ASCO has updated a guideline on pharmacologic interventions for breast cancer risk reduction in postmenopausal women at increased risk of developing breast cancer.1 The original clinical practice recommendations for breast cancer risk reduction were published in 1999 and updated in 2002, 2009, and...
For Her Royal Highness Princess Dina Mired of Jordan, ensuring that every patient with cancer receives high-quality care is not an abstract goal—it is personal. Princess Dina saw firsthand the life-and-death differences that access to state-of-the-art oncology care makes in a patient’s life when...
Question 1 Which of the following statements about cytokine-release syndrome and neurotoxicity after tisagenlecleucel infusion is correct? Correct answer: B. The median time to onset of cytokine-release syndrome is 3 days. Expert Perspective Following tisagenlecleucel infusion, cytokine-release...
The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab improved overall survival compared with chemotherapy as first-line therapy for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression of at least 1%, according to the results of CheckMate 227....
More Americans than ever are surviving lung cancer. While the disease remains the leading cause of cancer deaths among both women and men, over the past decade, the survival rate has increased. A new report from the American Lung Association—the 2019 State of Lung Cancer—examines this promising...
A blood test could soon become a monitoring tool for the early detection of uveal melanoma. Stark et al discovered markers in the blood that can differentiate between a benign mole and a melanoma, while also determining whether the cancer has metastasized, according to findings they published in...
Patients with advanced lung cancer can experience burdensome symptoms at the end of life. Pulmonologists can alleviate some of this suffering, but it’s a balancing act between doing too much and not enough, according to specialists who spoke at CHEST 2019, the annual meeting of the American College ...
In an analysis of the German ALL-REZ BFM 2002 trial, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Eckert et al found that postinduction minimal residual disease (MRD)-based treatment stratification resulted in “excellent survival” in pediatric patients with late relapse of B-cell precursor acute...
Endocrine therapy has been a lifesaver for women with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, but decreases in recurrence and cancer-related mortality have come with substantial side effects, according to data presented at the 2019 Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium.1 The results of a...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Gary Deng, MD, PhD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on the herbal extract...
Immune-related colitis is the second most common toxicity associated with checkpoint inhibitors, affecting up to 40% of patients. The ASCO Post interviewed Yinghong Wang, MD, PhD, Director of Medication-Induced Colitis and Enteritis, Director of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation, and Associate...
In a population-based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Koo et al found that presenting symptoms of cancer were mostly associated with stage earlier than stage IV, suggesting a benefit of symptom awareness campaigns based on common symptoms. As stated by the investigators, “Early diagnosis...
For the treatment of BRAF V600-mutated advanced melanoma, we now have three BRAF/MEK inhibitor combinations that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: dabrafenib/trametinib, vemurafenib/cobimetinib, and encorafenib/binimetinib. Although the toxicity profiles for these combinations ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, of the Institut Gustave Roussy and Paris-Sud-Paris-Saclay University, Villejuif, and colleagues, the long-term follow-up of the phase III COMBI-d and COMBI-v trials has shown a pooled 5-year overall survival rate of 34% ...
The ESMO Congress continues to grow as a pivotal platform for research in clinical oncology. At the ESMO Congress 2019, important findings were showcased in more than 2,200 studies, including 93 late-breaking abstracts. The ASCO Post summarized much of that news in separate articles over several...
Here is a glimpse at updated clinical trial data on newer therapies under study for the small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and advanced extrapancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. IMpower133 and ALTER: Novel Therapies for SCLC The treatment of small cell lung cancer has seen little progress in recent years, ...
Treatment with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib delayed disease progression and appears to improve survival, compared with newer hormonal agents in men with pretreated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and homologous recombinant repair (HRR) genetic...
In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sagar Lonial, MD, and colleagues found that lenalidomide significantly improved progression-free survival vs observation in patients with intermediate- or high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma. As noted by the investigators,...
The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab improved overall survival compared with chemotherapy as first-line therapy for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression of at least 1%, according to the results of CheckMate 227....
At the ESMO Congress 2019, ovarian cancer was a topic of heightened interest, particularly due to findings reported in several important phase III studies of PARP inhibitors in front-line maintenance therapy for patients with newly diagnosed advanced disease—and not just those with BRCA mutations....
Immunotherapy has changed the treatment paradigms for melanoma, lung cancer, bladder cancer, and renal cancer. Now, checkpoint inhibitor therapy is making inroads in triple-negative breast cancer—one of the most difficult-to-treat aggressive types of breast cancer. Late-breaking results of the...
CDK4/6 inhibitors improve overall survival in advanced breast cancer, according to results of two important phase III trials reported at the ESMO Congress 2019. Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles Women’s Cancer Research Program, presented the findings from the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Priyanka Sharma, MD, and colleagues, biomarker analysis among women with triple-negative breast cancer treated with adjuvant doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide in the SWOG 9313c trial has confirmed a 44-gene DNA damage immune response signature and...
In women with advanced ovarian cancer responding to first-line chemotherapy, maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor niraparib significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 38% overall and by 60% in women with BRCA mutations. Even patients without a homologous recombination...
