In addition to our regular coverage of major news stories from the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, here is an additional roundup of important studies related to prostate cancer. ARAMIS: Darolutamide and Quality of Life Darolutamide, a next-generation androgen receptor antagonist, significantly prolonged...
Earlier this year, ASCO announced plans for its first-ever international meeting, ASCO Breakthrough: A Global Summit for Oncology Innovators, which will be held October 11–13, 2019, in Bangkok, Thailand. The meeting is a joint effort by ASCO and the Thai Society of Clinical Oncology to bring...
The Hippocratic Oath calls on physicians to “use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment,” but not all versions of the oath call on us to prevent disease. Here we urge our colleagues to acknowledge that additional mandate and renew their commitment to preventing what could ...
Over the past several decades, the field of psychosocial oncology has matured into an invaluable subspecialty that helps patients with cancer and their caregivers deal with the existential issues that arise in cancer, especially in the advanced-disease setting. In an effort to add to this...
Positive findings from fully enrolled cohorts in non–small cell lung cancer and metastatic breast cancer from ASCO’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR™) study were presented in poster sessions at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting. In addition, the study is being expanded to...
Clinical risk factors add prognostic information that complements the 21-gene recurrence score, according to a new analysis from the landmark TAILORx trial.1,2 The integration of clinical risk with the recurrence score provides greater precision in determining recurrence risk and guiding the use of ...
Agents that improve survival in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer when added to background androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) are showing success in treating metastatic prostate cancer earlier while it is still hormone-sensitive. These agents include docetaxel (chemotherapy) and...
As you probably already know, physicians do not make the best patients. When I began experiencing the early signs of Hodgkin lymphoma, in 2007, including a persistent cough, unusual fatigue, and pruritus, I self-diagnosed allergic rhinitis and began treatment with intranasal corticosteroids....
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track designation for momelotinib in myelofibrosis, granted Priority Review to a biologics license application for luspatercept in myelodyslastic syndromes and beta-thalassemia, granted Orphan Drug designation for a new chemical...
Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitors are approved for the second-line treatment of head and neck cancer and likely will be soon in the first-line treatment of locally advanced disease. According to Robert L. Ferris, MD, PhD, developments in immunotherapy for this population should be...
New research published by Bagley et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network used a large real-world data set to demonstrate a modest but consistent survival benefit associated with adding bevacizumab to carboplatin/pemetrexed in advanced nonsquamous non–small...
Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed to improve the reimbursement currently given to hospitals that provide chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy to patients with blood cancer as part of the Fiscal Year 2020 Inpatient Prospective Payment System...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®), covering eight tumor types. NCCN Guidelines are now published for more than 70 tumor types and topics. Some of the key updates for 2019 were presented...
A breast surgery opioid prescription management program that analyzed current physician patterns and provided education and guidelines successfully reduced the volume of narcotics given postoperatively to patients at a large institution. These results were presented by Fan et al at the Annual...
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...
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,...
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...
Christopher L. Hallemeier, MD, Associate Professor in Radiation Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, and Andrew S. Kennedy, MD, Physician in Chief of Radiation Oncology at Sarah Cannon, Nashville, and Director of Radiation Oncology Research, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, commented on the...
Although ARCHES was a positive trial, the results may not signal a practice change at this time, according to formal discussant Ian Davis, MBBS, PhD, FRACP, FAChPM, of Monash University Eastern Health Clinical School, Melbourne. “We should probably not change practice yet on the basis of these...
DARATUMUMAB APPEARS to be the “gift that keeps on giving” to the myeloma community. “It seems we can add daratumumab to almost anything and make the regimen better. It’s got good activity and a good safety profile,” said Kenneth Shain, MD, PhD, Director of the Myeloma Working Group at Moffitt...
CITY OF HOPE announced recently that it received its third lymphoma Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The grant covers a 5-year period and totals $12.5 million. SPORE grants involve both basic as well as clinical and applied...
New research published by Dinan et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network provides evidence that genomic recurrence score testing using the 21-gene assay is associated with decreased cancer care costs in real-world practice among certain patients with breast...
With advances in the field, the number of haploidentical stem cell transplants being performed (ie, using human leukocyte antigen [HLA] half-matched donor stem cells) has been increasing. In recognition of evolving strategies to improve outcomes, a group of transplant physicians started the...
The number of guideline-recommended biomarkers to be assessed in patients with newly diagnosed, metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is increasing. These biomarkers include both predictive targets—including EGFR, ALK, ROS1, BRAF, RET, MET, and ERBB2—and prognostic...
IN A PHASE III TRIAL reported during the Plenary Session at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, single-agent ibrutinib and ibrutinib/rituximab were associated with superior progression-free survival vs...
SOME PATIENTS with advanced head and neck cancer may achieve durable responses with immunotherapy, and recent trial results suggest first-line immunotherapy may increase survival among patients with recurrent or metastatic disease. However, concerns remain about selecting patients most likely to...
