On September 20, 2021, tisotumab vedotin-tftv, a tissue factor-directed antibody and microtubule inhibitor conjugate, was granted accelerated approval for the treatment of adults with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who have had disease progression on or after chemotherapy.1 Supporting...
In a study of National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data reported in JACC: CardioOncology, Javier Valero-Elizondo, MD, MPH, of Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center, and colleagues, found that U.S. adult patients aged 18 to < 65 years with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease...
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 ...
Patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and brain metastasis derived significant benefit from treatment with the monoclonal antibody atezolizumab plus chemotherapy, according to the multicenter phase II Atezo-Brain trial.1 The study was presented at the International Association for the...
“Population-based screening for prostate cancer reduces prostate cancer mortality,” noted J. Kellogg Parsons, MD, MHS, FACS, Professor of Urology, UC San Diego Health, who commented on the study. “Effective screening programs focus on the early detection of aggressive but curable tumors, minimize...
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...
Longer follow-up data from the phase III CheckMate 649 trial support the use of nivolumab plus chemotherapy as a new standard first-line regimen in patients with advanced gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma. The findings were reported by Yelena Janjigian, ...
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...
In the global phase III TULIP trial in metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer, treatment with the antibody-drug conjugate vic-trastuzumab duocarmazine (SYD985) significantly improved progression-free survival in comparison with standard chemotherapy in previously treated patients, making this a new ...
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 ...
The VESPER phase III trial answers some key questions regarding the optimal management of muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The study found that the neoadjuvant regimen of dose-dense methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, and cisplatin (dd-MVAC) was superior to standard gemcitabine/cisplatin in...
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...
Ribociclib plus hormonal therapy in the first-line setting boosted overall survival by more than 1 year, vs hormone therapy alone, in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, according to the latest findings from the MONALEESA-2 trial, reported at...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thierry Facon, MD, and colleagues, an interim analysis of overall survival in the pivotal phase III MAIA trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of daratumumab to lenalidomide/dexamethasone in newly diagnosed, transplant-ineligible patients with ...
In a Korean phase IIb trial (NIFTY) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Yoo et al found that the addition of liposomal irinotecan to fluorouracil/leucovorin improved progression-free survival as a second-line treatment for patients with metastatic biliary tract cancer whose disease had progressed on...
In the phase II AMPECT trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wagner et al found that the mTOR inhibitor nab-sirolimus produced a substantial rate of durable responses and a high disease control rate in patients with malignant perivascular epithelioid cell tumors. As stated by the...
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...
In a phase I/II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Caicun Zhou, PhD, MD, and colleagues found that mobocertinib, a first-in-class oral kinase inhibitor, produced durable responses in platinum-pretreated patients with EGFR exon 20 insertion–positive metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD, and colleagues, in the phase II CheckMate 142 trial, first-line treatment with nivolumab plus low-dose ipilimumab produced a high rate of durable responses in a cohort of patients who had received no prior treatment for...
Rechallenge with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib in patients with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer led to significant improvement in progression-free survival, in patients with either BRCA1/2-mutated or nonmutated (ie, wild-type) disease compared with placebo, according ...
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...
In the phase II PARSIFAL trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Antonio Llombart-Cussac, MD, and colleagues found that the combination of fulvestrant plus palbociclib did not improve progression-free survival vs letrozole plus palbociclib in women with advanced endocrine-sensitive, hormone receptor...
In a global population-based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Duggan et al identified national health system characteristics associated with reduced breast cancer mortality, including higher Universal Health Coverage Service Coverage Index (UHC Index) rating and increased number of public...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by William G. Wierda, MD, PhD, and colleagues, findings in the measurable residual disease (MRD) cohort of the phase II CAPTIVATE study indicated a high disease-free survival rate with placebo and no significant benefit of continued ibrutinib in...
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 an Italian single-institution phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Locati et al found that abiraterone acetate showed activity in patients with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT)-resistant, androgen receptor (AR)-overexpressing salivary gland carcinoma. As stated by the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Buske et al, the final analysis of the pivotal phase III iNNOVATE trial has shown a continued progression-free survival benefit with the addition of ibrutinib to rituximab in patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia after 50 months of...
In a single-center cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Barrio et al evaluated nodal recurrence rates in patients with clinically node-negative breast cancer following neoadjuvant chemotherapy for biopsy-proven node-positive disease. The investigators found an extremely low incidence of nodal...
A new report finds that more than 46,000 cancer cases annually in the United States could be prevented if Americans met the 5 hours per week of moderate-intensity activity recommended in the American Cancer Society’s physical activity guidelines. Recent findings published by Minihan et al in the...
On October 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for adjuvant treatment following resection and platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have PD-L1 expression on ≥ 1% of tumor cells, as...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Devarakonda et al found that never-smokers with lung adenocarcinoma had a high frequency of RTK/RAS/RAF pathway driver alterations—similar to smokers with lung adenocarcinoma—but also harbored a significantly higher total frequency of...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sabnis et al analyzed characteristics of genomically targeted single-patient use requests for investigational agents for the treatment of pediatric cancers. These requests were made from pediatric cancer programs over a 5-year period. As...
The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2021 celebrates the gains made in cancer research since the National Cancer Act was signed into law on December 23, 1971. The report also recognizes the negative impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on cancer research and patient care, the disproportionate toll both...
In a German nationwide register-based cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dutzmann et al found that risk of developing cancer by age 18 exceeded 10% in children with Fanconi anemia or ataxia-telangiectasia. Study Details The study involved data on 421 patients with Fanconi...
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, de Ruiter et al found that white matter microstructure at baseline was associated with cognitive decline after chemotherapy for breast cancer. Study Details The study included 49 patients with breast cancer who received...
On October 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with chemotherapy, with or without bevacizumab, for patients with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer whose tumors express PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] ≥ 1), as...
In the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved five treatment options for patients with breast cancer, which are summarized herein. Abemaciclib Combination On October 12, 2021, the FDA approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) with endocrine therapy (tamoxifen or an aromatase...
Pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy improved progression-free survival vs chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment of advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to the results of KEYNOTE-355.1 Progression-free survival was significantly improved with pembrolizumab plus...
EA1131 study discussant, Melinda L. Telli, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, Director of the Breast Cancer Program at the Stanford Cancer Institute, and Associate Director of the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, commented: “At this point, capecitabine remains preferred as...
In patients with triple-negative breast cancer who have residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant capecitabine remains the standard of care. In the multicenter randomized noninferiority EA1131 trial, which included primarily basal tumors, noninferiority of adjuvant platinum over...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Aditya Bardia, MD, of the Division of Medical Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III ASCENT trial has shown prolonged progression-free and overall survival with the Trop-2–directed antibody-drug...
The invited discussant of GeparNuevo,1 Melinda L. Telli, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, Director of the Breast Cancer Program at the Stanford Cancer Institute, and Associate Director of the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, welcomed the additional data...
In the phase II GeparNuevo trial, patients with early triple-negative breast cancer receiving the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab in addition to chemotherapy as neoadjuvant therapy saw improvements in long-term outcomes. The results were presented at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Sibylle Loibl, MD,...
Invited discussant Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Milan, Italy, and Head of the Division of Early Drug Development at the European Institute of Oncology, said the “clear” findings of KEYNOTE-5221 are “practice-changing.” However, the ideal ...