Genetic testing for inherited cancer susceptibility is increasingly part of the care of cancer patients and their relatives. Early clinical guidelines recommended BRCA1/2 testing for women diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer if they also have a significant family cancer history or Ashkenazi...
NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®): 2017 Guidelines In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology®, covering 8 tumor types. Guidelines are now published for more than 60 tumor types and...
Few pediatric oncology patients or their parents expressed negative attitudes toward early integration of palliative care during cancer treatment, in a study by Deena R. Levine, MD, of the Division of Quality of Life and Palliative Care, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and colleagues reported ...
EACH YEAR, the ASCO President chooses a theme for his or her term, which is not a trivial pursuit. Trying to think up something novel and catchy, yet not schmaltzy, is quite a challenge. However, in my year as Chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the 2010 ASCO Annual Meeting, then during...
Mark looked at me shyly through his oversized Elvis Costello–style glasses. Was he feeling embarrassed by his own reply or just waiting for my reaction? He was sitting between his mom and dad, wearing a t-shirt with a huge Minion print. His braces showed when he smiled, something he does often in...
Sarcomas come in dozens of subtypes. Clinical trial results have been mixed when treating these diverse tumors with immunotherapy, a targeted therapeutic strategy that has success in other cancers. However, a study published by Pollack et al in the journal Cancer suggests how both existing and ...
Active surveillance in men under 60, use of telemedicine in the management of prostate cancer, and physicians' personal prostate cancer screening preferences were all highlighted at the 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA). Active Surveillance for Low-Risk...
New results presented at the 2017 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting from a large, community-based, multicenter clinical validation study conducted at Kaiser Permanente confirmed that the Oncotype DX Genomic Prostate Score (GPS) test is a strong independent predictor of prostate...
In one of the first large studies to explore the possible impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination on oral HPV infections, researchers found it may confer a high degree of protection. The study of young adults in the United States showed that the prevalence of high-risk HPV infection was...
The targeted therapy gefitinib (Iressa) appears more effective in preventing recurrence after lung cancer surgery than the standard of care, chemotherapy. In a phase III clinical trial, patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-positive, stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer ...
A study of 992 patients with stage III colon cancer found that those who reported a healthy lifestyle during and following adjuvant treatment had a 42% lower chance of death and a trend for lower chance of cancer recurrence than those who had less healthy lifestyles. The study will be presented by...
A UK retrospective study showed that colonoscopic surveillance was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer among patients with removal of intermediate-risk adenomas. The study was reported in The Lancet Oncology by Atkin et al. Study Details The study involved routine lower...
In a phase II trial, Khan et al found that hypofractionated postmastectomy radiotherapy, completed in 15 treatment days, was safe and effective in women with stage II to IIIa breast cancer. The study was reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Study Details In the study, 67 women from 2...
Radiotherapy at a high enough dose may increase survival in early-stage pancreatic cancer, according to research presented at the European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology (ESTRO) 36 Conference (Abstract OC-0426). Previous research has suggested that radiotherapy may be of little help to...
Treating prostate cancer with a single, high dose of radiation delivered precisely to the site of the tumor results in good quality of life and fewer trips to the hospital, with adverse side effects that are no worse than if the radiation treatment had been given in several lower doses. These...
An update to the 2012 International Pediatric Fever and Neutropenia Guideline Panel recommendations for management of fever and neutropenia in children with cancer and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) recipients was reported by Lehrnbecher et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology....
An investigation of immune cell subtypes in the tumor microenvironment of patients with lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) identified an immune subgroup that associates with prolonged patient survival and may be prognostic of response to nivolumab, according to findings presented ...
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) together with the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) announced the launch of a church-based initiative addressing striking health-care disparities among African Americans with multiple myeloma. Black Americans have twice the incidence of multiple...
Minimal residual disease is a promising biomarker for guiding the management of multiple myeloma that is becoming increasingly important with the advent of more efficacious therapies, according to emerging data and expert opinion. “The story of minimal residual disease in multiple myeloma is like...
A new score that incorporates tumor biology and response outperforms conventional histopathologic criteria for the staging of breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, finds a retrospective validation cohort study.1 Investigators led by John R. Bergquist, MD, MS, MA, a general surgery...
Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemoperfusion is efficacious when used as part of multimodality therapy for low-volume peritoneal metastases of gastric cancer, suggests a prospective single-arm phase II trial.1 Among the 19 patients enrolled, all of whom had stage IV disease with either...
A recent study by Mokdad and colleagues, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, looks at cancer demographic data for 28 cancers and compares mortality rates in 1980 to results in 2014.1 Publishing mortality rates by geographic area and the observation of significant differences is not new. The...
Researchers have identified a subtype of triple-negative breast cancer that may be responsive to inhibition of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6), according to findings presented by Asghar et al at the 2017 IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference, held in Brussels (Abstract 44P). This study also...
This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) will launch a pilot project for prequalifying biosimilar medicines, a step toward making some of the most expensive treatments for cancer more widely available in low- and middle-income countries. The decision comes after a 2-day meeting in Geneva...