TO ADD to our ongoing coverage of the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, we bring readers of The ASCO Post these summaries of an assortment of interesting studies. They focus on novel therapies under investigation in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic...
Physician wellness is emblazoned upfront in the news with attention-seeking headlines on a daily basis. The fact that one or two physicians commit suicide every day in this country sometimes elicits more of a sympathetic acknowledgment than a committed call to address it. Moreover, these sobering...
BREAST CANCER is a microscopic disease, with most patients presenting with “localized” stage I to III disease, for which they are offered curative-intent surgery often accompanied by radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and hormonal therapy. More accurately, we now know that patients with localized...
In discussions after these presentations, several points were made by several experts. To begin, Steven Gore, MD, Director of Hematologic Malignancies at Yale Medical School, called the study of venetoclax plus 10-day decitabine “very important,” but he raised the issue of appropriate dosing. He...
The benefit of adding venetoclax to a hypomethylating agent or low-dose cytarabine in the front-line treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was evident from a number of studies reported at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition (see Table 1). For elderly...
As reported by Solomon et al in The Lancet Oncology1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, results from a global phase II study of the third-generation ALK inhibitor lorlatinib showed a high overall response rate and high intracranial response rate for patients with advanced ALK-positive...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed V. Shanta, MD, an internationally renowned oncologist and Chairperson of the Cancer Institute in Adyar, Chennai, India. Dr. Shanta has been with the Institute since 1955, holding several positions...
A study by Graber et al in the International Journal of Cancer has found a significant increase in head and neck cancers among workers and volunteers who responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC), pointing to newly emerging risks that require ongoing monitoring ...
As the field of immunotherapy accelerates, so does the literature reporting on the path ahead. One of the newer books on the topic is A Cure Within: Scientists Unleashing the Immune System to Kill Cancer. It has a top-notch pedigree: the author, Neil Canavan, is a seasoned journalist with more than ...
FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO, author Neil Canavan attended a scientific conference to learn what he could about the then-emerging field of immunotherapy for cancer. After a presentation by Zelig Eshhar, PhD, principal investigator in the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced new changes to expand and update the Expanded Access (EA) program, which allows very ill patients access to experimental treatments outside of clinical trials. The most recent updates include: Clarifications on Safety Data: The FDA...
Although most major cancer organizations agree on the guidelines for prostate cancer screening, there is still uneven application of the test, such as in the older patient population, resulting in overdiagnosis and waste in an already fiscally challenged health-care system. Researchers from the...
Commenting on the findings of the KATHERINE trial were Eric P. Winer, MD, Director of the Breast Oncology Program in the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Thompson Senior Investigator in Breast Cancer Research andProfessor of Medicine at Harvard...
In patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer and residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant treatment with trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1; Kadcyla) reduced the risk of invasive disease by 50% over trastuzumab (Herceptin).1 The phase III KATHERINE study was presented at the 2018...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued the following new approvals and designations: Priority Review for Atezolizumab in Combination With Chemotherapy for the Initial Treatment of Extensive-Stage SCLC The FDA accepted a supplemental biologics license application...
AT THE BEGINNING of November, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program (QPP) outlining reimbursement changes for 2019. CMS estimates that the overall impact will be a 1% reimbursement cut for...
THE STUDY’S discussant, Susan M. O’Brien, MD, Associate Director for Clinical Science, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California Irvine Health, said the results of the Alliance North American Intergroup Study A041202—demonstrating that ibrutinib (Imbruvica) is more...
An analysis of the association between clinical outcomes and race in participants enrolled in the TAILORx trial found that even with equivalent treatments among women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, black women had worse clinical outcomes than white women, despite ...
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,...
“‘Sickness’ is what is happening to the patient. Listen to him. Disease is what is happening to science and to populations.” —Lawrence Weed, MD, 1978 America’s massive health-care system is highly complex, with its own unique language, methods, technologies, and scientific approaches, developed and ...
Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO, of the University of Michigan, and Carolyn D. Runowicz, MD, FASCO, of Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University, Miami, were selected by the ASCO Nominating Committee as candidates for President-Elect. Why do you want to serve as ASCO...
In response to the opioid-overdose epidemic, several measures have been put in place, such as the reclassification of hydrocodone as a Schedule II opioid and new requirements for physician review of prescription drug–monitoring program databases in most states. Moreover, the Surgeon General and...
In December, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School will launch an innovative cancer care model called the CaLM (cancer life re-imagined) Clinic as part of its new cancer center, the Livestrong Cancer Institutes. The goal of the Livestrong Cancer Institutes and the CaLM Clinic is to...
ACCORDING TO a study by Johns Hopkins, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.1 Lakshmi Santanam, PhD, tackled such sobering data at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium. “Incident learning systems are not just about medical errors or data; it’s kind of a first...