The incidence of pancreatic cancer—which historically has been higher in men than in women—has increased among both men and women during the past decade, with a significantly greater relative increase observed in women younger than age 55 years, and especially among those aged 15 to 34 years. These ...
In a single-institution prospective cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, Gamble et al found that patients with hereditary lobular breast cancer due to CDH1 variants also had a high prevalence of occult signet ring cell gastric carcinoma. Study Details The study involved 283 patients from 151...
Patients with multiple myeloma lacking an antibody response to COVID-19 vaccine may also fail to mount a T-cell response, according to research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Concerningly, this scenario was most common among patients actively treated with anti-CD38 and...
A primary endpoint analysis of the NRG Oncology phase III NRG-GU003 clinical trial, which compared hypofractionated postoperative prostate bed radiotherapy (HYPORT) to conventional postprostatectomy radiotherapy (COPORT) for men with prostate cancer, determined that treatment with HYPORT yielded no ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Courtney D. DiNardo, MD, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase II portion of a phase Ib/II trial (AG221-AML-005) showed that the addition of the oral mutant IDH2 protein inhibitor enasidenib to azacitidine significantly improved overall response rate ...
In the phase III CONFIRM trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Dean A. Fennell, FRCP, PhD, and colleagues found that nivolumab improved progression-free and overall survival vs placebo in patients with relapsed malignant mesothelioma. In October 2020, the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab...
Both dose-escalated radiation therapy and short-course androgen-deprivation therapy (SADT) have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Researchers then posed a new question—is giving both modalities upfront to newly diagnosed patients of benefit? Findings ...
Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) awaiting liver transplantation may benefit from noninvasive treatment with external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) but are rarely given this therapy, according to a new analysis of U.S. national data. Findings were presented by Nima Nabavizadeh, MD, at the...
Part 2 of the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer—provided by the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries—has found that patients with cancer in the United...
Diana D. Shi, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, discusses studies being planned and already underway to test BAY 2402234, a de novo pyrimidine synthesis inhibitor that possibly could be used clinically to target IDH-mutant gliomas and may act as a...
Adagrasib, a covalent inhibitor of KRAS G12C, combined with cetuximab, showed activity in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer in the phase I/II KRYSTAL-1 trial, as presented during a Presidential Symposium at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021 by Jared Weiss, MD,...
The time required to secure prior authorization approvals for radiation therapy equates to a financial impact of more than $40 million annually for academic medical centers, according to a new study presented by Bingham et al at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual...
Moderator of the session on oncology drug pricing, Arjun Gupta, MBBS, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, observed that generics alone may be insufficient to slow the astronomical rise of drug prices. “The general thinking has always been that generics...
A study presented by Manning et al at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting (Abstract 53) showed that interventions to help Black patients overcome obstacles to completion of treatment can impact disparities in survival outcomes between Black and White patients...
A 22-gene genomic classifier (the Decipher score) may be able to predict the course of disease in men with high-risk prostate cancer, according to a patient-level meta-analysis of three randomized clinical trials presented by Paul L. Nguyen, MD, at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology...
The first indication I had stage IV lung cancer was a persistent cough during the beginning of the cold-and-flu season in the fall of 2013. I was 35 years old, never smoked, and in otherwise excellent health, so I ignored the cough for several months until I noticed my breathing had also become...
Guest Editor’s Note: Cancer-related cognitive difficulties, experienced by many cancer survivors, include perceived or objective deficits in memory, attention, and concentration, which can negatively impact quality of life. Given the important role that healthful sleep plays in cognitive processes, ...
The number of deaths related to breast cancer are increasing at an alarming pace worldwide. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) 2020 report, approximately 2,088,849 new cases and 627,000 deaths related to breast cancer occurred in 2018.1 More than 55% of these deaths occurred in low- to ...
On September 17, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a rule that could increase access to cancer care through an extended open enrollment period and monthly special enrollment periods for federally facilitated health insurance exchanges and state-based exchanges...
On September 15, 2021, the kinase inhibitor mobocertinib was granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for adults with locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations, as detected by an FDA-approved test,...
ASCO’s Coverage and Reimbursement Steering Group presented a poster on utilization of advance care planning (ACP) services at the ASCO Quality Care Symposium. The poster examined whether Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) codes for ACP services are regularly utilized by hematology and oncology...
JCO Oncology Practice is now accepting manuscripts for a special issue on disparities in cancer care for Hispanic-Latinx people. Submit your manuscript today at https://www.editorialmanager.com/op-ascopubs/default.aspx Guest Editors Miguel Villalona-Calero, MD; Gilberto Lopes, MD, MBA; Narjust...
ASCO is calling on Congress to continue its bipartisan support of federally funded research. Robust, sustained, and predictable funding growth for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) baseline budgets is critical in advancing our nation’s work toward...
The leading causes of mortality in the United States are cardiovascular disease (23%) and cancer (21%), accounting for more than 40% of total deaths reported.1,2 The increasing rise in health-care expenditures over the past several decades has driven the need for metrics to further evaluate the...
Study discussant Bruna Pellini, MD, of the Department of Thoracic Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center, Florida, noted that, regardless of PD-L1 or tumor mutation burden status, the NADIM trial demonstrated improved progression-free and overall survival for patients with resectable, stage IIIA non–small ...
Pretreatment circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) levels in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) appear to be a more accurate predictor of long-term survival than classic survival surrogates, according to research presented during the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer...
The combination of dual checkpoint inhibition plus chemotherapy could be the new standard of care in first-line metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to data presented during the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer.1 ...
