Imagine a 70-year-old patient who is scheduled for a pancreaticoduodenectomy. On the morning of surgery, the patient is checked in at the front desk by the “data-entry provider.” The patient is taken to the preoperative area, where the appropriate formalities are completed by multiple “bedside-care ...
Ali McBride, PharmD, MS, BCOP, was named 2019–2020 President of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) during its 45th Annual Meeting & Cancer Center Business Summit on March 22, 2019. Dr. McBride is the Clinical Coordinator of Hematology/Oncology at The University of Arizona...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) has issued its 2018 Annual Report,1 including updates on regulatory reviews and initiatives, OCE programs, guidances, and more. The OCE is tasked with clinical medical oncology reviews, irrespective of whether the...
A retrospective analysis of nearly 200 patients treated with local consolidative therapy for oligometastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has found improved overall survival associated with aggressive consolidation.1 According to data presented at the 2019 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers...
Although tools like the ESPEN guidelines on nutrition for patients with cancer have helped to standardize practices in this area of patient care, scientific evidence on the efficacy of nutritional intervention among patients with breast cancer is still scarce. Preliminary results from a study to be ...
OneOncology, the national partnership of community oncologists, has announced that Lee Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, has been named Chief Medical Officer. The Chief Medical Officer position provides a link between OneOncology and its physician partners, demonstrating the shared, foundational commitment...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Davis et al, outcomes in the osteosarcoma cohort of the phase II SARC024 trial indicated a progression-free survival benefit with regorafenib vs placebo in previously treated metastatic osteosarcoma. Study Details The randomized...
Cognitive impairment associated with cancer—also known as “chemobrain”—has gained recognition as a complication of the disease and its treatment. With this in mind, a research team started to investigate levels of biomarkers in relation to chemobrain to better understand its ...
In light of the launch of his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden announced that they are stepping down as Co-Chairs of the Biden Cancer Initiative. They are also resigning from the Board of Directors. “[W]e are glad...
Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed to improve the reimbursement currently given to hospitals that provide chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy to patients with blood cancer as part of the Fiscal Year 2020 Inpatient Prospective Payment...
ASCO and ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation are proud to recognize the winners of ASCO’s Special Awards and Conquer Cancer’s Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Awards and Tribute Award. The recipients of these awards have worked to transform cancer care around the world. Don’t miss the opportunity...
In the 2 years since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of regorafenib in the treatment of patients with sorafenib-refractory advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, we oncologists have witnessed a veritable avalanche of newly approved medicines for the treatment of advanced...
In the phase III REACH-2 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Andrew X. Zhu, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues found that ramucirumab improved overall and progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and...
Rafael Fonseca, MD, the Getz Family Professor of Cancer and Chair of the Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic in Arizona and an expert in minimal residual disease (MRD) in myeloma, commented on the PRIMeR study for The ASCO Post. The PRIMeR subanalysis of the STaMINA trial showed the prognostic...
The members of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently elected Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, as its President-Elect for 2019–2020. He officially became President-Elect at the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting and will assume the presidency at the 2020 AACR Annual Meeting in San Diego. The...
ON MARCH 18, 2019, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) hosted another set of successful live performances of works by patients with cancer as part of its Visible Ink writing program. Held at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, Visible Ink celebrates its 11th year of the ongoing...
I’ve been in excellent physical shape my whole life. Growing up, it was my dream to play Division 1 soccer in college, and I trained hard throughout high school to achieve that goal. My dream came true, in 2005, when I was invited to play soccer at East Carolina University. I was eager to bond...
Findings from a new study highlight the importance of timing in initial staging positron-emission tomography (PET) and/or computed tomography (CT) scans for patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving chemoradiation therapy.1 According to data presented at the 2019...
Frailty and sarcopenia are common conditions among patients with lung cancer and are linked with decreased survival as well as increased surgical complications, chemotherapy toxicity, and cost of care. If a survey of oncologists at the 2019 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers Symposium is any...
In an Italian phase III study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, DeCensi et al found that tamoxifen at 5 mg/d vs placebo for 3 years reduced the risk of recurrence of breast intraepithelial neoplasia and was associated with limited toxicity. As noted by the investigators,...
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,...
Dance/movement therapy is a complementary modality that is being explored for symptom control and for improving the quality of life of patients with cancer, especially pediatric patients. Self-expression as well as the creative and interpersonal aspects of dance/movement therapy can help patients...
In the past, the role of the pathologist was primarily to present anatomic pathology findings on various specimens, particularly at tumor boards. However, in the emerging age of personalized medicine and molecular diagnostics, the responsibilities of pathologist have greatly expanded into...
MORE DATA are in to support early intervention for high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma—an early, asymptomatic entity lacking the presence of CRAB criteria (elevated calcium, renal failure, anemia, bone lesions). The latest come from two phase II studies presented at the 2018 American Society of...
We read with interest a recent article published on ASCOPost.com, which summarized a paper on the role of shared decision-making in lung cancer screening.1,2 The summary and original report highlight a mandate by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that bears careful...
