Two separate studies are investigating brentuximab vedotin plus nivolumab combination therapy for adults with Hodgkin lymphoma: one as first-line therapy and another as salvage therapy for relapsed/refractory classic disease, according to data presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting & Exposition...
FT596, a novel off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor natural killer cell (CAR-NK) product, was as effective as existing CAR T-cell platforms in killing cancer cells in vivo, and the combination of FT596 plus rituximab killed lymphoma cancer cells that were no longer responding to CAR T-cell...
Among children, adolescents, and young adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the bispecific T-cell engager blinatumomab improved event-free survival and overall survival, compared with standard chemotherapy, as post-reinduction consolidation therapy at first relapse prior to...
The addition of the checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to chemotherapy with carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel failed to significantly improve pathologic complete response rates compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with early high-risk, locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer. According...
In studies to be presented at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (Abstracts 649 and 665), researchers examined the prevalence of fear of cancer recurrence in patients with renal cell carcinoma and evaluated the prognostic understanding patients with genitourinary cancer possess of their...
The use of bridging therapy before treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel was associated with worse overall survival in univariate, multivariate, and propensity score–matched analyses performed on data from the U.S. Lymphoma CAR T Consortium, investigators reported at the 2019 American Society of...
A personalized approach to selecting antibody therapy for patients with newly diagnosed stage IV gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma resulted in a 1-year overall survival rate of 66% and a median overall survival of 16.4 months in the PANGEA study (see Table 1).1 The study used a novel clinical...
Compared to individuals without a history of dengue virus infection, those previously infected with the virus had over twice the risk of developing leukemia, with the highest risk occurring between 3 and 6 years after infection. The results of a study conducted in Taiwan were published by Chien et...
In a modeling study reported in The Lancet, Brisson et al in the World Health Organization (WHO)-sponsored Cervical Cancer Elimination Modelling Consortium (CCEMC) found that high human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake in girls could lead to cervical cancer elimination in most low-income and...
Your Stories, the podcast series from Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®, kicks off its third season with a conversation between oncologist Neil Iyengar, MD, and nutrition advocate Nadja Pinnavaia, PhD. The pair have joined forces to help reduce the risk of cancer and share the latest research...
President Trump recently signed a bill that funds the federal government, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. Importantly, the bill also raises the purchasing age of...
In the release of its annual report on progress against cancer, Clinical Cancer Advances 2020, ASCO recognized progress in the refinement of the surgical treatment of cancer as the Advance of the Year. In particular, the emergence of novel systemic therapies—combined in new and better ways—has...
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 70% of deaths from cancer occur in low- and middle-income countries, where late-stage presentation and inaccessibility to diagnosis and treatment are common.1 In the sub-Saharan African country of Ethiopia, cancer is becoming an...
“They’re all charlatans,” my professor assured me when, in medical school in the mid-1970s, I expressed an interest in oncology. The treatment of cancer with drugs, despite popular but inaccurate descriptions of its history, began in 1944 when Goodman and Gilman at Yale conducted contract research...
A 5-year follow-up study of more than 2,000 U.S. men who received prostate cancer treatment—radiation, surgery, or active surveillance—in patients of all ages and ethnicities is creating a road map for the future regarding long-term bowel, bladder, and sexual function in order to clarify...
A new study on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that extremely rare, harmful genetic mutations present in healthy donors’ stem cells—though not causing health problems in the donors—may be passed on to patients with cancer...
Michael Jain, MD, PhD, Assistant Member in the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, commented on Dr. Kilgore’s findings. Dr. Jain was coauthor of a study by the U.S. Lymphoma CAR T Consortium that presented real-world data...
Fox Chase Cancer Center has been recognized under ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) by the QOPI Certification Program LLC as successfully completing a 3-year certification for oncology practices that meet nationally recognized standards for quality and safety in cancer care. “Fox...
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) recently announced an initiative to increase minority representation in cancer clinical trials. All future SU2C-supported research grant proposals will now be required to include and address crucial issues related to recruitment and retention of patients from ethnic groups ...
In a recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Coleman et al released the results from the GOG-0213 trial, a multicenter, randomized prospective trial that compared secondary cytoreduction followed by chemotherapy with chemotherapy alone in women with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian ...
The phase II KEYNOTE-890 trial is a small but interesting study in patients with inoperable advanced triple-negative breast cancer. After one injection of intratumoral tavokinogene telseplasmid, a plasmid encoding the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12), followed by electroporation and...
The addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy achieves higher rates of pathologic complete response compared with placebo in patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to results of the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer...
Women with early-stage breast cancer who test positive for an inherited genetic variant are not always receiving cancer treatment that follows current treatment guidelines, according to findings from a new study published by Allison W. Kurian, MD, MSc, and colleagues in JAMA Oncology. An inherited ...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
In my 45 years of practicing hematology/oncology at a major urban academic medical center, I have observed a sea change in daily practice that contributes to physician burnout. Although the emotional stresses of caring for seriously ill people play a part in physician burnout, I find the daily...
The history of medicine once was featured in medical school curricula. That is becoming less common due to time restriction and the increased prevalence of more technical topics. However, the importance of the history of medicine cannot be overstated: It shapes every aspect of our cultural,...
