A physician-scientist at City of Hope has identified a novel combination immunotherapy regimen—a triplet therapy consisting of regorafenib, ipilimumab, and nivolumab—that demonstrated significant response in patients with chemotherapy-resistant, microsatellite-stable metastatic colorectal cancer....
On September 12, Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO, Board Chair of the Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), made the following statement: “President John F. Kennedy’s historic speech that inspired our nation and an entire generation of Americans to achieve manned space exploration underscored ...
Axel Bex, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses phase III findings from the IMmotion010 study, which evaluated the efficacy and safety of atezolizumab vs placebo in patients with renal cell cancer who are at high risk of disease recurrence following nephrectomy (Abstract LBA66).
Researchers reported study results showing that fruquintinib, a small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR), significantly improved overall survival and progression-free survival in patients with refractory metastatic colorectal cancer. Findings...
In an international, multicenter phase II clinical trial, 63.3% of patients with stage II to IV cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma saw their tumors nearly or completely eradicated when treated with the anti–PD-1 agent cemiplimab-rwlc before surgery. The results were presented by Gross et al at the...
Physicians, care providers, and payers may be preparing for a major shift in early cancer detection that will affect almost every stage of cancer diagnosis and treatment. New data supporting the accuracy of multicancer early detection blood testing, presented by Deb Schrag, MD, FASCO, MPH, at the...
Patients with high-risk melanoma who received the anti–PD-1 therapy pembrolizumab both before and after surgery to remove cancerous tissue had a significantly lower risk of their cancer recurring than similar patients who received the drug only after surgery. These results from a study by the SWOG...
Aggarwal et al presented data from PRESTO (AFT-19) at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 (Abstract LBA63), the first trial to evaluate whether intensifying treatment beyond androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) by adding apalutamide with or without abiraterone acetate plus...
An overall survival benefit has now emerged for sacituzumab govitecan-hziy in patients with previously treated hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative locally recurrent inoperable or metastatic breast cancer, according to a planned second interim analysis of the phase III TROPiCS-02 trial. These...
Patients who received fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) for HER2-low metastatic breast cancer reported that the treatment maintained their quality of life compared to conventional chemotherapy, according to results presented by Ueno et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)...
A novel treatment strategy with personalized cell therapy significantly improved progression-free survival compared to standard immunotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma, according to results from the phase III M14TIL trial reported by John Haanen, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the European...
Significant improvements in progression-free survival and response rate—combined with reduced symptoms and better quality of life—were reported as outcomes of a new treatment approach for patients with desmoid tumors, benign but locally aggressive and invasive soft-tissue tumors. Through targeting...
A targeted kinase inhibitor added to a two-drug immunotherapy combination slowed the progression of advanced kidney cancer in previously untreated patients, according to research led by Toni K. Choueiri, MD. Dr. Choueiri, who is the Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Cancer at...
The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group presented data from PROSPER RCC (EA8143), the first randomized phase III trial of neoadjuvant immunotherapy in patients with kidney cancer, at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 (Abstract LBA67). Patients with high-risk renal cell...
A new mechanism has been identified through which very small pollutant particles in the air may trigger lung cancer in people who have never smoked, paving the way to new prevention approaches and the development of novel therapies, according to late-breaking data reported by Charles Swanton, MBBS, ...
On September 9, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), together with the European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS), announced the launch of the Europe-wide “Cancer Prevention Across Europe” campaign (PrEvCan) aimed at reducing the burden of cancer. The announcement was made at the opening ...
Perhaps the best known of all cancer predisposition genes are inherited mutations in the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. They were originally associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Later studies revealed that they also increased the risk of prostate and pancreatic cancers and, in...
I was just 31 and about to give birth to my fourth child, Yitzchok, when I received a diagnosis of primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma. The news was terrifying and crippling. For months, I had been experiencing shortness of breath, coughing, and a pain in my left shoulder, all of which were...
“I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning!” —Steve Jobs Relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma remains a treatment challenge. Promising responses have been demonstrated with bispecific antibodies, with a...
EQRx is an economics professor’s dream company. It is the perfect example of the principle of substitution. EQRx provides quality, lower-cost drugs in high-cost categories that may substitute for the higher-priced options. Although the profit margin for each drug unit is smaller than the...
The numbers are dizzying. The costs of cancer care in the United States are rising so fast that by 2030, it is projected the national cancer-attributable costs will total more than $246 billion, up from $183 billion in 2015—a 34% increase.1 And although the total global economic burden of cancer is ...
The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) recently announced that Ochsner Cancer Institute in New Orleans is a recipient of a 2022 ACCC Innovator Award. The award recognizes Ochsner Cancer Institute’s Chemotherapy Care Companion program—a digital technology system that allows the cancer...
ASCO has issued a new practice guideline update on the use of biomarkers in the management of metastatic breast cancer.1 The updated guideline revisits recommendations from the 2015 guideline and addresses topics that have emerged since then in the move toward personalized medicine in metastatic...
The GOG Foundation, Inc (GOG-F), Board of Directors recently announced the election of Thomas J. Herzog, MD, as its next President, succeeding Larry J. Copeland, MD, who has served in this role since 2017. Under Dr. Copeland’s leadership, the GOG-F has experienced unprecedented growth in its...
On August 11, 2022, Roche announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a label expansion for the Ventana MMR RxDx Panel. The Ventana MMR RxDx Panel is the first immunohistochemistry companion diagnostic test to aid in identifying patients whose solid tumors are deficient in DNA ...