The addition of 2 years of abiraterone acetate plus prednisolone (AAP) to androgen-deprivation therapy improves metastasis-free survival and overall survival compared with androgen-deprivation therapy alone in men with nonmetastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer, according to a primary...
Florian Lordick, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology and Director of the University Cancer Center Leipzig, Germany, applauded the positive finding for nivolumab plus chemotherapy in CheckMate 6491 and questioned why nivolumab plus ipilimumab did not meet its endpoint. “I’m calling this a big step...
Patients with untreated, metastatic BRAF-mutated melanoma may benefit from receiving immunotherapy first, moving to targeted therapy in the second line, data from the updated overall survival analysis of the randomized, phase II SECOMBIT trial suggest.1 The study aimed to define the optimal...
Barbara Pistilli, MD, of the Breast Cancer Group at Gustave Roussy Cancer Center, Villejuif, France, said the results of the TULIP trial, showing the progression-free survival benefit for vic-trastuzumab duocarmazine (SYD985), help to establish antibody-drug conjugates as key components of the...
Invited discussant Enrique Grande, MD, of the Medical Oncology Department at MD Anderson Cancer Center Madrid, said that the VESPER trial should really be regarded as a neoadjuvant trial, since 88% of the patients enrolled were treated in the neoadjuvant setting. He focused the rest of his remarks ...
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening recommendations made by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in 2012 may have led to worse outcomes for insured patients with prostate cancer, according to data presented at the 2021 ASCO Quality Care Symposium.1 Findings from the retrospective...
Two new studies published in Nature Communications indicate that immunotherapy may benefit people with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare but serious complication of cancer that has spread to the brain and/or spinal cord. Approximately 5% to 8% of all patients with cancer develop leptomeningeal ...
The National Cancer Act of 1971 established a national priority to address the widely shared dread of a cancer diagnosis. The goal of the National Cancer Act was to strengthen the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to more effectively carry out the national effort against cancer. After the Act was...
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder defined by a specific phenotype and the presence of more than 5,000 clonal B cells in the peripheral blood.1 In the absence of this number of circulating cells, its soft-tissue/bone-marrow counterpart is semantically...
The invited discussant of the MONALESSA-2 trial was Gonzalo Gomez-Abuin, MD, a medical oncologist who is Head of the Clinical Research Unit at Hospital Alemán in Buenos Aires. According to Dr. Gomez-Abuin, phase III trials of three different CDK4/6 inhibitors—ribociclib, palbociclib, and...
“We know that molecular alterations on gene mutations such as EGFR and ALK can lead to better prognosis, better response rates, and, more important, better quality of life for patients,” said Joshua K. Sabari, MD, of NYU Langone Health Perlmutter Cancer Center, who discussed the abstract at the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Julie R. Palmer, ScD, and colleagues have developed and validated a risk prediction model for invasive breast cancer in Black women in the United States. Study Details For the development of the model, breast cancer relative and attributable risks...
A large study from the United Kingdom has taken a deep dive into SARS–CoV-2 in the setting of cancer, yielding both concerning and encouraging findings about natural and vaccine-induced immunity. The study was presented at the Presidential Symposium during the European Society for Medical Oncology...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kwan et al found that preexisting TP53 clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) variants were associated with increased risk of secondary myeloid neoplasms in patients receiving poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor therapy with rucaparib...
Individuals diagnosed with cancer who live in low-income and rural areas may face an increased risk of suicide compared with patients living in high-income and urban areas, according to a study published by Suk et al in JAMA Network Open. The research focused on determining whether the risks and...
New research published by Shaverdian et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network assessed patient satisfaction and preferences associated with telemedicine. Researchers found 45% of people with cancer undergoing radiotherapy preferred telemedicine, whereas 34% preferred...
Dieter Hörsch, MD, of Germany’s Central Clinic in Bad Berka, discusses phase III results from the SPINET trial, the largest prospective study to date of the somatostatin analog lanreotide autogel. The study suggests that this agent may prove to be an appropriate treatment option for patients with...
Filippo Pietrantonio, MD, and Federica Morano, MD, both of the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, discuss results from the MAYA trial, which provided proof of concept that temozolomide-induced hypermutation may be exploited to achieve durable responses to low-dose ipilimumab plus nivolumab in patients...
Breast cancer risk increases with age, but while scientists have long studied cellular changes that take place in the body over time, a new study published by Bahcecioglu et al in Advanced Science examined how the extracellular matrix—an underlying network of molecules and proteins that provide the ...
As reported in JAMA Surgery by van der Kruijssen et al, 60-day post–random assignment mortality results in the Danish/Dutch phase III CAIRO4 trial showed higher rates of mortality in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who received primary tumor resection plus systemic treatment vs those...
The combination of the KRAS inhibitor sotorasib with afatinib, a pan-ErbB tyrosine kinase inhibitor, was feasible in treating patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and mutated KRAS whose disease had progressed on prior therapies, including KRAS inhibitors alone, according to interim...
In a phase II clinical trial, the drug 4-demethyl-4-cholesteryloxycarbonylpenclomedine (DM-CHOC-PEN) improved survival for some adolescent and young adult patients with cancers involving the central nervous system, according to results presented by Morgan et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual...
In preclinical models, combining an investigational Aurora kinase A (AURKA) inhibitor with a KRAS inhibitor or a WEE1 inhibitor showed efficacy against lung cancer cells with intrinsic or acquired resistance to KRAS inhibition, according to results presented by Lee et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC...