As the number of opioid-related deaths continues to rise in the United States, stakeholders are struggling to make sense of the crisis. At the 2018 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium, two experts in the field, Charles F. von Gunten, MD, PhD, and Leslie J. Blackhall, MD,...
Does evidence of the effectiveness and safety of scalp cooling to reduce hair loss among women being treated for breast cancer mean that scalp cooling is a new standard of care? “I would suggest that it is,” stated Mikel Ross, MSN, RN, AGNP-BC, of the Breast Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a guidance titled Clinical Trial Endpoints for the Approval of Cancer Drugs and Biologics. The guidance provides recommendations to applicants on endpoints for cancer clinical trials submitted to the FDA to support effectiveness claims...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a revolutionary approach to treating hematologic malignancies. As experience with this strategy is gained, researchers are learning more about how to optimize responses, especially in patients with “immune exhaustion,” who have a suboptimal initial...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On November 26, 2018, larotrectinib (Vitrakvi) was...
Grace Lu-Yao, PhD, Associate Director of Population Science at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health (SKCC), has been honored with the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) 2018 Nursing and Allied Health Investigator Award at the SIOG 2018 Annual Conference. Dr. Lu-Yao...
Jonathan Chernoff, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Stanley P. Reimann Chair in Oncology Research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, has received a grant from the Melanoma Research Foundation to support research on RAC1-mutant melanoma. The grant will provide $200,000 over 2 years. With this...
A large comprehensive patient-level meta-analysis showed that achieving pathologic complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy correlates with significantly improved event-free survival and overall survival in patients with localized breast cancer. These findings were particularly robust in...
High drug prices are the number one health-care concern of many Americans. The average price of a cancer drug rose from less than $10,000/yr before 2000 to more than $170,000/yr in 2017.1-3 Between 1995 and 2013, the launch price of cancer drugs increased by 10% to 12% every year, and the average...
At a press conference where the ECOG-ACRIN E1912 presentation and related issues were discussed, session moderator Aaron T. Gerds, MD, MS, of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Center, was quite enthusiastic about these results. “I believe these results should change clinical practice....
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...
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses how treatment with a lower dose of palbociclib (100 mg vs 125 mg) in combination with fulvestrant or tamoxifen is associated with a lower rate of high-grade neutropenia (Abstract PD2-12).
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...
IN A QUALITY improvement project that was featured in the Quality Care Symposium press program,1 members of an oncology care team achieved a 46% reduction in opioid use among patients who underwent a range of urologic surgeries. They did this by using a systemic approach that identified multiple...
ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation is committed to supporting the research and career development of young researchers through its Grants & Awards Program. On October 10–11, 2018, Conquer Cancer hosted its 4th Scientific and Career Development Retreat at ASCO headquarters in Alexandria,...
Although overall cancer survival rates continue to improve among all age groups in the United States—there are currently an estimated 15.5 million cancer survivors, and that number is expected to increase to 20.3 million by 20261—survival rates for adolescents and young adults with cancer (AYAs)...
Catherine J. Wu, MD, Professor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, was reared in a medical environment, which shaped her career path as a physician-scientist. “Both of my parents are physicians and were trained in internal medicine. Medicine was always part of my life as I grew up, and it seemed like...
ON SEPTEMBER 13, 2018, moxetumomab pasudotox-tdfk (Lumoxiti), a CD22-directed cytotoxin, was approved for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory hairy cell leukemia who received at least two prior systemic therapies, including with a purine nucleoside analog.1,2 Supporting...
IN JULY 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the combination of the oral BRAF inhibitor encorafenib (Braftovi) and the oral MEK inhibitor binimetinib (Mektovi) for BRAF V600E– or V600K– positive metastatic melanoma. The FDA approval was based on the results of the COLUMBUS...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On September 24, 2018, duvelisib (Copiktra) was granted...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT of the ACE trial, Rebecca Dent, MD, of the National Cancer Center in Singapore, commented that the phase II ENCORE 301 study provided proof of concept that a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor can reprogram epigenetic changes.1 In that randomized, double-blind,...
DISCUSSANT OF the abstract, Catherine C. Park, MD, FASTRO, Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco, expressed excitement about this study’s results, which suggest the possibility of curing patients with stage IV disease. “We’re...
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...
Monica Morrow, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center reviews lessons learned from top abstracts, including how to tailor the extent of local therapy to minimize morbidity, the diminishing role of axillary lymph node dissection, long-term sequelae of breast surgical procedures, and the need...
A study by Dominici et al investigated the long-term quality of life outcomes in young breast cancer survivors across three surgical strategies: breast-conserving surgery, unilateral mastectomy, and bilateral mastectomy. The researchers found that patients who underwent mastectomy had lower breast...
BOOKMARK Title: Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors, and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood LeukemiaAuthor: Tim WendelPublisher: ILR PressPublication date: April 2018Price: $24.95, hardcover, 256 pages Tim Wendel is a journalist and author of several noted books, mostly concerning sports. In...
