In a Chinese phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Yuan Zhang, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that the addition of gemcitabine/cisplatin induction chemotherapy to standard platinum-based chemoradiotherapy improved recurrence-free survival vs chemoradiotherapy alone in...
In a study presented in a brief report in JAMA Oncology, David J. Pinato, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that past—but not concurrent—use of broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy was associated with poorer treatment outcomes in patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors for various cancers in...
In a research letter published in JAMA Oncology, Feng Wang, MD, PhD, and colleagues identified the frequency of mutations in DNA polymerase epsilon (POLE) and delta 1 (POLD1) genes across cancer types and found that these mutations were associated with better survival outcomes among patients...
A recent study1 finding significantly longer progression-free survival and reduced risk for treatment-related toxicities among patients with metastatic colorectal cancer being treated with chemotherapy can have immediate application, albeit with some caveats related to the observational nature of...
Patients who were being treated with chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer and who reported engaging in physical activity had a significantly longer progression-free survival and reduced risk for treatment-related adverse events than did those reporting less physical activity, according to...
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,...
African American and Hispanic patients with multiple myeloma generally start treatment with novel therapy significantly later than white patients, according to a study published by Ailawadhi et al in Blood Advances. The study found that, on average, it took about 3 months for white patients to...
The National Institutes of Health(NIH) has recently announced the names of two recipients of the 2019 Director’s Pioneer Awards whose research focuses on cell biology: Jennifer H. Elisseeff, PhD, is focusing onregenerative immunotherapies, and Valentina Greco, PhD, is studying the role of stem...
The American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP) presented Peter Wiernik, MD, with the Nathaniel T. Kwit Memorial Distinguished Service Award at the ACCP’s Annual Meeting in September. Dr. Wiernik is Director of the Cancer Research Foundation of New York. The Nathaniel T. Kwit Memorial...
A study investigating the utilization of hospice care among racial/ethnic minority patients following treatment for pancreatic cancer has found that African American and Hispanic patients who underwent surgical removal of the pancreas were less likely than white patients to use hospice services at...
CDK4/6 inhibitors clearly improve overall survival in advanced breast cancer, as this prized endpoint was robustly demonstrated in two landmark phase III trials reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019. Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD, of the University of California,...
The advent of new targeted agents for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has ushered in a golden age of treatment, leading to longer, more durable periods of disease control. Not all oncologists are convinced, however, that improvements in progression-free survival alone warrant dispensing with...
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost One of the first patients I encountered after residency was a 26-year-old woman with a single brain metastasis from melanoma. For anonymity, let’s call her Anna. Anna had just...
Nationally regarded melanoma researcher Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD, was born in La Jolla, California, a seaside community surrounded by ocean bluffs and beaches within the city of San Diego. She was reared in a Navy family that moved from the West Coast to the East Coast during her childhood,...
Ovarian cancer is typically a second-tier newsmaker at the world’s premier oncology conferences, but at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019, this tumor type generated universal buzz. Impressive findings were presented for three PARP inhibitors in front-line maintenance...
Formal discussant Sherene Loi, MD, PhD, Professor of Cancer Therapeutics at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia, characterized the results of KEYNOTE-522 as “exciting.” “This is the first phase III neoadjuvant study in triple-negative breast cancer. Despite breast cancer not...
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. The addition of the checkpoint...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track designation to a therapy for steroid-refractory acute graft-vs-host disease and granted Orphan Drug designation to a therapy for peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Fast Track Designation for T-Guard in Steroid-Refractory Acute...
National lung cancer screening guidelines are inadequate to diagnose patients who contract lung cancer from occupational exposure, including first responders, according to a study reported by Vershalee Shukla, MD, at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s (IASLC) North America ...
A phase II study evaluating whether combining an investigational anti-GD2 monoclonal antibody with induction chemotherapy improved outcomes in children with newly diagnosed high-risk neuroblastoma found that the therapy significantly improved 2-year event-free survival. Furman et al published the...
Commenting on both RADICALS-RT and the meta-analysis, formal discussant Gert de Meerleer, MD, of the University Hospital, Leuven, Belgium, stated: “A big applause for these trials. I agree with both conclusions and congratulate both groups of authors for finding noncommercial funding.” Dr. de...
Early salvage radiotherapy appears to be a better choice after radical prostatectomy for men with prostate cancer than adjuvant radiotherapy, according to late-breaking results from the RADICALS-RT trial and the ARTISTIC meta-analysis of three trials that included RADICALS-RT. Observation after...
Researchers have identified a gene pattern that may help predict which patients with breast cancer will have early or late disease recurrence following radiation therapy. The ability to predict the timing of recurrence could change—and improve—treatment strategies and determine the length of...
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 ...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the...
In a single-center retrospective study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Lee et al found that implementation of an interprofessional malignant bowel obstruction program changed care patterns and improved outcomes for women with advanced gynecologic cancers and malignant bowel...
A novel multivariate cancer risk score model demonstrated 60% sensitivity at 98.5% specificity. These findings demonstrate that a blood-based cancer screening assay with a novel risk score model may be a viable method for detecting cancer in asymptomatic individuals, especially in populations at...
The Prevent Cancer Foundation recently honored Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD, with the James L. Mulshine, MD, Leadership Award for his work leading the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), the first large-scale clinical trial for low-dose computed tomography (CT) lung cancer screening. The award...
Inspiration comes in many forms. For cancer researcher Ariel Hollinshead Hyun, PhD, known professionally as Dr. Hollinshead, it came at the age of 15, when she was captivated by Paul de Kruif’s book Microbe Hunters. She was fascinated by the lives of early bacteriologists detailed in the book and...
Let’s face it, men don’t go to the doctor as often as we should. At least that has been my experience. I felt compelled to finally make an appointment with my primary care physician after I began working as a research assistant at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai in 2014, as it felt...
Most Latinx people who are LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) reported being reluctant to share their gender identity and/or sexual orientation with a health-care provider, and a majority have never received cancer information tailored for their community, according...
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,...
RESEARCHERS FROM Fox Chase Cancer Center have discovered a link between higher patient volume at cancer facilities and improved survival in two studies of patients with advanced cancer.1,2 These data underscore the ability of a higher-volume facility to provide patients with more experience and...
City of Hope recently announced that several of its researchers and faculty have been named as the recipients of several awards and grants. These accolades recognize individuals for their work in their respective fields of human genetics education, genomic research, and leptomeningeal disease....
Early in 2019, trastuzumab-dttb was approved as a biosimilar to standard trastuzumab for treatment of HER2-expressing breast cancer in the adjuvant setting, metastatic breast cancer, and metastatic gastric cancer or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma in patients who have not received prior...
The management of rectal cancer has evolved over the past decades, yielding several major practice changes that have substantially improved outcomes. However, rectal cancer treatment remains challenging and even with improved outcomes can result in life-altering morbidity. To shed light on the...
New results from ASCO’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) Study demonstrated that single-agent palbociclib has no meaningful clinical activity in patients with CDKN2A-mutated or -deleted advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma. The results, based on data...
The Kidney Cancer Association has announced the recipients of the Advanced Discovery Awards (ADAs) and Young Investigator Awards (YIAs). In April, the Kidney Cancer Association approved $1.3 million in new grant funding to advance early detection and new treatments of kidney cancer. Established...
I gave my first national presentation of my original clinical research on a topic that was to become a professional obsession: finding a cure for esophageal cancer. (Spoiler, I failed.) It was late May 1982. Writing about this now is undoubtedly predicated on my recent retirement, my desire to...
GUEST EDITOR Addressing the evolving needs of cancer survivors at various stages of their illness and care, Palliative Care in Oncology is guest edited by Jamie H. Von Roenn, MD, FASCO. Dr. Von Roenn is ASCO’s Vice President of Education, Science, and Professional Development. It has been well...
Longer-term follow-up of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are treated with immunotherapy have appreciably extended survival at 5 years, suggesting that for some patients, this disease can be managed as a chronic condition. These findings are based on two presentations ...
Studies show that people suffering from serious mental illness are at increased risk for poor cancer outcomes and mortality due to inequities in their cancer care. Although psychiatric care at the time of diagnosis may improve care, current models for integrating psychiatric interventions and...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, and colleagues, the phase III Alliance/CALGB 80802 trial has shown no progression-free or overall survival benefit with the addition of doxorubicin to sorafenib in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. The study was stopped early...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate...
Recurrent high-grade glioblastoma has a poor prognosis, with a median overall survival of 6 to 9 months. Treatment is limited, partly because immunotherapy has not yet been shown to be effective in the immunosuppressive microenvironment of this tumor. A novel treatment approach involving...
In the past few weeks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued regulatory decisions in prostate cancer, urothelial cancer, myelofibrosis, breast cancer, pediatric brain cancer, leukemia, and skin cancer. Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Niraparib in Metastatic...
The addition of the immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab to standard therapy significantly improved overall survival vs standard therapy alone for patients with previously untreated extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC), according to a preplanned interim analysis of the phase III CASPIAN...
Alex A. Adjei, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, also commented on this phase I study of AMG 510. “Although it is a little bit early to tell and the number of patients with non–small cell lung cancer treated is still small, AMG 510 is the first potential true breakthrough in the...
The investigational KRAS inhibitor AMG 510 yielded clinical activity in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to updated results of a small ongoing phase I trial reported at the 2019 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) World Conference on...
Recurrent high-grade glioblastoma has a poor prognosis, with a median overall survival of 6 to 9 months. Treatment is limited, partly because immunotherapy has not yet been shown to be effective in the immunosuppressive microenvironment of this tumor. A novel treatment approach involving...