With three new HER2-targeted therapies approved over the past year or two alone, the treatment landscape for patients with metastatic breast cancer has become increasingly crowded. In the third-line setting and beyond, there are now at least eight HER2-targeted agents approved by the U.S. Food and...
C. Kent Osborne, MD, Founding Director of the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Dudley and Tina Sharp Chair for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, said in a press briefing that the results of the study were clear, but the explanation for the findings is less so....
The SWOG S1007 RxPONDER trial evaluated the benefit of chemotherapy in women with early-stage hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer and node-positive disease.1 The data showed that many postmenopausal women can skip adjuvant chemotherapy, based on a 46% reduction in the risk of...
Commentary for monarchE and PENELOPE-B was provided by C. Kent Osborne, MD, and Ruth M. O’Regan, MD, respectively. Dr. Osborne is Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Oncology and the Dudley and Tina Sharp Chair for Cancer Research at Baylor College of Medicine, as well as Founding Director of...
The primary outcome analysis of the phase III monarchE trial, an update of previous data, continued to show significant benefit for abemaciclib in the adjuvant setting, reducing the risk for invasive disease recurrence by 28.7%. Meanwhile, the first results of the phase III PENELOPE-B trial of...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Erica L. Mayer, MD, and colleagues, the second interim analysis of the phase III PALLAS trial showed no improvement in invasive disease–free survival with the addition of adjuvant palbociclib to ongoing endocrine therapy in patients with hormone receptor...
Formal discussant of the OlympiA trial, Nadine M. Tung, MD, Director of Breast Medical Oncology and the Cancer Genetics and Prevention Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, was enthusiastic about the ability of olaparib to improve invasive disease–free survival ...
Adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib for 1 year extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline (inherited) mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented at the...
Because of their well-established efficacy, inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are the standard of care in the treatment of hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. The question now is this: After disease progresses on a CDK4/6 inhibitor and endocrine...
John V. Cox, DO, MBA, of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, summarizes his Joseph V. Simone Lecture, in which he stressed the need for coordinated care among practices. The concept of oncology medical homes, he says, has evolved to a broader-based model in which oncologists...
Care for the 15 most prevalent types of cancer in the United States cost approximately $156.2 billion for about 402,000 privately insured adult patients in 2018, according to a report published by Nicholas G. Zaorsky, MD, and colleagues in JAMA Network Open. The research team also found that...
Psychological therapy may reduce adverse biobehavioral effects of testicular cancer in young adult survivors, according to a pilot study published by Hoyt et al in the American Journal of Men’s Health. Biobehavior is the interaction of biologic processes and behavior. The recently published...
A study that tracked parental opinion about the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine showed that after hesitancy decreased for several years, hesitancy has now either stabilized or increased in some ethnic and age groups, according to results presented by Adjei Boakye et al at the 14th AACR...
The Wistar Institute has announced the appointment of Italo Tempera, PhD, as Associate Director for Cancer Research Career Enhancement at the Institute’s Cancer Center. Dr. Tempera, who is also Associate Professor in the Gene Expression & Regulation Program, will lead the educational mission of ...
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) has named Michael Boyer, MBBS, FRACP, PhD, as the 2021 recipient of the Adi F. Gazdar IASLC Merit Award. The announcement was made during the IASLC 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer. In 2019, the IASLC Board of Directors...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has appointed Tracy Gosselin, PhD, RN, AOCN, NEA-BC, FAAN, as Senior Vice President, Chief Nurse Executive, and Chair of Nursing, effective November 2021. Dr. Gosselin currently serves as Chief Nursing & Patient Care Services Officer at Duke...
For years, scientists at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center have devoted themselves to research to better understand ovarian cancer. Now, teams of researchers from these two leading centers are combining efforts after together ...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has announced Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH, MPH, as the recipient of the 2021 AACR Distinguished Lectureship on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities. Dr. Colditz presented his award lecture, “Making Progress, Together: An Inclusive, Broad-Based ...
The resurging COVID-19 pandemic has reawakened challenges for patients and physicians—ones we all hoped were over—and presented stressful situations for patients and providers. Hospitals in some states, particularly those with lower vaccination rates, have faced levels of urgent illness that have...
Divya Gupta, MD, of the Stanford Cancer Center, discusses an intervention utilizing a computer model and lay care coaches to improve advance care planning conversations with patients who have metastatic cancer. The study, Dr. Gupta reports, showed a trend toward less intensive care for patients at...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued several regulatory decisions for novel treatments for patients with cancer. Priority Review for Relatlimab and Nivolumab Fixed-Dose Combination in Unresectable or Metastatic Melanoma The FDA accepted for Priority Review the...
Elevated allostatic load was associated with a lower likelihood of completing chemotherapy and a lower overall survival rate in patients with lymph node–positive or high-risk lymph node–negative HER2-negative breast cancer, according to results presented by Samilia Obeng-Gyasi, MD, MPH, at the 14th ...
Black patients with prostate cancer who were treated with the androgen receptor inhibitor darolutamide had clinical outcomes similar to those observed in the overall clinical trial population, according to results from the phase III ARAMIS trial presented by Neal Shore, MD, at the 14th AACR...
On October 5, Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, announced his decision to end his tenure as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by the end of the year. Dr. Collins is the longest-serving presidentially appointed NIH Director, having served three U.S. presidents over more than 12 years....
“It is important to note that a paper on managing individuals with germline variants in PALB2 was published in the same issue of Genetics in Medicine as an article on reporting secondary findings in clinical exome and genome sequencing,”1,2 Douglas R. Stewart, MD, told The ASCO Post. “PALB2 is a...
