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 a recent article in JAMA Oncology, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Dess et al present an important analysis to help guide decision-making in the setting of salvage radiotherapy in prostate cancer.1 This secondary analysis assessed the association of prostate-specific antigen (PSA)...
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...
Women Who Conquer Cancer (WWCC) is a groundbreaking program that is committed to supporting early-career women researchers by funding research grants through Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®. Since its inception 7 years ago, the program has raised nearly $5 million, funded 27 Young Investigator ...
An analysis of 59 prostate cancer clinical trials based in North America and Europe found that the vast majority of enrollees were non-Hispanic white men, according to a study published by Rencsok et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. The proportion of white participants 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...
The RET inhibitor pralsetinib showed activity in patients with a broad variety of tumors harboring RET gene fusions, according to results from the phase I/II ARROW trial, presented by Vivek Subbiah, MD, and colleagues during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 109). “This trial shows...
Discussant Scott T. Tagawa, MD, MS, of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, congratulated Dr. Hofman and coauthors on this first randomized trial any PSMA-targeted therapy, and was cautiously optimistic about the targeted radioligand treatment being adopted as post-docetaxel therapy in men with...
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...
The desire to pursue a career in medicine took root when Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO, was a young child visiting family in segregated Ahoskie, North Carolina. She witnessed firsthand the impact the town’s lone African American family physician had on the community. When it came time to...
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...
Genetic testing for cancer risk can significantly improve the prevention or treatment of hereditary cancers, but studies have shown that people who might have a genetic risk often don't get tested. A collaborative team of researchers have tested a possible solution through a clinical trial aimed at ...
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 ...
In 2019, at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Ian Tannock, MD, PhD, DSc, FASCO, was honored with the Allen S. Lichter Visionary Award for his contributions to the fields of genitourinary and breast cancers as well as his efforts to optimize clinical trial design. The title of his lecture was “Clinical...
Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, FASCO, knew from the start of his medical career that if treatments for cancer were to become curative, research in new therapies would have to move away from the mainstay one-size-fits-all approach of systemic chemotherapy to an innovative, personalized strategy that ...
When oncology luminary Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, was in her early teens, her youngest sister, Teri, developed acute lymphocytic leukemia at age 5. Dr. O’Shaughnessy, the oldest of four girls, recalled that her sister’s struggle with the disease had a profound effect on her worldview. “Teri went...
Women who present at diagnosis with advanced breast cancer have faced an unanswered question: will local therapy, consisting of surgery and radiation to the tumor in the breast, prolong survival compared to the traditional treatment of systemic treatment alone? Now, data from the randomized phase...
Combination therapy with the isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) inhibitor ivosenidib plus the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax with or without the chemotherapeutic agent azacitidine showed activity in patients with IDH1-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in a phase Ib/II trial. The results of the...
In an international trial, treatment with MK-6482, a small-molecule inhibitor of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-2a, was well tolerated and resulted in clinical responses for patients with von Hippel-Lindau disease–associated renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The results of the phase II trial were shared ...
Geriatric assessment–driven interventions—such as physical therapy, nutritional recommendations, and social support, among others—can reduce toxicity due to chemotherapy in adults with cancer aged 65 years and older, according to results from a randomized clinical trial presented as part of ASCO20...
Patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and a mutation that leads to mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) exon 14 skipping had a 46.5% objective response rate to the targeted therapy drug tepotinib, as shown in a study presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program...
Positive results from two cohorts of the Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) study provide real-world evidence to support recent clinical trial data that demonstrate a role for olaparib in the treatment of advanced prostate and pancreatic cancers with BRCA1/2-inactivating...
Although 84% of children with cancer survive 5 years or more, children with refractory, relapsed, and progressive high-risk malignancies have a poor median survival of 9.5 months. The German INFORM registry is a large prospective, noninterventional, multicenter study collecting clinical and...
Data from the global TERAVOLT Consortium, which is investigating the impact of COVID-19 infection on patients with thoracic cancers, have found that these patients are at high risk for hospitalization and death. Prior use of chemotherapy was associated with an increased risk of mortality, as was...
The successful treatment of malignant lymphoma has been one of the great achievements in medical oncology, but certainly more work is needed to define key biologic targets as well as molecular markers for a more accurate definition of prognosis following therapy. In day-to-day practice, unanswered...
Like many professional organizations in the public sphere, ASCO regularly confronts policy issues. Because we are a large organization, and because we represent many constituencies, we are frequently called upon to offer our advice to the federal government. Our members must sometimes wonder where...