The art of oncology practice is tailored to the individual patient with cancer, and with the advent of highly personalized targeted therapies, patient outcomes have improved markedly over the past several decades. Although much of oncology practice is guideline- or protocol-driven, chemotherapy...
A year-by-year age analysis of colorectal cancer rates among adults in the United States has found a 46% increase in new diagnoses from ages 49 to 50, indicating that many latent cases of the disease are likely going undiagnosed until routine screenings begin at 50, according to a new study by...
A study published by Anthony Lucci, MD, and colleagues in Clinical Cancer Research showed that the presence of circulating tumor cells was independently associated with relapse of melanoma, suggesting circulating tumor cell assessment may be a useful tool for identifying patients at risk for...
In the release of its annual report on progress against cancer, Clinical Cancer Advances 2020, ASCO recognized progress in the refinement of the surgical treatment of cancer as the Advance of the Year. In particular, the emergence of novel systemic therapies—combined in new and better ways—has...
ASCO has released a new guideline providing recommendations to practicing clinicians on radiographic imaging and biomarker surveillance strategies after definitive, curative-intent therapy in patients with stage I to III non–small cell lung cancer or small cell lung cancer. These guideline...
A simple test using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan may be used to predict how well people with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer will respond to treatment, according to the results of a new study published by Winfield et al in Radiology. In a large clinical trial, scientists have shown a...
Today’s World Cancer Day, led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), aims to mobilize urgent action from individuals, governments, and the global cancer community to close gaps in cancer risk awareness between higher and lower socioeconomic groups and the subsequent impact on their...
The American Medical Association Foundation (AMAF) recently announced a new initiative to create a cadre of LGBTQ health specialists through the AMA Foundation LGBTQ Fellowship Program—a national fellowship program to promote best practices and shared outcomes, while improving the quality of LGBTQ ...
Commenting on Dr. DeMichele’s poster presentation at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, told The ASCO...
Cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors are changing the landscape of the treatment of hormone receptor (HR)-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer. Three CDK4/6 inhibitors are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—ribociclib, palbociclib, and abemaciclib—as first- or...
Unlike ASCO’s Annual Meeting, symposia, and conferences, which highlight the current scientific advances in specific cancers and how they are improving cancer outcomes for the more than 18.1 million people worldwide diagnosed with cancer each year,1 ASCO Breakthrough: A Global Summit for Oncology...
Although TP53 is the most frequently mutated gene across all cancers and encodes the tumor suppressor p53 protein, TP53-targeted therapies have not demonstrated efficacy beyond in vitro models and immunotherapies targeting mutant TP53 are not currently available. A study by Malekzadeh et al...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Aurelien Marabelle, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Villejuif, and colleagues, the phase II KEYNOTE-158 trial has shown robust activity of pembrolizumab in patients with noncolorectal high...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to a treatment for lung and thyroid cancers with a RET fusion or mutation; gave Breakthrough Therapy designation to a doublet therapy for TP53-mutated myelodysplastic syndromes; and issued an update to their...
With nearly all patients who undergo treatment for cancer of the head and neck experiencing oral mucositis, effective pain control is one of the main goals of physicians and care teams. Looking to provide more effective relief for patients—while also reducing the need for opioid painkillers—a team...
In 2017, breast cancer expert Gabrielle Rocque, MD, MSPH, received an American Cancer Society Mentored Research Scholar Grant for her work in enhancing shared decision-making for patients with advanced breast cancer. “I come from three generations of physicians,” shared Dr. Rocque. “My father (Dr. ...
Advanced-stage cancer diagnoses declined following health insurance expansion in Massachusetts, likely due to increased access to screening and diagnostic services that identified cancers earlier, according to new research published by Sabik et al in the journal Medical Care. The analysis...
Some patients with cancer celebrate the end of a course of radiation or chemotherapy by ringing a bell. Indeed, many patients say they love the graduation-like ceremony and the sense of closure it gives them. However, a study published by Williams et al in the International Journal of Radiation...
Consider a patient who is referred for neoadjuvant therapy for stage IIIA, HER2-positive breast cancer. She is otherwise healthy, with no significant medical history, an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 0, unremarkable baseline labs, and a left-ventricular ejection fraction...
Residents of rural, sparsely populated “frontier counties” in the western United States have a higher incidence of skin cancer and related mortality rates. New research published by Jensen et al in Psychology, Health & Medicine indicated that the biggest obstacle to early detection and...
The antibody-drug conjugate ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) failed to show improved safety when compared with paclitaxel plus trastuzumab as adjuvant therapy in patients with stage 1 HER2-positive breast cancer. These results of the randomized, phase II ATEMPT trial were presented at the 2019 San ...
In a study presented by Picozzi et al at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, researchers found that even as drug costs increased over the past decade, total inflation-adjusted pancreatic cancer care expenses declined, as did costs related to quality of life (Abstract 773). Health...
Three decades after the first Surgeon General's report on smoking cessation, the Surgeon General has released a new report that reviews and updates evidence on the importance of quitting smoking. The report finds that more than two-thirds of U.S. adult cigarette smokers report an interest in...
Six-year follow-up of the APHINITY trial found a modest, but not statistically significant, overall survival benefit for the addition of pertuzumab to chemotherapy plus trastuzumab vs chemotherapy/trastuzumab as adjuvant therapy in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer. The benefit was...