BOOKMARK Title: Your Happy Brain: Why and How to Hug ItAuthors: Philomena Lawrence, BA, BEd, and Gilbert Lawrence, MD, FRCRPublisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing PlatformPublication date: June 2018Price: $16.00, paperback, 390 pages Some 2,400 years ago, the ancient Greeks were among the...
Despite the fact that I had to have open heart surgery at age 7 to fix a congenital heart defect and then more surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy to treat a diagnosis of rhabdomyosarcoma a year later, I never felt like I was a sick kid. Children don’t have the existential worries about...
BOOKMARK Title: Doing Harm: The Truth About Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and SickAuthor: Maya DusenberyPublisher: HarperOnePublication date: March 2018Price: $27.99, hardcover, 400 pages Over the past year or so, there have been several books by women focused...
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,...
On August 20, 2018, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with pemetrexed (Alimta) and platinum was granted regular approval as first-line treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with no epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) or anaplastic lymphoma...
Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. GUEST EDITOR The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the...
“The data are in, and they are clear and convincing. Palliative care leads to better outcomes for patients. The major challenge now is to make it part of standard cancer care everywhere in the United States and then everywhere else in the world, said Charles von Gunten, MD, PhD, a medical...
Cancer is the leading cause of disease-related childhood death. To better serve the special needs of this highly vulnerable patient population, pediatric palliative care teams use a personalized, holistic, and interdisciplinary approach tailored to relieve the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual ...
“We are on the cusp of a new way to treat breast cancer,” Mary L. (Nora) Disis, MD, said in summarizing advances using immunology to treat breast cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, adaptive T-cell therapies, and vaccines can enlist and rev up the immune system and be combined with chemotherapy...
Finance is a key driver in cancer prevention, as has been evidenced by the influence of tax on the consumption of products such as cigarettes and alcohol. Going up against a huge industry like Big Tobacco will almost certainly be met with tremendous opposition, but understanding the industrial...
The global burden of cancer-related suffering is tremendously unbalanced, according to Eric L. Krakauer, MD, PhD, Director of the Global Palliative Care Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston and a lead coauthor of the Report of the Lancet Commission on Global...
A retrospective study evaluating the influence of time to chemotherapy on patients with triple-negative disease and its impact on survival outcome has found that patients who delayed adjuvant chemotherapy more than 30 days after surgery had a significantly higher risk for disease recurrence and...
On October 16, 2018, the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor talazoparib (Talzenna) was approved for the treatment of patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA-mutated, HER2-negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.1,2 Patients must be selected for...
On August 16, 2018, lenvatinib (Lenvima) was approved for the first-line treatment of patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on the findings of a phase III open-label noninferiority trial (REFLECT), in which 954 patients with previously...
A 6-month course of chemotherapy-based treatment with FCR (intravenous fludarabine and cyclophosphamide plus rituximab [Rituxan]) has historically been the most effective treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), especially in patients 70 years of age and younger. However, results from a...
At the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, Grover et al presented preliminary results from a clinical study of an investigational cellular immunotherapy for Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma expressing the CD30 protein marker (Abstract 681). Data...
Norman E. Sharpless, MD, Director of the National Cancer Institute, discusses his vision for the NCI in four key areas––big data, clinical trials, workforce development, and basic science––and how this vision affects the hematology community.
Researchers used machine learning to develop a new system to analyze genomic and clinical data to provide a personalized overall outcome that is patient-specific in myelodysplastic syndromes. In tests, the system outperformed the current standard prognostic tool, suggesting the new model may offer...
A population-based study examining patient receipt of a surveillance colonoscopy 3 years after the removal of high-risk adeonomatous polyps has found that the procedure was underutilized and varied by health-care system, patient age, and number of adenomas found. Strategies to improve adherence to...
YouTube videos on prostate cancer often offer misleading or biased medical information that poses potential health risks to patients, an analysis of the social media platform published by Loeb et al in European Urology showed. For the latest analysis, researchers, which included social...
New results from the long-running I-SPY 2 trial, which aimed to identify which new drugs or combinations of drugs are most effective in which types of breast cancer, demonstrated the usefulness of two genomic tests. Laura van ‘t Veer, PhD, leader of the Breast Oncology Program at the...
"WE ABSOLUTELY have an obligation to evaluate all of the features describing our patients with cancer when we are trying to figure out why some patients do better than others,” Lisa A. Newman, MD, MPH, reminded the nearly 700 participants at the 2018 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium, hosted by...
Elisha Waldman, MD, is a pediatric oncologist and Associate Chief in the Division of Palliative Care at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. He grew up in a Connecticut suburb, the son of a conservative rabbi. Early on, Dr. Waldman majored in religious studies and felt...
Cancer memoirs are generally written by people who have an intimate relationship with the disease, mostly survivors, sometimes by those who are dying while writing, such as the breathtaking book, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, by the poet Nina Riggs. Once in a while, a scientist or...