate treatment option for patients with...
Filippo Pietrantonio, MD, and Federica Morano, MD, both of the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, discuss results from the MAYA trial, which provided proof of concept that temozolomide-induced hypermutation may be exploited to achieve durable responses to low-dose ipilimumab plus nivolumab in patients...
Breast cancer risk increases with age, but while scientists have long studied cellular changes that take place in the body over time, a new study published by Bahcecioglu et al in Advanced Science examined how the extracellular matrix—an underlying network of molecules and proteins that provide the ...
The combination of the KRAS inhibitor sotorasib with afatinib, a pan-ErbB tyrosine kinase inhibitor, was feasible in treating patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and mutated KRAS whose disease had progressed on prior therapies, including KRAS inhibitors alone, according to interim...
In a phase II clinical trial, the drug 4-demethyl-4-cholesteryloxycarbonylpenclomedine (DM-CHOC-PEN) improved survival for some adolescent and young adult patients with cancers involving the central nervous system, according to results presented by Morgan et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual...
In preclinical models, combining an investigational Aurora kinase A (AURKA) inhibitor with a KRAS inhibitor or a WEE1 inhibitor showed efficacy against lung cancer cells with intrinsic or acquired resistance to KRAS inhibition, according to results presented by Lee et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC...
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of Hunstman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, discusses efficacy and safety results from the COSMIC-021 study, in which cabozantinib plus atezolizumab demonstrated clinically meaningful activity and a manageable safety profile in patients with metastatic...
A new report finds that more than 46,000 cancer cases annually in the United States could be prevented if Americans met the 5 hours per week of moderate-intensity activity recommended in the American Cancer Society’s physical activity guidelines. Recent findings published by Minihan et al in the...
On October 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for adjuvant treatment following resection and platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have PD-L1 expression on ≥ 1% of tumor cells, as...
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, MD, honored the late Henrietta Lacks with a WHO Director-General’s award, recognizing her world-changing legacy. Ms. Lacks, a Black American woman, died of cervical cancer 70 years ago, on October 4, 1951. While she...
On October 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with chemotherapy, with or without bevacizumab, for patients with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer whose tumors express PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] ≥ 1), as...
On October 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) in combination with endocrine therapy (tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor) for the adjuvant treatment of adult patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative, node-positive early breast cancer...
Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, discusses phase II results from the NORSE study, which showed that the kinase inhibitor erdafitinib plus the monoclonal antibody cetrelimab produced meaningful responses in cisplatin-ineligible patients with first-line metastatic or...
Joseph M. Unger, PhD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses findings from his study of the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Trials Network, which has conducted publicly funded cancer research for more than 50 years. The substantial gains in life years for patients with cancer, he ...
Jonathan Lim, MBBS, MRCP, of Christie NHS Foundation Trust and the Francis Crick Institute, discusses results of an ESMO survey, which showed that the risk of poor well-being, distress, and burnout has continued to rise since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite improved job performance and...
In the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved five treatment options for patients with breast cancer, which are summarized herein. Abemaciclib Combination On October 12, 2021, the FDA approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) with endocrine therapy (tamoxifen or an aromatase...
Yuan Yuan, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at City of Hope, Duarte, California, weighed in on the KEYNOTE-355 findings. “The study presented by Dr. Rugo on KEYNOTE-355 reconfirms the utility of adding immune checkpoint inhibitors to chemotherapy as front-line treatment for metastatic triple-negative ...