Lung cancer remains the number one cancer killer, leading to about 150,000 deaths per year in the United States and accounting for approximately 25% of all cancer deaths in the nation. Early detection has improved survival in other malignancies such as breast, colon, and cervical cancers, but...
Advances in systemic therapy and supportive care, as well as ongoing improvements in surgical techniques, have led to improved survival for many patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. We have observed increased survival with FOLFIRINOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil, irinotecan,...
Third-line treatment with cabazitaxel extended progression-free survival and overall survival in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the CARD trial. These results provide the first evidence from a randomized phase III trial for a survival benefit with third-line therapy, and ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Ken Kato, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ATTRACTION-3 trial conducted in predominantly Asian patients has shown a survival benefit with nivolumab vs paclitaxel or docetaxel in patients with advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who were refractory to...
In an analysis of the phase III TITAN trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Neeraj Agarwal, MD, and colleagues found that that treatment with apalatuamide was associated with preserved health-related quality of life, including pain and fatigue outcomes, in patients with metastatic...
In an analysis from the phase III PACE-B trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Nicholas van As, MD, and colleagues found that shortened treatment courses with stereotactic body radiotherapy did not increase gastrointestinal or genitourinary acute toxicity vs intensity-modulated fractionated...
It is with great sadness that we report Craig Alguire, MD, 42, died on October 11, 2019, at his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Diagnosed with grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme in 2015, Dr. Alguire chronicled the effects the cancer was having on his life in his Patient’s Corner column, published in...
American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn coined the term “paradigm shift” to connote a fundamental change in the basic concepts and practices of a standard scientific discipline. They are few and far between. To convince the entrenched oncologic surgery community in the 1960s and 1970s that...
As first-line treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer, the addition of veliparib during induction followed by veliparib maintenance therapy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death in the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial reported at the European Society for Medical...
Testing for levels of the serum biomarker cancer antigen 125 (CA125) in the blood may be a useful tool for the detection of ovarian cancer, and could help detect other types of cancer among patients in primary care, according to research presented by Funston et al at the 2019 National Cancer...
A study using a technique called Mendelian randomization to investigate the causal role played by bacteria in the development of colorectal cancer was presented at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference. First study author Kaitlin Wade, PhD, of the University of...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology,1Jonathan M. Loree, MD, of BC Cancer, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues found that race and race subgroup analyses were frequently not included in reported trials supporting U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oncology drug approvals...
A computer-aided diagnosis system using deep-learning analysis to detect lung lesion locations and quantitatively characterize the lesions on computed tomography (CT) images offered a fast and convenient approach for assisting radiologists in the diagnosis of lung nodule pathologies. These findings ...
The treatment landscape for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma has changed drastically over the past several years with the introduction of many new therapeutic options for patients. The revolution began with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of nivolumab and ipilimumab...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues, extended follow-up of the phase III CheckMate 214 trial has shown maintained survival benefit of first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs sunitinib among patients with...
Founded in 1887, the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) is located in Portland, Oregon, and is home to the cutting-edge Coussens Lab, which focuses on the role of immune cells and their mediators as critical regulators of cancer development. The lab’s eponymous Director, Lisa Coussens, PhD,...
Treatment with atezolizumab plus chemotherapy extended progression-free survival by 1.9 months vs chemotherapy alone in patients with metastatic urothelial cancer, according to the early results of the IMvigor130 trial, which were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)...
Women with early-stage breast cancer treated with lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy rated the cosmetic results for whole-breast and partial-breast irradiation to be equivalent, according to a new analysis of results from the phase III NRG Oncology/NSABP B39-RTOG 0413 clinical trial. Results...
In a secondary analysis of the phase III TAILORx trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Joseph Sparano, MD, and colleagues found that adjuvant chemotherapy plus endocrine therapy produced good 5-year outcomes among women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, axillary node–negative breast cancer...
In an analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Eichenauer et al found that patients with newly diagnosed nodular lymphocyte–predominant Hodgkin lymphoma treated in German Hodgkin Study Group (GHSG) trials had good long-term outcomes overall. Study Details The analysis identified the...
Treatment with olaparib delayed disease progression, and early survival data suggest a positive trend in favor of olaparib compared with newer hormonal agents in men with pretreated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and homologous recombinant repair genetic alterations—specifically...
Two presentations at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting offered more evidence that omitting radiation therapy leads to higher rates of recurrence for patients with early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma.1,2 Both studies involve work by the German Hodgkin Study Group among...
The investigational KRAS G12C inhibitor MRTX849 yielded clinical responses in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and colorectal cancer harboring KRAS G12C mutations, according to data from a phase I clinical trial presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular...
The incidence and mortality rates of pancreatic cancer have increased in 195 countries and territories over a 27-year period, according to a systematic analysis performed within the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 and published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The study is the...
GUEST EDITOR Dr. Abraham is the Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Taussig Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with breast cancer...
The major treatment advances for melanoma can be attributed to anti–-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated protein 4 (anti–CTLA-4; ipilimumab) and anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1; nivolumab, pembrolizumab) immune checkpoint inhibitors and the combination of BRAF and MEK inhibitors...