On June 12, Merck announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved an expanded indication for Gardasil 9—a human papillomavirus (HPV) nine-valent vaccine—for the prevention of oropharyngeal and other head and neck cancers caused by HPV types 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, and 58....
In a study presented at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 5077) and published as a brief report in JAMA Oncology, Ravi et al found that rechallenge with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy was capable of producing responses in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, including...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Chae et al, findings in a cohort of the phase II NCI-MATCH trial (EAY131, Subprotocol W) indicated that the oral inhibitor of fibroblast growth factor receptor 1, 2, and 3 (FGFR1–3), AZD4547, produced a small number of responses in patients with a...
This week, we’ll review two late-breaking abstracts from the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program that reported negative results. Both were presented during the plenary program.
Women presenting with newly diagnosed de novo metastatic breast cancer derived no additional survival benefit from surgery and radiotherapy given after systemic treatment, although the practice may reduce locoregional progression of disease, according to the results of the phase III E2108 study...
As reported in The Lancet by Jeremy L. Warner, MD, and colleagues, a cohort study using the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) database has shown that increased risk of all-cause mortality in patients with cancer infected with COVID-19 is associated with such factors as increased age, male sex, ...
In a phase Ib study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Powell et al found that the addition of pembrolizumab to curative chemoradiotherapy was safe and associated with response in patients with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Study Details The U.S. multicenter...
Black and Hispanic children admitted to pediatric intensive care units for cancer treatment have significantly higher death rates than non-Hispanic white patients, according to findings from a study published by Laurens et al in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Nationwide, 8.5% of black and 8.1%...
The importance of first-line therapy in multiple myeloma is that the first therapy typically achieves the most impact, and subsequent lines of therapy tend to be less effective, explained ENDURANCE study discussant Jesús G. Berdeja, MD, Director of Myeloma Research at the Sarah Cannon Research...
For newly treated patients with standard- and intermediate-risk multiple myeloma who are not slated for immediate autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT), the triplet regimen of carfilzomib/lenalidomide/dexamethasone (KRd) failed to improve progression-free survival vs the current...
A meta-analysis of published studies of immune checkpoint inhibition for advanced microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) cancers—published as a brief report in JAMA Oncology by Petrelli et al—found high activity of these therapies across tumor types and evaluated agents. Study Details The...
In a retrospective study reported by Nastoupil et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers in the U.S. Lymphoma CAR T Consortium described outcomes with standard-of-care use of the autologous CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel in patients ...
Although early-stage disease is highly curable, most ovarian cancers are diagnosed at later stages due to a lack of effective screening. As a result, less than 50% of women survive beyond 5 years. Improving prevention by identifying modifiable risk factors could dramatically change the outcome of...
An updated analysis of the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial, presented during the 2020 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer Webinar Series,1 suggested synergy between the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor veliparib and platinum chemotherapy in the...
On April 29, 2020, niraparib was approved for maintenance treatment of adult patients with advanced epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer who are in complete or partial response to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on...
Proponents of combining bevacizumab with poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibition to treat advanced ovarian cancer now have more data to support the maintenance regimen, according to an updated analysis of the phase III PAOLA-1 trial presented during the 2020 Society of Gynecologic Oncology...
A less-frequent, more-convenient dosing schedule for pembrolizumab (400 mg every 6 weeks) was deemed safe and effective in patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma, according to interim data from cohort B enrolled in the KEYNOTE-555 trial. These findings were presented at the 2020 Virtual...
The poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor talazoparib did not improve overall survival in women with metastatic HER2-negative breast cancer and mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, according to new results from the phase III EMBRACA trial presented at the 2020 American Association for Cancer...
A blood test based on cell-free DNA was able to detect cancer as well as the site of origin in patients with a clinical suspicion of cancer, according to results of the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study presented at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has recognized Phillip A. Sharp, PhD, Fellow of the AACR Academy and Nobel Laureate, with the 17th AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research. Dr. Sharp is Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David H. Koch Institute...
Formal discussant Yvonne Chen, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the issue of toxicity was important, since high levels of toxicity were observed in this small group of five patients. “All five patients...
Two gynecologic oncologists and ASCO’s Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, commented on the findings of the TROPHIMMUN trial for The ASCO Post. “The authors demonstrate efficacy of a new treatment approach for gestational trophoblastic...
Assisted suicide gets a lot of press, as if it were a new event. About 20 to 30 years ago, it was ever present but neither defined nor acknowledged. When patients left the hospital for what they and I believed to be the last time, I did one or both of two things: gave them my home number or, if...
In the fall of 2015, I was looking forward to a trip to Florida for a visit with my daughter and her family, along with a little relaxation. The evening before the trip, I experienced some abdominal pain that my wife, Angela, and I thought might be appendicitis. Concerned the problem could...
Long-term cancer-related cognitive impairment reported among women with early breast cancer receiving adjuvant endocrine therapy with or without chemotherapy “should alert clinicians to the importance of ongoing symptom monitoring among this large population of cancer survivors who receive at least ...
