Irene Ghobrial, MD, Director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, has received the William Dameshek Prize. This award is given annually by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) to an individual younger than age 50 who has made outstanding...
Jaye Gardiner, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, is among 10 recipients of the 2022 Dr. Eddie Méndez Award. This honor recognizes underrepresented postdoctoral researchers across the United States who have demonstrated research expertise in cancer, infectious...
Ochsner Health has announced the recipient of the 37th Annual Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease: Claudia Henschke, PhD, MD. She is Director, Early Lung and Cardiac Action Program (ELCAP) and Professor of Radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. This...
In 2016, Theresa Brown, RN, wrote The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, a vivid real-time description of an oncology nurse’s standard 12-hour shift on a hospital cancer ward. It was an excellent book, which was reviewed on these pages and highly recommended for readers of The...
Robert Uzzo, MD, MBA, FACS, has been named President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. In addition, Dr. Uzzo will assume the roles of Executive Vice President, Cancer Services for Temple University Health System, and Senior Associate Dean, Clinical Cancer...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, Deputy Director, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief of Solid Tumor Medical Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute, where his research focuses on the development of new therapies for...
Research shows that although 15% of Black individuals and 13% of Hispanic individuals have cancer in the United States, only between 4% and 6% of clinical trial participants are Black and between 3% and 6% are Hispanic.1-3 To improve these statistics, in 2020, ASCO and the Association of Community...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced that Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, FACS, a pancreatic cancer surgeon and researcher, a pioneer in cancer health disparities research, and an academic medical leader, has been selected to serve as its next President and Chief Executive...
At the 2022 Summit on Cancer Health Disparities in Seattle, leaders from five of the leading professional societies in cancer discussed their respective organizations’ current initiatives toward improving cancer health disparities.1 Representatives from ASCO, the American Society for Clinical...
The use of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can reduce treatment disparities between White and Black patients, according to research presented by Ganesh et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) World...
Patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received a combined therapy of tremelimumab, durvalumab, and chemotherapy experienced longer overall survival compared with those who received chemotherapy alone, regardless of STK11, KEAP1, or KRAS mutational status. These findings...
In an analysis of the Multicenter Selective Lymphadenectomy Trial II reported in JAMA Surgery, Crystal et al found that patients with melanoma with sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastasis who were randomly assigned to observation vs completion lymph node dissection (CLND) following SLN biopsy...
In a collaboration announced on June 4, ASCO will work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to measure and improve the quality of cancer care internationally. The goal is to achieve health-related targets of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and WHO Global Action Plan on Non-Communicable...
ASCO has released the first comprehensive set of guidelines for the management of metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).1 The guidelines are subdivided into six main sections: diagnosis, the role of cytoreductive nephrectomy, first-line systemic treatment, second- or later-line systemic...
ASCO has endorsed the recommendations put forth in a new guideline, developed by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), on the use of radiation therapy for the management of brain metastases.1,2 Although ASTRO—in conjunction with ASCO and the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO)—recently...
An interim analysis of the Chinese phase III LAUNCH trial was reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Peng et al. The researchers found that the addition of transarterial chemoembolization to lenvatinib improved overall survival in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma who were...
To shed some light on the importance of caring for the whole patient and his or her caregiver, as well as the role of cellular aging and oncogenesis, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Kaumudi Bhawe, PhD, a clinical scientist with Cancer Commons in Mountain View, California. Dr. Bhawe has more than ...
The invited discussant of the DS8201-A-U105 trial, Rebecca A. Dent, MD, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology, Senior Consultant, and Chief of the Breast Medical Oncology Service at the National Cancer Center Singapore, said the results were reassuring in terms of safety and may pave the way...
In the phase Ib DS8201-A-U105 trial, the addition of the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab to the antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) did not appear to improve outcomes over T-DXd alone (based on historical controls). However, it did establish the safety of the combination,...
Cathy Eng, MD, FACP, FASCO, the David H. Johnson Endowed Chair in Surgical and Medical Oncology, Co-Director of Gastrointestinal Oncology, and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, told The ASCO Post she finds the data from...
In the phase II MOUNTAINEER trial, tucatinib in combination with trastuzumab produced durable responses in patients with previously treated HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer. The late-breaking data were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) World Congress on...
Rates of most types of cancer are higher in men than in women for reasons that are unclear. Results from a recent study published online by Jackson et al in the journal Cancer suggest that the cause may be underlying biological sex differences rather than behavioral differences related to smoking,...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Network Open, Bagshaw et al found that the risk of a second primary cancer at more than 1 year from diagnosis was significantly greater among U.S. veterans with localized prostate cancer who received primary radiotherapy vs those who received surgery ...
The pivotal global phase III FRESCO-2 trial evaluating the investigational use of fruquintinib met its primary endpoint of overall survival in patients with advanced, refractory metastatic colorectal cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track designation for the...
On August 5, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd, Enhertu), an intravenous infusion for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-low breast cancer. This is the first approved therapy targeted to patients with the...
