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Showing 4151 - 4200ESTRO 2016: SBRT in Early-Stage Lung Cancer Linked to Increased Risk of Noncancer Deaths
Researchers have found that treating patients who have early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is associated with a small but increased risk of death from causes other than cancer, according to findings presented at the European Society...
ESTRO 2016: Radiation and L19-IL2 Immunotherapy Combination Shows Activity in Preclinical Models
Radiation therapy not only targets and destroys cancer cells, but also helps to activate the immune system against their future proliferation. However, this immune response is often not strong enough to be able to completely eradicate tumors, and even when it is, its effect is limited to the area...
ESTRO 2016: Failure to Publish Phase III Radiotherapy Trial Results Exposes Patients to Risks Without Providing Benefits for Others
Although the publication of results of clinical trials carried out in the United States within 12 months of their completion has been mandatory since 2007, a remarkably high number of phase III radiotherapy trials did not do so, according to new research presented at the European Society for...
Study Finds No Association Between Anthracycline-Based Chemotherapy and Cognitive Decline in Women With Breast Cancer
A new study by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers published by Van Dyk et al in JAMA Oncology found that commonly used chemotherapy drugs showed no association with cognitive decline following treatment in women with breast cancer. The report addresses recent concerns that the ...
Poor Understandability of Dense Breast Notifications Sent to Women Following Screening Mammography
In a study published by Kressin et al in JAMA, Nancy R. Kressin, PhD, of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues examined the content, readability, and understandability of dense breast notifications sent to women following screening...
Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy May Offer a Higher Cure Rate in Prostate Cancer Than More Traditional Approaches
A 5-year study published by Hannan et al in the European Journal of Cancer showed that stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to treat prostate cancer offers a higher cure rate than more traditional approaches, according to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center Harold C. Simmons...
Natural Cancer Remedies
The cost and side effects associated with traditional cancer therapy are major concerns, and in part many patients are seeking natural remedies such as graviola, curcumin, and moringa, due to these concerns. Traditional cancer therapy is increasingly effective, and oncologists are achieving better...
Expect Questions About Potential Trade-Offs of Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy
Women who were diagnosed with breast cancer and had contralateral prophylactic mastectomy had only marginal improvement in psychosocial well-being, such as feeling confident and emotionally healthy, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 Those who also had breast...
Quality-of-Life Benefits of Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy May Be Too Small to Be Clinically Meaningful
Women diagnosed with breast cancer who chose contralateral prophylactic mastectomy reported improvement in psychosocial well-being and breast satisfaction, but “the magnitude of the effect may be too small to be clinically meaningful,” according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1...
Friends of Cancer Research Encourages FDA to Modernize and Consolidate
“In order to take advantage of today’s advancements in science, drug development, and patient treatment, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) structure needs reorganization to focus its resources and ensure the best outcomes for patients. Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) proposes...
Raising Awareness of Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma
I’m used to having bumps and cysts pop up on my body, so when I felt a lump on the front of my throat, just below my Adam’s apple, I brushed it off. But when it was still there 6 months later, I became concerned and decided to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist. He performed a fine-needle...
Radiation: Myths, Facts, Dangers and Benefits
For many, the word “radiation” conjures up images of mushroom clouds and the nightmarish nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. It also brings to mind those pesky dental x-rays and lifesaving cancer treatments. However, to most people, radiation is a mysterious invisible power to be feared and embraced...
Immunotherapy Could Be the Wave of the Future, but Problems and Challenges Cannot Be Ignored
Immunotherapy is on its way. A few agents have already been approved: ipilimumab (Yervoy) in 2011 for melanoma; nivolumab (Opdivo) in 2015 for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and then later that year for renal cell carcinoma; and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for NSCLC. In addition, many clinical...
Supportive Care in the Older Adult With Cancer: What You Need to Know
The median age of patients at the first diagnosis of cancer in the United States is 65 years, and the majority of patients with cancer are older adults.1 As we have learned from previous articles in this series, older patients with cancer require more complex care. Older adults are more likely to...
Praise for the ACS/ASCO Breast Cancer Survivorship Care Guideline
The recent publication of the American Cancer Society (ACS)/ASCO breast cancer survivorship care guideline is a tremendous contribution to the literature and should provide a roadmap for providers who care for patients with a history of breast cancer for years to come.1,2 The guideline, reported by ...
Drug Prices and Value: Finding Middle Ground
The advent of targeted therapies along with complex personalized treatment regimens has added many effective tools to the oncology armamentarium. But progress has a price tag. Although the oncology community needs new drugs, there is growing concern that the price of many newer compounds is...