Women with early-stage breast cancer who received adjuvant chemoendocrine therapy reported greater cognitive impairment at 3 and 6 months than women receiving adjuvant endocrine therapy alone, according to the results from a subgroup of women participating in the TAILORx trial.1 By 12 months, the...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of 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, historical...
On May 29, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two combination regimens: ramucirumab (Cyramza) was approved in combination with erlotinib for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)...
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. As populations age, the incidence of cancer inevitably increases—the World Health Organization has predicted a dramatic increase in global breast cancer cases during the next 15 years. Moreover, breast cancer is increasing in ...
Positron-emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging with the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radiotracer fluorine F-18 DCFPyL (PyL) successfully identified areas of occult metastasis in men with biochemically recurrent metastatic castration-resistant prostate...
Nurse-scientists from the Phyllis F. Cantor Center for Research in Nursing and Patient Care Services at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, received more than $1.3 million in funding for two separate research projects. The American Association for Cancer Research announced that in partnership...
On April 22, 2020, the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who have received at least two prior therapies for metastatic disease.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was...
The addition of the checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to enzalutamide failed to improve overall survival compared with enzalutamide alone in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the phase III IMbassador250 trial, according to results presented at the 2020 American Association ...
In an analysis from the NRG/RTOG 9601 trial reported in JAMA Oncology,1Robert T. Dess, MD, of the Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues found that men with higher prostate-specific antigen (PSA) presalvage radiotherapy levels after prostatectomy had a...
The treatment approaches to multiple myeloma have significantly changed over the past decade with the introduction of many new active agents. Among them, the monoclonal antibodies have been one of the most exciting advances in myeloma, complementing their success in other hematologic cancers. In...
The addition of trastuzumab to radiotherapy did not reach the protocol objective of a 36% reduction in the ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence rate for women with HER2-positive ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in the NRG Oncology clinical trial NSABP B-43. The trial did find a modest (19%) reduction ...
In a single-center phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Janjigian et al found that the addition of pembrolizumab to trastuzumab and chemotherapy showed activity in the first-line treatment of HER2-positive metastatic esophagogastric cancer. Study Details The investigator-initiated trial...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mark Bustoros, MD, and colleagues identified genomic features of smoldering multiple myeloma associated with a higher risk of progression to multiple myeloma and found that alterations that drive disease progression are already present at the ...
In an interim analysis of the German phase II IMMUNED study reported in The Lancet, Zimmer et al found that adjuvant therapy with nivolumab/ipilimumab or nivolumab alone significantly prolonged recurrence-free survival vs placebo in patients with resected stage IV melanoma and no evidence of...
Results of the phase II DESTINY-Gastric01 study—reported at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 4513) and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, by Kohei Shitara, MD, of the National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, and colleagues—found that the antibody-drug conjugate...
In a retrospective analysis reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Grover et al found that enterocolitis flares occurred in approximately one-quarter of patients with preexisting inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or microscopic colitis who received immune checkpoint inhibitors for the treatment of solid ...
The 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was jointly awarded to three researchers. Their discoveries paved the way for promising new strategies to treat anemia, cancer, and many other diseases. One of the three Nobel Laureates is William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD, who continues his research at his...
The Revolutions of 1989 that resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond began in Poland. Perhaps if not for that social upheaval, the career of internationally renowned oncologist Jacek Jassem, MD, PhD, would have taken a very different path. Dr. Jassem had fled...
Lung cancer specialist Narjust Duma, MD, was born and reared in Mérida, Venezuela, a city nestled on a plateau in the Venezuelan Andes. “I’m the daughter of two surgeons. After my parents divorced, I lived with my mother and spent a lot of time at the hospital where she worked. When she was in...
F. Stephen Hodi, MD, Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, was born in Framingham and grew up in the town of Acton, a western suburb of Boston. “My dad was an engineer, and I was influenced by puzzle-solving and using...
ASCO President-Elect Everett E. Vokes, MD, FASCO, is the John E. Ultmann Professor, Chair of the Department of Medicine, and Physician-in-Chief of University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences. After a journey from the United States to Germany and back again, Dr. Vokes arrived at the...
As reported in The Lancet by Matthew D. Galsky, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and colleagues, the phase III IMvigor130 trial has shown prolonged progression-free survival with first-line atezolizumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy vs platinum-based chemotherapy alone in patients ...
My year as President was a busy one. Aside from continuing my research and directing the activities of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, I was drowned by the vast amount of information that was sent to me by ASCO headquarters. At the onset of my Presidency, I discovered a...
Although ‘paradigm shifts’ are frequently referenced in oncology, these are really few and far between. They occur when new data either partially invalidate previously accepted theory or are at complete odds with the existing paradigm. Moving away from the Halsted radical mastectomy, a standard of ...
Internationally recognized immune-oncology melanoma expert Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, FASCO, was born and reared in Staten Island, not far from where he would shape his noted career at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York, New York. “I went to Princeton University and, during my ...