In a phase II trial (SJYC07) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Robinson et al found that risk-adapted treatment did not improve event-free survival in young children with medulloblastoma. Analysis by methylation status showed superior outcome in the sonic hedgehog (SHH) subgroup. Study Details The ...
A NOVEL APPROACH using two doses of nivolumab (Opdivo) prior to surgery achieved major pathologic responses in 45% of patients with resectable stages I to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the results of a small Stand Up 2 Cancer–Cancer Research Institute Dream Team study...
PRETREATMENT CLINICAL findings may predict early treatment discontinuation in patients with ovarian cancer receiving checkpoint blockade immunotherapy agents. Data presented by MD candidate Julia L. Boland at the 2018 Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer revealed that...
THE QUANTITY of original research presented at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) Annual Conference has been growing, and at the 2018 meeting, 121 researchers presented their work. The ASCO Post captured some of the findings for this report. Blood Markers Correlate With Anti–PD-1...
A NEW STUDY has found that early detection along with a simple intervention can be highly effective in preventing breast cancer–related lymphedema for at-risk women. According to data presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons,1 82% of women identified at an...
“THIS STUDY represents a true milestone in the field of lung cancer. For the first time, the vast majority of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can receive immunotherapy with pembrolizumab (Keytruda),” said ASCO expert John Heymach, MD, PhD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston,...
IMMUNOTHERAPY WITH pembrolizumab (Keytruda) improved overall survival compared with investigator’s choice of platinum-based chemotherapy as first-line treatment for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the KEYNOTE-042 trial. Median overall survival was improved by 4 to 8...
Dr. Hayes, ASCO President 2016–2017, is Professor of Internal Medicine; Stuart B. Padnos Professor in Breast Cancer; and Clinical Director of the Breast Oncology Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor. AS I COMPLETE my 3-year term as ASCO President, I am...
A Norwegian population–based cohort study indicated that the use of warfarin was associated with a reduced risk of cancer overall and site-specific cancers among patients aged > 50 years. The findings were reported in JAMA Internal Medicine by Haaland et al. As noted by the investigators,...
In the fall of 2015, I was feeling great. At age 37, I had just completed running my fourth half-marathon and regularly hiked trails near my home in Arlington, Texas, to stay fit in-between races. The only symptom that foretold what was in my future was some light watery discharge I was...
Following guidelines for proper nutrition, maintaining a healthy weight, and staying physically active may improve survival among patients treated for colon cancer, according to the results of a study with nearly 1,000 patients followed for a median of 7 years.1 “The study suggests that if...
The text and photographs on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photos below are from the volume titled “The X-Ray Era: 1901–1915.” The photographs...
Results from KEYNOTE-407, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase III study evaluating pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with carboplatin/paclitaxel or carboplatin/nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) as first-line treatment for metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer...
On May 4, 2018, dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) in combination was granted approval for treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic anaplastic thyroid cancer with BRAF V600E mutation and no satisfactory locoregional treatment options.1-3 Dabrafenib is not indicated for ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III CheckMate 214 trial has shown an overall survival advantage with nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) vs sunitinib (Sutent) in patients with...
Interim results from cohort A of KEYNOTE-427, a phase II trial evaluating pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as first-line treatment for advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC), were presented by McDermott et al at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 4500). Interim data showed an overall response...
In an Australian investigator-initiated single-center phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Hofman et al found that treatment with a radiolabeled small molecule that binds to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), lutetium-177 (177Lu)–PSMA-617, produced a high response rate ...
Results from a preplanned interim analysis of the phase III iNNOVATE (PCYC-1127) study evaluating the investigational use of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in combination with rituximab (Rituxan) in relapsed/refractory and treatment-naive patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia were...
An updated analysis of a randomized phase III trial showed that taking a high dose of the acid-reducing medicine esomeprazole with low-dose aspirin for at least 7 years can moderately reduce the risk of developing high-grade dysplasia or esophageal cancer and delay death from any cause in people...
The federally funded, phase III TAILORx clinical trial showed that most women with hormone receptor (HR)–positive, HER2-negative, axillary node–negative early-stage breast cancer and a mid-range score on a 21-tumor gene expression assay (Oncotype DX® Breast Recurrence Score) do not...
A new chemotherapy strategy seems to improve cure rates for children with rhabdomyosarcoma who are at high risk for cancer recurrence. In a randomized phase III clinical trial, adding 6 months of low-dose maintenance chemotherapy after initial treatment increased the 5-year overall survival rate...
An analysis of pooled data from 9 randomized phase III trials of more than 8,000 men with advanced prostate cancer who received chemotherapy shows chances of survival are as good for black men as white men. The median survival was the same in black men and white men overall (21 months), but black...
An analysis of health claims data from two demographically similar regions on either side of the U.S./Canada border shows that a common treatment for advanced colorectal cancer costs twice as much in Western Washington State than in British Columbia—$12,345 vs $6,195 monthly per patient....
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kurian et al found that use of germline multiple-gene sequencing has become more common than BRCA1/2-only sequencing after breast cancer diagnosis in clinical practice, with an associated increased detection of pathologic variants not...