Over the years I have become increasingly proud of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. I believe that ASCO is unique among specialty societies—at least in the various disciplines of oncology and hematology. Our Society is amazingly democratic (ie, with an independent nominating process and...
It has been 5 years since ASCO has been part of a new publication, the last being the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). As the ASCO Board and leadership evaluated the publication mix we recognized there was a gap that needed to be filled. The Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), now 25 years old, ...
Sharing his perspective on KEYNOTE-177 with The ASCO Post was Axel Grothey, MD, Director of GI Cancer Research at the West Cancer Center, OneOncology, Memphis. “This is a very important, highly anticipated study,” he said. “It’s the first randomized trial of any checkpoint inhibitor in...
“These data are solid, showing a 7-month improvement in overall survival in patients with stable disease or better after first-line chemotherapy. This is roughly a 50% improvement in survival, which is clinically meaningful. Also, progression-free survival was significantly increased with...
Maintenance therapy with avelumab and best supportive care significantly prolonged overall survival vs best supportive care alone in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma that did not progress on first-line platinum-based chemotherapy, according to an interim analysis of the phase III...
Two novel biomarkers have been found to correlate with improved outcomes with immunotherapy in metastatic breast cancer and may help to identify the patients most likely to benefit from this treatment, according to exploratory studies reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)...
Cancer-related fatigue is a prevalent and potentially persistent issue among breast cancer survivors. A study presented by Di Meglio et al at the ESMO Breast Cancer Virtual Meeting 2020 (Abstract 183O) has now shown that existing recommendations and proven strategies for reducing fatigue—which can...
Patients with breast cancer younger than 40 generally present with a characteristic profile—later-stage disease and more aggressive tumors with poorer prognosis—according to findings from a new study analyzing one of the largest patient data sets compiled to investigate age-related breast cancer...
Telephone outreach coupled with scheduling assistance significantly increased screening mammography setup and follow-through in a population characterized by low rates of screening mammography and high rates of advanced breast cancer at diagnosis. These are findings from a new study conducted by...
ASCO recently released a set of recommendations to support the oncology community as health-care institutions across the United States face potentially difficult decisions around the allocation of scarce health-care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some geographic areas, the ongoing...
The fundamental goal of scientific meetings is to share knowledge and accelerate scientific advances. Investigators use different types of presentations to disseminate and share their valuable work with others in the field. This is an important aspect of promoting their scientific careers. These...
The symptoms of low-grade oligodendroglioma first appeared in the summer of 2003, when I was 12, but they were vague enough—mild headaches and occasional weird sensations on my right side—to ignore. In the fall, I tripped and fell during a game of rollerblade hockey with my classmates and started...
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...
In 2003, Nina Kadan-Lottick, MD, MSPH, established the regional Yale HEROS multidisciplinary research and clinical program for long-term survivors of childhood cancer survivors, which is the first of its kind in Connecticut and one of the first in the United States. She intends the HEROS program to ...
The Reagan-Udall Foundation for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in collaboration with Friends of Cancer Research recently announced the COVID-19 Evidence Accelerator, an expansive public-private partnership combining the efforts of academic, government, and private sector organizations...
In 1980, Paul G. Marks, MD, became the President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), the oldest and largest private cancer center in the world. Over his 19-year reign, he is credited with setting MSK on a more scientific course by encouraging innovative...
My journey in cancer medicine started in June 1968, when I traveled from Lebanon to New York to begin my fellowship in medical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Since then, and on a daily basis, I have been actively engaged in the treatment of patients with cancer and in cancer...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, The ASCO Post will be interviewing oncologists on how they and their centers are dealing with the crisis. Here, we speak with Alexander Melamed, MD, MPH, a gynecologic oncologist and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia...
A clinical trial has begun to evaluate whether the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, given together with the antibiotic azithromycin, can prevent hospitalization and death from COVID-19. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health...
G. David Roodman, MD, PhD, of Indiana University (IU) Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been awarded a 5-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to study ways to build bone and decrease tumor growth in multiple myeloma bone disease. Dr. Roodman is...
Insomnia is a persistent sleep disorder that affects nearly 60% of people with cancer, diminishing their quality of life.1,2 Chronic insomnia disorder is defined by trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking too early three times per week for 3 months or more.3 Standard care comprises...
Medical images for a wide range of diseases, including COVID-19, can now be more easily viewed, compared, and analyzed using a Web-based imaging platform developed by Massachusetts General Hospital and collaborating researchers. The Open Health Imaging Foundation (OHIF) Web viewer was originally...