Results of a small clinical trial suggest that supplementing chemotherapy with high doses of vitamin D may benefit patients with metastatic colorectal cancer by delaying progression of the disease. These findings were published by Ng et al in JAMA. Initial trial findings were reported at the 2017...
A new study reports that a type of cervical cancer that is less amenable to detection by Papanicolaou (Pap) testing is increasing in several subpopulations of women, pointing to the growing importance of human papillomavirus (HPV) testing and vaccination. The study was published by Islami ...
A study by Bauman et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that patients who kept ice chips in their mouths—what the study authors called “oral cryotherapy”—during oxaliplatin infusions reported less trouble with eating and...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO has announced the recipients of its 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting Merit Awards. These distinguished awards support oncology trainees who are first authors on abstracts selected for presentation at the ASCO Annual Meeting. This year, Conquer Cancer will...
In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bayman et al found that prophylactic radiotherapy to the chest wall after diagnostic or therapeutic procedures did not reduce the risk of chest wall metastases in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. In the open-label,...
Yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, ASCO announced a new task force aimed at reducing disparities and improving outcomes for patients and survivors of cancer who live in rural communities. The new Rural Cancer Care Task Force will identify opportunities to close the care gap and ...
In the phase III PHOENIX trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Younes et al found that the addition of ibrutinib to R-CHOP (rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) did not improve outcomes in patients with untreated non–germinal center B-cell...
ASCO recently announced that it is seeking applications for research grants for projects that use data from CancerLinQ Discovery®—an offering of ASCO’s CancerLinQ® initiative—as a source. CancerLinQ Discovery provides curated sets of deidentified data from patients with cancer to academic...
OVER THE PAST several months, the ASCO in Action Podcast has secured exclusive interviews with high-ranking officials to discuss health policy issues affecting the United States. In March, the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Acting...
Carson Leslie was a kind, popular, lively teen who loved sports and spending time with his family and friends. He was a devoted student at The Covenant School of Dallas, where he was quarterback on the school’s football team, and he was an active member of Grace Bible Church. He shared a special...
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION for Cancer Research (AACR) recently honored Charles L. Sawyers, MD, FAACR, with the AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship at the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting in Atlanta. The AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship, now in its 13th year, is awarded to a scientist...
THE PEZCOLLER FOUNDATION–AMERICAN ASSOCIATION for Cancer Research (AACR) International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research was recently presented to Alberto Mantovani, MD, Professor of Experimental Medicine and Pathophysiology at Humanitas University in Milan, Italy, at the 2019...
In 1996, an excruciating sore throat sent me first to my primary care physician and then to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, after a suspicious mass was found on the right side of my throat. A biopsy determined that the tumor was squamous cell neck cancer, and additional tests of my neck,...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to...
The early debate over the social and ethical implications of gene therapy led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee in 1974. However, the risks of human gene therapies were largely unknown until 1999, when a patient died of a massive immune...
THE EMERGENCE of anticancer agents that block immune checkpoints has transformed the field of oncology, leading to durable responses and improvements in overall survival in melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, head/neck squamous cell carcinoma, urothelial bladder cancer, and non–small cell lung cancer....
NEW AGENTS for the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer should be coming soon to your clinic, according to Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of...
HIS HEAD WAS DIFFERENT from those of the other people in line. He bore a matrix of white rows of circular patches on his shaved scalp like a wig. The patches were electrodes, connected by cords to a power supply in a satchel around his shoulder. I was able to make an instant and unfortunate...
Harborside, a market-leading medical communications company (and publisher of The ASCO Post), has announced that OncologyGo™, its free, on-demand oncology video mobile app, has been recognized in the 2019 Mobile Star Awards winter program, hosted by MobileVillage.com. Both Harborside and the app...
Informed consent is an important part of delivering quality cancer care. Traditional ethical and legal rules require clinicians to disclose three types of information: (1) the patient’s diagnosis; (2) the nature of the proposed intervention and its intended benefits, risks, and adverse effects;...
Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center recently announced the launch of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center in Boston. The Center will provide expert, compassionate, and cutting-edge care to young adult patients with colon and rectal cancer, with a focus on scientific discovery and...
In patients with locally advanced rectal cancer, the delivery of all radiotherapy and chemotherapy neoadjuvantly—with a shorter course of radiation—may improve the chance of complete response and downstaging over conventional treatment, according to investigators from Washington University, St....
ASCO, the American Society of Hematology (ASH), and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) are pleased to acknowledge receipt of a key clarification from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on prescribing opioids to manage pain from certain conditions. ...
Increasing evidence is emerging about the effectiveness of electrochemotherapy in the treatment of basal cell carcinomas in the head and neck region. A study presented by Kis et al at the World Congress on Advanced Treatments and Technologies in Skin Cancer (Skin Cancer 2019) (Poster Board 6) aimed ...
Watch John Marshall, MD, and BILCAP first author John Neil Primrose, PhD, MBBS, discuss the trial at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting. In the phase III BILCAP trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Primrose and colleagues found evidence that adjuvant capecitabine may improve overall...