People with light skin tones are far more likely to develop melanoma than people with darker skin tones. This large disparity results from far more than can be explained by the ultraviolet (UV) protective effects of melanin pigment, owing in large part to the melanin precursor...
Over recent decades, more and more adults under the age of 50 are developing cancer. A recently published study revealed that the incidence of early-onset cancers (those diagnosed before age 50)—including breast, colon, esophageal, kidney, liver, and pancreatic cancers, among others—has...
Mount Sinai researchers have published results that show alternate therapeutic options for patients with multiple myeloma after first-line treatment with bispecific antibodies fails. While new T cell–based immunotherapies, or “T-cell redirection” therapies, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)...
Researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have received a $9.5 million National Cancer Institute Program Project (P01) grant to investigate esophageal adenocarcinoma. “People with chronic gastroesophageal reflux disease can develop a...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the 30-month follow-up of the phase III KEYNOTE-564 trial showed a continued disease-free survival benefit with adjuvant pembrolizumab vs placebo in patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma who are at increased risk...
March 2, 2009. Just published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.1 And we even got the cover. Twists and turns of heat shock protein-90 (Hsp90), the chaperone, the evolutionary capacitor. Great name and important cancer target. People smiled when I talked about this at the Hsp90 conference....
In 2019, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed V. Craig Jordan, CMG, OBE, PhD, DSc, FMedSci, Companion of the Most Distinguished order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), honoring his extraordinary scientific work in the development of selective estrogen receptor modulators, most notably...
When combined with radiotherapy as definitive treatment of locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, cisplatin at a dose of 40 mg/m2 weekly is noninferior to cisplatin at 100 mg/m2 every 3 weeks, according to the results of the ConCERT trial.1 These findings were presented by Atul...
On September 5, 2022, the oncology community lost a pioneer in the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma, Saul A. Rosenberg, MD, FASCO. Dr. Rosenberg was the Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor in the School of Medicine, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Together with the late Henry Kaplan, MD, Dr....
The randomized phase II GRIFFIN study evaluated the investigational use of daratumumab in combination with lenalidomide, bortezomib, and dexamethasone (RVd), followed by maintenance therapy with daratumumab and lenalidomide, compared to RVd followed by maintenance therapy with lenalidomide alone,...
Nipple-sparing techniques can provide better outcomes for women undergoing breast reconstruction after mastectomy, but due to complication risks, these approaches are often not offered to women with sagging or larger breasts. For this group of patients, a “batwing” incision may provide a safer...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Deek et al, long-term follow-up of the pooled phase II STOMP and ORIOLE trials suggest maintained benefit of metastasis-directed therapy vs observation in patients with oligometastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer. Study Details As noted by ...
Interim results of a phase II study have demonstrated the safety and feasibility of treating elderly and frail patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with the monoclonal antibody durvalumab during and after radiation therapy, without chemotherapy. The results of a...
Two studies published simultaneously by Jaratlerdsiri et al in Nature and Gong et al in Genome Medicine have identified genetic signatures explaining ethnic differences in the severity of prostate cancer, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Through genetic sequencing of prostate cancer tumors from...
A team of researchers from the University of Rochester discovered how certain genetic mutations fuel the growth of cholangiocarcinoma, a rare but aggressive type of malignancy that has been on the rise in the United States. Their work, published by Guo et al in Cell Reports this week, details the...
Expanded data from the phase I C-800 study showed the immunotherapy combination of botensilimab and balstilimab appeared to be active in patients with microsatellite-stable (MSS) metastatic colorectal cancer. The findings were reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) World...
Currently, there are two U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies targeting the B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) for adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma: idecabtagene vicleucel and citacabtagene autoleucel. However, although ...
A new clinical guideline from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) provides recommendations on the use of radiation therapy to treat patients with isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)-mutant grade 2 and grade 3 diffuse glioma. Evidence-based recommendations outline the multidisciplinary...
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) alone may be considered an effective treatment option for “low-risk” T1–2N1 and T3N0 nasopharyngeal carcinoma, according to trial data presented by Jun Ma, MD, MS, Professor of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China,...
In an interim analysis of the Chinese phase III REALITY trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Lin et al found that apatinib, a highly selective VEGFR2 inhibitor, significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with progressive, locally advanced or metastatic, radioactive...
On September 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients aged 12 years and older with locally advanced or metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer that has progressed following prior vascular endothelial growth...
In a population-based age-period-cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Zhang et al estimated that current human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates will have a limited impact on overall oropharyngeal cancer incidence through 2045, due to a high risk of oropharyngeal cancer in unvaccinated...
“MC1675 is an important and exciting trial,” stated invited discussant Farzan Siddiqui, MD, PhD, of the Henry Ford Cancer Institute, Detroit. “Congratulations to the authors and to Dr. Ma for his award.” “There is strong evidence to suggest that patients with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancers...
De-escalated adjuvant radiotherapy appears to be safe in patients with surgically resectable, human papillomavirus (HPV)--positive oropharyngeal cancers, particularly in patients without extranodal extension or pN2 disease by American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 8th edition. These findings...
Women with a breast cancer diagnosis undergoing procedures for fertility preservation are not at an increased risk for recurrence of the disease or disease-specific mortality, according to the results of a study from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden that followed participants for 5 years on...