Beverly Moy, MD, MPH, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a modest working-class home. Both her parents were immigrants from China. “Education is highly prized in Chinese culture, and my home life was no exception. I didn’t speak any English when I began kindergarten, so that was a bit challenging,...
Over the past year (June 2017–May 2018), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval to a number of new oncology drug products, including several biosimilar products. Here we provide the labeling approved for these novel drugs and new indications. EPOETIN ALFA-EPBX (RETACRIT)...
Arti Hurria, MD, FASCO, who is Director of City of Hope’s Center for Cancer and Aging, is a first generation of immigrant parents from India. “My parents left India and moved from England to Canarsie, Brooklyn, where I was born. When I was 8, my family moved to Southern California, partly due to...
“At the age of 6, my mother threw me into the arms of Hippocrates’ discipline, giving me as a special gift a toy suitcase full of medical equipment and a little puppet to train my skills with a stethoscope, syringe, thermometer, small reflex hammer, and torch to explore the oropharyngeal airways....
The remarkable careers of Jimmie C. Holland, MD, and James F. Holland, MD, spanned collectively for more than a century, leaving an indelible footprint in oncology clinical care and research. Synonymous with cancer care itself, the Hollands were a living documentary of the rich and dramatic history ...
Internationally renowned expert on the early detection, prevention, and treatment of younger women with breast cancer, Nagi S. El Saghir, MD, FACP, FASCO, was born on January 5, 1953, in Bint Jbeil, a village in southern Lebanon. His parents moved to Beirut in 1948, at the height of the...
A post-hoc analysis from the phase III SPARTAN study that showed treatment with apalutamide (Erleada) significantly reduced the risk of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) progression in patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) who had a rapidly rising PSA while receiving ...
Researchers presented new findings on a Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA)-approved robotic system, safety of testosterone therapy after prostate cancer, and active surveillance protocol for low-risk prostate cancer patients at the 113th Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association ...
A veteran mountain climber and skier, I’ve been healthy for most of my 61 years, so it was especially shocking to experience a bout of shortness of breath during a moderately intense mountain bike ride with my wife, Jan, in the spring of 2014. A never-smoker, I was used to climbing up high mountain ...
On May 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerted health-care professionals, oncology clinical investigators, and the public about decreased survival associated with the use of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) or atezolizumab (Tecentriq) as monotherapy in clinical trials to treat patients with ...
With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah)1 and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta),2 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has moved into real-world practice, offering new potentially curative options for incurable hematologic malignancies. Its ...
For this installment in the Living a Full Life series of articles, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed immunology pioneer James Allison, PhD, Chair of the Department of Immunology, the Vivian L. Smith Distinguished Chair in Immunology, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Research,...
Extended next-generation sequencing genomic profiling in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has revealed remarkable heterogeneity and molecular complexity of the disease and provided critical insights into the genetic mechanisms underpinning of preleukemic and leukemic pathogenesis.1,2 Despite...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Mojca Jongen-Lavrencic, MD, PhD, of Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that molecular minimal residual disease identified by next-generation sequencing during complete remission was associated with an increased risk of...
In a Dutch/Belgian phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Willemien J. van Driel, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, and colleagues, the addition of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (aka HIPEC) to interval cytoreductive surgery following neoadjuvant...
Applications for the session of ASCO’s Quality Training Program (QTP) being held at ASCO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, are being accepted now. The deadline for submission is June 4, but applicants are encouraged to submit early to prepare for Session 1. Once applicants are accepted, they...
Nationally recognized oncologist Nancy L. Bartlett, MD, had an early love for mathematics and a swooning aversion to the sight of blood. “I was born and reared in Kansas City, Missouri and am a Midwesterner at heart. No one in the family was involved in medicine. My mom was an elementary school...
ASCO President-Elect Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FASCO, was born and reared in Wyoming, where her family ran a cattle ranch in the foothills of the snow-topped peaks of the Wind River Range (or “Winds” for short), a place of breathtakingly uncluttered vistas where the chief feature is the air...
Simultaneously presented at the 2018 European Association of Urology meeting and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the PRECISION trial will go down as a landmark study for solidifying the role of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in prostate cancer diagnosis.1 This trial provides...
On March 20, 2018, brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) was approved for the treatment of adult patients with previously untreated stage III or IV classical Hodgkin lymphoma in combination with chemotherapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on the findings of the open-label phase III...
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. On May 1, 2018, tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), a...
This past year’s approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of two chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies heralded a new era in both effective cancer treatments and the most expensive cancer drugs ever. Tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) was initially approved for the treatment of...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Julie R. Brahmer, MD, of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on management of immune-related adverse events in patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.1 Immune...
Radiotherapy given in high doses over a shorter period of time is safe and effective for patients with prostate cancer, according to research from a phase III trial presented at the European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology (ESTRO) 37 Conference.1 The treatment—called ultrahypofractionated...
To stem the rising tide of financial toxicity in cancer care, creative physician reimbursement strategies, by themselves, will not work, according to a thought leader in the field who advocated for elimination of the federal mandate against price negotiation, curbing the power of monopolies, and...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) covering 8 tumor types. Guidelines are now published for more than 60 tumor types and topics. Some of the key updates were presented at NCCN’s 23rd...