Investigators have identified genetic signatures that could predict whether tumors in patients with bladder and other cancers will respond to immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Their findings, published by You et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, implicate DDR1- and...
When the 21st Century Cures Act went into effect in April 2021, health-care organizations began releasing electronic health information to patients immediately. An aim of the act is to reduce barriers to patients’ timely access to electronic health information, and previous research has shown that...
In a 5-year update of part 1 of the phase III COLUMBUS trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dummer et al found a continued benefit of encorafenib plus binimetinib vs vemurafenib in patients with advanced BRAF V600–mutant melanoma. The trial supported the June 2018 approval of...
Despite data showing that cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for the development of lung cancer,1 and a leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States, an estimated 30.8 million American adults continue to smoke cigarettes.2 Globally, the number of...
In less than a decade, immunotherapy has reshaped the treatment landscape of cancer, but some histologies tend to be more responsive to this modality than others. During the Society of Surgical Oncology 2022 International Conference on Surgical Care, Yuman Fong, MD, of the City of Hope Medical...
According to Cancer Research UK, over 52,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year in the UK, and there are more than 12,000 deaths. Over three-quarters (78%) of men diagnosed with the disease survive for over 10 years, but this proportion has barely changed over the past decade in the...
A new large study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) shows older age and smoking are the two most important risk factors associated with a relative and absolute 5-year risk of developing any cancer. The findings also demonstrate that in addition to age and smoking history,...
Giving women the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine around the time they have surgery for precancerous cervical lesions might lead to a reduction in the risk of lesions returning as well as other HPV-related diseases, suggests a study published by Kechagias et al in The BMJ. The researchers...
A study released by the University of Colorado Cancer Center showed that more than 70% of patients with breast cancer have reported changes that affect their sexual health during and beyond treatment. The study was published by Huynh et al in the Annals of Surgical Oncology. Study Background “More...
A new study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS), shows serious smoking cessation activity declined among adults in the United States immediately after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and persisted for more than a year. Declines in attempts to quit smoking were largest among...
A study looking at the correlation between daily insulin dose and cancer incidence among patients with type 1 diabetes found that higher insulin dose is positively associated with cancer incidence and that the association is stronger among those with insulin resistance. The results were published...
Physicians and researchers from UK HealthCare's Transplant Center and the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center conducted a study of patients over age 70 with hepatocellular carcinoma to examine how the outcomes of ablative treatments compare to liver transplants. The findings were published...
In a Korean phase III noninferiority trial (KCSG CO09-07) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kim et al found noninferiority in disease-free survival and reduced risk of neuropathy for adjuvant therapy with 3 vs 6 months of oxaliplatin plus 6 months of fluoropyrimidine treatment in...
Women make up just 37.7% of all speakers at hematology and medical oncology board review lectures, according to a study published in Blood Advances. The findings call attention to the many barriers people underrepresented in medicine face in obtaining educational opportunities that can be vital to...
A recent survey shows that only 40% of Americans are concerned that they might get lung cancer, and only about one in five have talked to their doctor about their risk for the disease, despite lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. The 2022 Lung Health Barometer, ...
Patients seeking to purchase chemotherapy drugs online face a confusing array of websites, over half of which potentially operate unsafely or illegally, according to a study published by Sun et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. A survey of online pharmacies claiming...
Patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head or neck were 93% less likely to die of any cause during the first 3 years after diagnosis if they ate a healthy diet high in nutrients found to deter chronic disease, according to results published by Vieytes et al in Frontiers in Nutrition. The...
In a population-based study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chehab et al found that survivors of childhood cancer were at significantly increased risk of infections resulting in hospitalization vs comparators without cancer. Study Details The study involved children and adolescents...
The invited discussant of the ATLAS trial, Peter M. Voorhees, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Plasma Cell Disorders Division, at Levine Cancer Institute and Atrium Health/Wake Forest Baptist in North Carolina, applauded the very good outcomes achieved in the study.1 However, he posed the...
For newly diagnosed patients with multiple myeloma participating in the international phase III ATLAS trial, use of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) as maintenance therapy after induction and autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) significantly reduced the risk of disease...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kevin Billingsley, MD, MBA, FACS, Chief Medical Officer of the Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Although interracial marriage is common in the United States...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Houillier et al, 8-year follow-up in the French phase II PRECIS trial has shown a maintained event-free survival benefit with autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) vs whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) as consolidation in patients aged ≤ 60...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Moncrieff et al found that patients with stage IIIA melanoma (per American Joint Committee on Cancer [AJCC], 8th edition) with sentinel node metastatic tumor deposits ≥ 0.3 mm are at higher risk of disease progression vs those with smaller...
Frequent aspirin use may be linked with lower ovarian cancer risk in individuals with multiple risk factors, according to a new study published by Hurwitz et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. “Ovarian cancer is the most fatal gynecologic cancer. Most known risk factors of ovarian cancer—such...
Researchers studying the molecular landscape of over 500 patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma discovered a prevalence of activated key oncogenic pathways in these patients—much more than previously thought. Upward of 45% to 65% of NF-κB and RAS/MAPK pathways each had alterations....