In a phase II trial (Active8) reported in JAMA Oncology, Ferris et al found that the addition of the toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8) agonist motolimod to platinum-fluorouracil plus cetuximab (Erbitux) did not improve progression-free survival among all patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Hussain et al, the phase III PROSPER trial has shown a 71% reduction in risk of metastasis or death with enzalutamide (Xtandi) vs placebo in men with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Study Details In the double-blind trial,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Orphan Drug designation to CPI-613 for the treatment of Burkitt lymphoma. Burkitt lymphoma is a highly aggressive hematologic B-cell malignancy classically characterized by the overexpression of c-Myc. Due to the rapid proliferation rate of...
In a Korean single-center phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cho et al found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was active in advanced thymic epithelial tumors progressing after platinum-based chemotherapy. Study Details The study included 26 patients with thymic carcinoma...
In this edition of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed medical oncologist Lee S. Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, Executive Director at the West Cancer Center, Memphis. Dr. Schwartzberg’s major research interests are new therapeutic approaches to breast cancer,...
A POOLED analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has shown a benefit of treatment beyond disease progression on Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) in some patients receiving anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) antibodies for unresectable or...
TUMOR MUTATIONAL burden is emerging as a predictive biomarker for the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as other tumor types. However, experts say tumor mutational burden has hurdles to overcome. At the 2018 Annual Meeting of...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT Parameswaran Hari, MD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, was impressed by many aspects of the bb2121 study, which represents the “largest and most mature” data set for the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell approach in myeloma, he noted. According to Dr. Hari,...
Imagine health care in the not too distant future… JOHN IS GOING about his usual Saturday at home, when his health-care–enabled smart watch alerts him to a sudden rise in his heart rate. As he is wondering about the reason, he feels a sharp pain in his left lower quadrant. The tachycardia...
THE COMBINATION of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus platinum-based chemotherapy improved overall survival, response rates, and duration of response in patients with advanced squamous cell non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with chemotherapy alone irrespective of programmed cell death ligand 1 ...
A research team led by a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital epidemiologist has conducted the largest analysis to date of how adult survivors of childhood cancer view their health risk. The scientists found that a surprisingly high number of survivors showed a lack of concern for their...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Naren Ramakrishna, MD, of the University of Florida Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline update on disease management for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer and...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Earlier this year, apalutamide (Erleada) was approved for ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently accepted a new drug application and granted Priority Review designation for glasdegib, an investigational oral smoothened inhibitor being evaluated for the treatment of adult patients with previously untreated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. “Mindfulness” has gained significant popularity in the lay press in recent...
Despite significant gains in improved access to public places, transportation, and job opportunities for people with disabilities since the enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, the long history of discrimination in the social and medical treatment of people with disabilities is ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Shannon L. Maude, MD, PhD, of Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues, the phase II ELIANA trial has shown that the anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) ...
The phase III IMpower133 study recently met its coprimary endpoints of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) at its first interim analysis. The study demonstrated that first-line treatment with the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus chemotherapy (carboplatin and...
The likelihood of severe complications after emergency colon cancer surgery is significantly higher over the weekend, according to a study published by Huijts et al in JNCCN – Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The research was led by Perla Marang-van de Mheen, PhD, of the...
In the phase III LILAC equivalence trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, von Minckwitz et al found similar efficacy and safety with the trastuzumab biosimilar ABP 980 vs reference trastuzumab (Herceptin) in HER2-positive early breast cancer. On local review, the risk difference and risk ratio (RR) ...
As of June 20, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has restricted the use of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who are not eligible for cisplatin-containing therapy. The restriction results from a...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wang et al found that germline pathogenic/likely pathogenic mutations significantly contributed to the risk of subsequent neoplasms in long-term survivors of childhood cancers. Study Details The study involved whole-genome sequencing on...
With growing concern among the medical community and the public regarding physician and medical student depression, burnout, and suicide, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted policy during its Annual Meeting that continues its efforts aimed at improving physician access to mental health...
A study using California Cancer Registry data showed that survival improvements in patients with cancer between 1997 and 2014 have largely been limited to those with private or Medicare insurance. These findings were reported in JAMA Oncology by Libby Ellis, PhD, of the Cancer Prevention Institute...
Building on the efficacy of colorectal cancer screening, the American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed a plan at its Annual Meeting to work with physicians and payers to make the screening more available and affordable. Challenges with insurance coverage remain a barrier to colorectal cancer...
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. Gary Deng, MD, PhD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present information on the potential health benefits ...
Valentina Nardi, MD, is a staff pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and her current clinical work includes implementing molecular assays for hematologic malignancies at the Center for Integrated Diagnostics. “I was born in Rome, but I did my high school and college education in Genoa. I ...