Meet W. Charles Penley, MD, FASCO
A Partner at Tennessee Oncology, PLLC, W. Charles Penley, MD, FASCO, has been an ASCO member since 1988. He has served on the Conquer Cancer Foundation Board of Directors since 2005 and currently holds the role of Immediate Past Chair. What led you to oncology? WCP: While it may sound silly to say ...
Expert Point of View: Thierry Facon, MD
Thierry Facon, MD, of Lille University Hospital in France, spoke to The ASCO Post about the preliminary results of the pembrolizumab studies. Dr. Facon cautioned that a response rate of 76% overall “is not so impressive,” given about 65% of patients respond to lenalidomide/dexamethasone alone....
ASCO Endorses Cancer Care Ontario Guideline on Active Surveillance for Management of Localized Prostate Cancer
As reported by Ronald C. Chen, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has endorsed, with qualifications, the 2015 Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) guideline on active surveillance for management of localized prostate cancer....
In Ductal Carcinoma in Situ, Benefit of Wider Margins Tied to Radiation Use
The relationship between margin width and risk of recurrence after breast-conserving surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ depends on the use of radiation, according to a surgical oncologist who sought to determine the optimal margin width in these patients.1 “Positive margins are associated with an ...
Expert Point of View: Douglas A. Levine, MD
In the discussion session, Douglas A. Levine, MD, Head of Gynecology Research Laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said that while advanced genomics can help to predict outcomes, stratify treatment, and understand biology, one of the problems of precision medicine is that...
ASCO Statement on Human Papillomavirus Vaccination for Cancer Prevention
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Bailey et al, ASCO has released a statement on increasing human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination to prevent HPV-related cancers in the United States. In the United States, HPV is estimated to cause approximately 99.7% of cervical cancers, 60% of...
Expert Point of View: Kristin Zorn, MD
Kristin Zorn, MD, Associate Professor and Director of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, said that the study’s data confirm the importance of other homologous recombination genes in these defects, not just BRCA1 and BRCA2. “I think this really...
Physicians as Champions for Quality Improvement
Interest in quality measurement and improvement was once primarily a concern of regulators, insurers, and consumer advocates. Today, quality improvement is front and center in health care—a continuous mission requiring the efforts of everyone on the health-care team. At the recent ASCO Quality Care ...
Benefits and Risks of Transplantation: The Changing Therapeutic Paradigm for Multiple Myeloma
Although high-dose chemotherapy plus autologous transplantation has been a standard of care in the treatment of younger patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, the advent of effective novel agents for the cancer over the past 15 years has raised the question of whether transplantation, with ...
sFRP2 in Aged Melanoma Tumor Cells Drives Metastasis and Therapy Resistance
Cancer risk increases with one's age as accumulated damage to our cells and chronic inflammation occur over time. Now, an international team of scientists led by The Wistar Institute has shown that aged tumor cells in melanoma behave differently from younger tumor cells, according to study results...
New Study Links Coffee Consumption to Decreased Risk of Colorectal Cancer
Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center of Keck Medicine of USC and Clalit National Israel Cancer Control Center have found that coffee consumption may be inversely associated with the risk of colorectal cancer. The findings by Schmit et...
Compartmentalizing Cancer
I was the last one on the oncology team to meet Mel. He was 36 years old, and by then Mel had been living with metastatic colon cancer for several years. During that time, his clinicians had never referred him to our psycho-oncology team because of his strong attitude and outlook. Mel’s outward...
A Political Activist Challenges the Drug Approval Process and the U.S. Government
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) primary concern in the drug approval process is to ensure that the drug is safe and effective. For the past several decades, the advocacy groups have vociferously painted the agency as a stodgy bureaucracy that prevents desperate patients access to...
Things May Not Be What They Seem: Are Old Cancer Treatment Theories New Again?
The adage “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” is true, but authors still need to be aware of the importance of first impressions. The title of science writer Travis Christofferson’s book Tripping Over the Truth: The Return of the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Illuminates a New and Hopeful Path to ...
Phase Ib/II Study Reports High Response Rates Seen With Addition of Cisplatin to Regimen for Advanced Pancreatic Cancer
The oncology research team at HonorHealth Research Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, is spearheading a phase Ib/II trial that is demonstrating promising results with a novel regimen in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. “The patients we are treating have advanced adenocarcinoma of the...
Susan Block, MD, Honored With AAHPM Palliative Care Lifetime Achievement Award
Susan Block, MD, an institute physician in the Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School Professor, and Director of the Serious Illness Care Program at Ariadne Labs, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the American...
Selected Abstracts From 2015 ASH Annual Meeting: Part 4
Here is the final installment of selected abstracts from the proceedings of the 2015 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, focusing on Hodgkin lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. For other selected abstracts...
Understanding and Preparing for MACRA
The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) was passed in April 2015, introducing comprehensive changes to how Medicare pays physicians for services. As the policies passed in MACRA are rolled out over the coming years, they will profoundly impact reimbursement and care...