PALB2 germline pathogenic variants are associated with a substantially increased risk for breast cancer and a smaller increased risk for pancreatic and ovarian cancers, warranting enhanced surveillance and the option of risk-reducing interventions, according to a global team of cancer genetic...
Since my small cell lung cancer diagnosis in 2010, I’ve had to overcome not just the distress of having a life-threatening disease, but the stigma attached to it as well. I admit that I was a smoker. I was attracted to smoking when I was 16 and saw how “cool” people looked smoking in television and ...
Given that death is a certain outcome in life, we seek the best way out as possible. What is a good death? According to Jeff Spiess, MD, author of the book Dying With Ease: A Compassionate Guide to Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions, a good death is one in which pain and suffering are minimized and ...
Divya A. Parikh, MD, of Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses findings that suggest an evidence-based tool, the Serious Illness Conversation Guide, may engage patients with metastatic or recurrent urologic cancer in goals-of-care conversations, potentially resulting in an increase of...
“I vividly remember watching television with my older sister, Suzy, and marveling at President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act in December 1971, and thinking ‘for me, this was like a man going to the moon,’” writes Nancy G. Brinker in the foreword to the recently published Centers of the ...
Ensuring equitable cancer care for every patient, everywhere has been embedded into ASCO’s mission statement since the Society’s inception nearly 60 years ago. Nevertheless, events of the past year, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionally impacted minority communities, ...
On September 15, 2021, SpaceX launched the Inspiration4 mission, sending four civilians on a 3-day trip orbiting the earth. The passengers were the first to travel on an all-civilian space journey in an effort to further scientific and aerospace research while at the same time raise funds for...
On October 7, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted recognition to a partial listing of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Oncology Knowledge Base (OncoKB) as the first tumor mutation database to be included in the Public Human Genetic Variant Databases. The FDA recognized a...
President Biden announced the appointment of seven distinguished clinicians and researchers to the National Cancer Advisory Board, which plays an important role in guiding the Director of the National Cancer Institute in setting the course for the national cancer research program. President Biden...
Courtney Williams, DrPH, of the National Cancer Institute, discusses the costs associated with cancer survivors who don’t take their medications and cites the need for research to better understand whether residing in an urban or rural area may affect prescription adherence, and what interventions...
For aggressive B-cell lymphomas, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy saves lives, but relapse remains common, and a second-line standard of care is lacking. During the 2021 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, Grzegorz (Greg) S. Nowakowski, MD, Professor of Medicine and Oncology, Lymphoma...
Benjamin W. Corn, MD, of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, discusses hope: what it takes for hope to thrive; how he and his colleagues are helping patients and providers become more hopeful through workshops; and his collaboration with the Southwest Oncology Group to aid patients, through...
Several recent investigations have led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of novel antiandrogens to treat nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Yet, this work has not addressed the treatment of nonmetastatic hormone-sensitive biochemically recurrent prostate...
Jenny F. Seligmann, MBChB, PhD, of the University of Leeds, discusses phase II findings that suggest adavosertib improved progression-free survival, compared with active monitoring, by inhibiting the WEE1 kinase in patients with RAS- and TP53-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer. In the trial,...
On October 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved brexucabtagene autoleucel (Tecartus), a CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, for adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). ZUMA-3 Efficacy was evaluated ...
Eleven years ago this month, the scans and exams that hold the most power to spot the early signs of cancer became available for free to many American adults through the passing of the Affordable Care Act. Now, two new studies show that when those screening tests reveal potentially troubling signs, ...
A new study published by Jingxuan Zhao, MPH, and colleagues in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention found racial/ethnic disparities in survival among newly diagnosed patients with childhood cancers in the United States, and that area-level socioeconomic status and health insurance...
Luis E. Aguirre, MD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, discusses the subset of patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia who have a more indolent disease course. Features at diagnosis may include higher hemoglobin and platelet counts or JAK2, SF3B1, and IDH2 mutations; ...
Kieron M. Dunleavy, MD, of Georgetown University, offers insights into the latest data on treating patients with primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma: the optimal regimen; whether radiotherapy or stem cell transplants are needed; new information on the biology of the disease; novel agents such as...
For more than 2 decades, the chemotherapy agent gemcitabine has been a mainstay treatment for several types of cancer. Now, scientists have uncovered genetic evidence of which patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer are likely to benefit from the drug. In a study published by Panagiotis...
Research published by Kachuri et al in the American Journal of Human Genetics reveals that children born with a genetic predisposition to produce more lymphocytes—particularly in relation to other types of white blood cells—may be at a higher risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)....
Sarah S. Mougalian, MD, of Yale Cancer Center, discusses the increasingly common problem of long wait times for access to oncology care. Her team developed a next-day access program in several of Yale’s oncology services, which was well received by patients and decreased the time to first visit.
Leticia Nogueira, PhD, MPH, of the American Cancer Society, discusses results from a study designed to evaluate the impact of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In Medicaid-expansion states, mortality among patients after lung cancer surgery decreased from 2.4% before the ACA...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval of a new indication for cetuximab (Erbitux) in combination with encorafenib (Braftovi) for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and a BRAF V600E mutation, as detected by an FDA-approved test, after prior...
A new paper published by Geuzinge et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute indicates that adding magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to mammography is cost-effective for detecting breast cancer in women with very dense breasts. About 10% of women have extremely dense breasts, and...