THE 2018 JACOBSON INNOVATION AWARD of the American College of Surgeons was recently presented to Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, Chief of the Surgery Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as well as Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and at the...
RESEARCHERS AT the University of California (UC), Davis, have shown that patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who received their care at a National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer center in California had a dramatically reduced risk of early mortality. Using data from the California Cancer...
By including a planned gift to ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation in your estate plans, you can help make a dramatic difference for patients with cancer years—even decades—into the future. With just one small change to your will or trust, your planned gift of any size will deliver a big impact, and: ...
A career in oncology can be extremely rewarding. Fast-paced advances in research and treatment, exciting changes in the practice environment, and the opportunity to build strong relationships with and provide critical support to patients can be incredibly professionally satisfying—but they can...
Researchers can access a wide array of ASCO data through the Society’s Center for Research and Analytics (CENTRA). A detailed list of the data, along with samples of each data set, can be found on CENTRA’s updated data library page. ASCO maintains an expansive repository of information that...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Michael J. Morris, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on optimizing anticancer therapy in men with metastatic non-castrate prostate cancer.1 To ...
An updated analysis of a randomized phase III trial showed that taking a high dose of esomeprazole with low-dose aspirin for at least 7 years may moderately reduce the risk of developing high-grade dysplasia or esophageal cancer and may delay death from any cause in people with Barrett’s esophagus. ...
It is widely acknowledged that the costs of cancer care are much higher in the United States than in Canada, with outcomes that are thought to be similar. A new study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting supports that view, by documenting and quantifying the differences in health-care costs...
In patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, the risk of disease progression was reduced by 80% with the combination of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and rituximab (Rituxan) over rituximab alone, in the international phase III iNNOVATE trial, reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting1 and...
The addition of durvalumab -(Imfinzi) to anthracycline/taxane-based chemotherapy had encouraging results as neoadjuvant therapy for early triple-negative breast cancer in the randomized phase II GeparNuevo study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 The results were positive in a subgroup of...
The call from the dermatologist came at noon on Good Friday, just after my wife left with our two young daughters for a week on her family’s tree farm in Northern Michigan. I was on call for the hospital inpatient leukemia service, so I could not join them. When the dermatologist solemnly began,...
Results from the phase III QuANTUM-R study of single-agent quizartinib in relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were presented by Cortes et al at the 23rd Annual Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) (Abstract LB2600). Study Findings QuANTUM-R study results showed...
Colin D. Weekes, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, called the results of the PRODIGE trial “practice-changing.” Dr. Weekes was the invited discussant of the study and was interviewed by The ASCO Post. “The magnitude of effect is beyond what we have ever seen in...
As reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 9519) and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Migden et al, results of early-phase testing show activity of the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor cemiplimab in advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. Currently, no...
The ELOQUENT-3 trial, an international phase II study evaluating the addition of elotuzumab (Empliciti) to pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and low-dose dexamethasone in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, achieved its primary endpoint, showing a statistically significant and clinically...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Zhu et al, the phase II KEYNOTE-224 study has shown activity of pembrolizumab in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) pretreated with sorafenib. Study Details In the study, 104 eligible patients who were intolerant of or progressed on sorafenib were...
On June 11, the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates voted 56% to 44% to reject a report by its Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) that recommended the AMA maintain its Code of Medical Ethics’ opposition to medical aid in dying. Instead, the House of Delegates...
In a Dutch phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, De Ruysscher et al found that prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) prevented symptomatic brain metastases vs observation in patients with stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving treatment with curative...
Cancer survivors who consumed a balanced, nutrient-dense diet had a 65% lower risk of dying from cancer than survivors who ate a poor-quality diet, according to findings published by Deshmukh et al in JNCI Cancer Spectrum. The study suggests that more than focusing on any particular food group,...
Breast cancer survivors are not getting the recommended level of screening postsurgery, according to a study by Ruddy et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The study was led by Kathryn Ruddy, MD, MPH, Director of Cancer Survivorship for the Department of...
In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lyman et al reviewed opportunities, issues, and challenges posed by the advent of biosimilar medications, focusing on biosimilars in cancer treatment. Although these agents could help to meet the health-care goals of high quality care with cost...
Barbara L. McAneny, MD, an oncologist from Albuquerque, has been sworn in as the 173rd President of the American Medical Association (AMA). She will focus her tenure on the AMA’s three strategic arcs: attacking the dysfunction in health care by removing obstacles and barriers that interfere...
In an analysis of two clinical trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Camidge et al found that brigatinib (Alunbrig) produced high intracranial response rates and good intracranial progression-free survival in patients with ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and...