As reported by Katherine S. Virgo, PhD, MBA, of Emory University, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has issued a provisional clinical opinion on second-line hormonal therapy for chemotherapy-naive castration-resistant prostate cancer. The provisional clinical opinion applies...
According to a study by Skinner et al, the primary cause of death in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is local treatment failure. Although human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is sensitive to radiation, HPV-negative tumors are...
According to a study reported by Hamada et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, postdiagnosis aspirin use was associated with improved survival vs nonuse among patients with colorectal cancer who have lower, but not higher, tumor levels of CD274 (programmed cell death 1 ligand 1; PD-L1). Study...
In a study reported in JAMA, Ali H. Mokdad, PhD, and colleagues from the University of Washington, Seattle, found that cancer mortality rates in the United States dropped from 240.2 to 192.0 per 100,000 population between 1980 and 2014.1 Mortality rates varied widely among U.S. counties for...
Using a novel approach called tumor-treating fields—which involves the delivery of low-intensity electric fields to the brain by a patient-operated device—along with standard-of-care temozolomide therapy improved overall survival and progression-free survival vs temozolomide alone in patients with...
The investigational cyclin D–dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib was recently evaluated in several solid tumor types in a phase I multicenter trial.1 Given primarily as a single agent and with continuous dosing, abemaciclib showed encouraging early signals of clinical activity not only ...
The robust progression-free survival benefits achieved with the use of the CDK4/6 inhibitors palbociclib or ribociclib in the metastatic setting provided the impetus to study these agents in early-stage breast cancer. Adjuvant studies are underway, but they take time to mature. For evaluating...
Men may need more frequent lung cancer screening than women, according to research to be presented by Koo et al at the 2017 European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC). The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends annual screening for lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (CT) in adults...
Higher costs for complex cancer surgery may be an indicator of worse—rather than better—quality of care, according to new research by experts at Rice University and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their findings are published by Ho et al in Surgery, and provide...
A propensity score analysis in a prospectively maintained database at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has shown that use of perioperative hepatic arterial infusion pump chemotherapy after complete resection of colorectal liver metastases is associated with a marked improvement in...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to durvalumab (Imfinzi) for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who have disease progression during or following platinum-containing chemotherapy or who have disease...
Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered that surgery could more than double life expectancy for many patients with late-stage kidney cancer, giving them anywhere from 2 to almost 10 years more than they would have without the surgery. A paper published by Zaid et al in The Journal of Urology found...
Although cancer immunotherapy can produce dramatic responses, only a minority of patients benefit from such therapy. Being able to differentiate treated responders from nonresponders early in the course of therapy would help to triage nonresponding patients away from ineffective therapies, reducing ...
A randomized trial, reported by Maly et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, has shown that having an individualized survivorship care plan in place was associated with increased physician implementation of recommended breast cancer survivorship care among low-income, predominantly Latina breast ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded the approved use of regorafinib (Stivarga) to include treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who have been previously treated with the drug sorafenib (Nexavar). This is the first new FDA-approved treatment for liver cancer in...
A new position statement, jointly published by seven international and European organizations, identifies fracture-related risk factors in patients treated with aromatase inhibitors and outlines key management strategies to help prevent bone loss and related fractures. It was published by Hadji et...
In newly updated clinical guidelines from the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, along with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues at The University of Texas MD Anderson...
A pathologic complete response to presurgical therapy occurs in between 40% and 50% of patients with HER2-positive and triple-negative breast cancer, raising the question of the need for surgery for all patients after neoadjuvant chemotherapy indicates a pathologic complete response in...
Women enrolled in California's Medicaid program (Medi-Cal) who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness have been screened for cervical cancer at much lower rates than other women, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), published by...
The 21-gene recurrence score assay, Oncotype DX, determines a score that estimates the likelihood of distant recurrence of disease in women with early-stage estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer; this score is used to assess the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy. Testing with this assay is...
Although the prognosis of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) has improved with R-CHOP—the addition of rituximab (Rituxan) to the cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone chemotherapy regimen—one-third of patients still relapse after therapy, and patients with the ...
Medical oncologist Ophira Ginsburg, MD, has joined New York University (NYU) Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center as Director of its new High Risk Program, which identifies, studies, and cares for patients with hereditary syndromes that increase cancer risk. Dr. Ginsburg also holds a faculty...
The approach to treatment of high-risk, clinical stage I, nonseminomatous or combined germ cell tumors of the testis is not written in stone. Orchiectomy followed by surveillance or chemotherapy with two cycles of bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (BEP) is a favored approach by most experts. A...
Early-phase studies suggest that venetoclax (Venclexta) holds promise as a treatment for myeloma. At the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, investigators reported strong activity in heavily pretreated patients, especially those with the t(11;14)...
Prostate cancer has lagged behind breast cancer in the identification of predictive and prognostic biomarkers, but the field is catching up. Researchers have identified a molecular signature that can distinguish aggressive prostate cancer that is androgen-indifferent and will have a better response ...
On March 21, 2017, Gravely et al published a study1 in Lancet Public Health on the 2003 global tobacco control treaty’s impact on the adoption of tobacco-reduction measures around the world, which has led to a 2.5% reduction in global smoking rates. The treaty obligates the 180 countries committed...