Diversity Training Key to Increasing Cultural Competence Among Oncology Surgeons
A study in the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP)1 measured the level of cultural competence among surgeons from six hospitals in the Puget Sound region of Washington State, home to a large population of American Indians and Alaskan Natives. According to the study, “Assessing Cultural Competence...
New Commission on Cancer Standards Clarifies and Emphasizes Process, Quality, Data Reporting, and More
The 2016 edition of the Commission on Cancer’s accreditation standards manual clarifies and provides additional information in many areas and raises the bar for compliance in some, including psychosocial distress screening, survivorship care, data reporting, and activities in prevention and...
Outcome Measures in Quality and Identifying High-Quality Practice
At this year’s ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Craig Earle, MD, MSc, of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, used Donabedian’s Triad—structure, process, and outcome—to set the stage for his presentation on the science of quality. “The theory behind Donabedian’s Triad is that structure...
Experts Consider What It Means to Improve Quality of Care in an Era of Increasing Reliance on Targeted Therapies
Precision medicine is judged according to different values across the multiple stakeholders involved in cancer care. At this year’s Quality Care Symposium, presenters from different sectors of oncology addressed a central question: How do we assess quality in the age of precision medicine?1,2 Right ...
A Business Professor and Husband Turns Breast Cancer Researcher
In more than 25 years of viewing posters at oncology meetings, I’ve met researchers from virtually all professional walks of life, but it was not until the 2016 Miami Breast Cancer Conference, that the author’s affiliation turned my head: It was a business school. “Utilizing Metastatic Tumor...
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Named ASCO’s Next CEO
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Chief of the Breast Medicine Service, Vice President for Government Relations, and Chief Advocacy Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, has been named the next Chief Executive Officer...
Computer-Assisted Decision Support in Medical Oncology: We Need It Now
Today’s medical oncologist is increasingly challenged to stay current with the latest developments in cancer treatment. I have been fortunate to speak with many oncologists over the past quarter-century on how professional life has evolved since the 1990s. These conversations have left me with a...
Throwing Out the Baby With the Bathwater: A Critical Appraisal of the USPSTF Recommendation Against Screening for Prostate Cancer
In 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued a recommendation against routine screening for prostate cancer.1,2 The grade D recommendation was considered controversial at the time, and remains so now, because many stakeholders have weighed the same body of evidence and come to...
ENDO 2016: BPA Changes Fetal Development of the Mammary Gland, Can Raise Breast Cancer Risk
A new culture system that tests the role of chemical exposure on the developing mammary gland has found that bisphenol A (BPA) directly affects the mammary gland of mouse embryos. The study results, presented by Speroni et al Friday, April 1, at the Endocrine Society's Annual Meeting in Boston...
Widely Cited Prostate-Specific Antigen Screening Publications Influence Biopsy Rates and Associated Complications
While absolute rates of biopsy and postbiopsy complications have decreased following several benchmark prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening publications, the relative risk for each patient continues to increase, according to a new study by Mayo Clinic researchers. The study is the largest to...
Therapeutic Combinations May Prevent Resistance to CDK4/6 Inhibition in Estrogen Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer
In preclinical studies, breast cancer cells became resistant to therapeutics targeting CDK4/6, such as palbociclib (Ibrance), in multiple ways. According to the research published by Herrera-Abreu et al in Cancer Research, different combinations of therapeutics might prevent and overcome the...
Minimal Residual Disease in AML: Worth Looking?
As summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, Ivey and colleagues demonstrated that assessing for NPM1-mutated gene transcripts by reverse-transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay is a feasible approach for measuring minimal residual disease after acute myeloid leukemia (AML)...
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Named ASCO’s Next CEO
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Chief of the Breast Medicine Service, Vice President for Government Relations, and Chief Advocacy Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, has been named the next Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ...
ASCO Issues Report on State of Cancer Care in America: 2016
The State of Cancer Care in America: 2016, published online in the Journal of Oncology Practice1 and presented earlier this month at a Congressional briefing in Washington, DC, is ASCO’s third annual assessment of national trends in cancer care delivery. The report highlights many promising cancer...
I Never Forget I Have Cancer
I have a history of fibrocystic breasts, which required biopsies to make certain the cysts were benign, and for years they were. But in 2009, my mammogram screening picked up a suspicious lump in my right breast, which turned out to be stage III estrogen receptor–positive/progesterone...
Somebody’s Watching You: Meet the Tweet Trackers of the Social Oncology Project
In a one-story concrete industrial building across the street from a lumberyard in Austin, Texas, Greg Matthews and his computers are tracking everything that more than 500,000 U.S.-based physicians post publicly on social media. Every tweet. Every public blog, Facebook, or Instagram post. Every...
