In a retrospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Herling et al identified a 17-gene signature that distinguished patients with IGHV-unmutated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) more likely to achieve long-term remission after front-line chemoimmunotherapy with fludarabine,...
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...
On October 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a supplemental new drug application (sNDA) for aprepitant (Cinvanti) injectable emulsion for intravenous (IV) use. The sNDA requested FDA approval to expand the recommended dosage to include the 130-mg single-dose regimen for...
In a post hoc 5-year follow-up of the KEYNOTE-006 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Caroline Robert, MD, of Institut Gustave Roussy, Université Paris-Sud, and colleagues found that pembrolizumab maintained overall and progression-free survival benefits over ipilimumab in advanced melanoma.1 In ...
A new study has found that oncology massage therapy can provide symptomatic relief for a common and difficult-to-treat side effect of cancer treatment. Patients with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy experienced a sustained reduction in lower-extremity pain up to 6 weeks after completion...
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...
Chair of the German Breast Group, Sibylle Loibl, MD, of the University of Frankfurt, commented as a formal discussant of MONALEESA-3 and MONARCH 2. “It’s great to see overall survival in the first- and second-line metastatic breast cancer settings. We haven’t seen that in many years,” she said....
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...
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,...
Although the role of radiotherapy in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for lymphoma is still evolving, radiotherapy “would be an ideal bridging therapy” for patients with chemorefractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, stated George Mikhaeel, MD, Professor of Radiation Oncology and...
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...
Kelvin Kar-Wing Chan, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist and Associate Scientist at Odette Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, commented that from the patient’s perspective, rising cancer costs can lead to financial hardship, whether material (ie, medical debts and bankruptcy) or psychological...
A new model works to determine which genetic mutations may respond best to treatment with immunotherapy. Richman et al published the data on the model’s development in Cell Systems, and the algorithm, antigen.garnish, is already available online as an open source technology to serve as a resource. ...
In an analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Evron et al found that patients with thyroid cancer who were declared disease-free after initial treatment were more likely to have increased numbers of physician visits and imaging tests if they reported a generalized preference for...
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...
The results of simple interventions involving community health workers suggest that improvements in value-based cancer care need not come from health-care professionals. According to data presented at the 2019 ASCO Quality Care Symposium,1 reliance upon community health workers trained to assess...
In 2018, the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor launched the Integrative Oncology Scholars Program, with the goal of teaching oncology health-care providers how to evaluate the scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of complementary therapies for patients with cancer. The...
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...
I read with great interest and appreciation the Law and Ethics in Oncology column, “Should You Become an Expert Witness in a Legal Proceeding? Here Are the Pros and Cons,” by Thaddeus Pope, JD, PhD (August 25, 2019, issue of The ASCO Post). I am an oncologist and have been an expert witness in a...
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...
ASCO’s Center for Research and Analytics (CENTRA) is now accepting research applications from ASCO members who wish to conduct member surveys for research purposes. All researchers who wish to conduct surveys of opted-in ASCO members must complete a Research Survey Pool application. The application ...
The ASCO eLearning Multidisciplinary Molecular Tumor Boards (MMTBs) offer participants an opportunity to learn from experts and from each other on a variety of tumor-based topics. MMTB formats alternate between slide-based and discussion forum-based layouts. The discussion-based MMTBs are an...
Nearly 20% of Americans receive their health insurance coverage through Medicaid. However, unlike Medicare and other payers, Medicaid is not federally required to cover routine care costs, such as physician visits and laboratory studies, for clinical trials. Only 12 states require this coverage,...
GUEST EDITORS Dr. Abutalib is Associate Director, Hematology and Cellular Therapy Program and Director, Clinical Apheresis Program Cancer Treatment at Centers of America, Zion, Illinois; Associate Professor, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science; and Founder and Co-Editor of...
Endometrial cancer remains the most common gynecologic malignancy affecting women in the United States. There are over 60,000 new cases diagnosed and more than 12,000 deaths annually. Traditional management includes surgical staging, with optimal disease cytoreduction as able, and adjuvant...
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 August 15, 2019, the oral TRK, ROS1, and ALK kinase...
In an interim analysis of a U.S. phase III trial (E1912) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine,1 Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, of Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues found that ibrutinib/rituximab improved progression-free and overall survival vs standard chemoimmunotherapy in ...
A recent analysis published by Yadav et al in Cancer reviewed how the treatment of male breast cancer has evolved over the years 2004 to 2014. In addition, certain patient-, tumor-, and treatment-related factors were found to be linked with better survival. Male breast cancer comprises 1% of all...
A study published by Freeman et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that generally, providers with more experience treating multiple myeloma have better outcomes than those with more limited experience. Providers who saw the most cases were more likely to be...
In a Norwegian study published by Lergenmuller et al in JAMA Dermatology, researchers found evidence of a dose-response association between lifetime indoor tanning and risk of development of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma in women. The association was the same regardless of duration of use and...
In a Children’s Oncology Group study (COG ARET0332) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chévez-Barrios et al found discrepancies between central and institutional identification of high-risk features of enucleated unilateral retinoblastoma, and that use of adjuvant chemotherapy based 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...
In the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial—reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019 (Abstract LBA3) and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine—Robert L. Coleman, MD, and colleagues found that the use of the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor ...
Selpercatinib (LOXO-292), a RET kinase inhibitor, demonstrated antitumor activity in the lungs and brain and durable responses with acceptable tolerability in patients with RET fusion–positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to an updated analysis of the LIBRETTO-001 registration...
Formal discussant Myung-Ju Ahn, MD, of Samsung Medical Center Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea, said that the CASPIAN results were similar to those of IMpower133, which found that the addition of the immune checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to etoposide/carboplatin significantly...
In late August, experts from around the globe convened in Basel, Switzerland, at the 2019 Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference (APCCC) to discuss controversial areas related to the management of advanced prostate cancer. Although the full proceedings of the conference will be published in...
Fit elderly patients aged 70 years and older with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma were able to undergo rigorous treatment that provided benefit similar to that observed in younger patients. However, elderly patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma classified by geriatric assessment ...
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...
New data have shown a trend toward clinically meaningful improvements in survival and response rates and a favorable safety profile with first-line immunotherapy compared to current standard treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The data, reported by Yau et al at the European...
Men with prostate cancer may be spared radiotherapy after surgery, according to late-breaking results of the RADICALS-RT trial presented by Parker et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019 (Abstract LBA49_PR). The study answers a long-standing question about whether...
In a study presented in a brief report in JAMA Oncology, Pinato et al 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 routine clinical practice. As...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerted health-care professionals and patients of a voluntary recall of 14 lots of prescription ranitidine capsules distributed by Sandoz Inc, used to decrease the amount of acid created by the stomach. This recall is due to a nitrosamine...
Earlier this week, Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Ned Sharpless, MD, testified before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on the FDA’s planned regulation of electronic nicotine delivery systems and investigation of vaping illnesses. His remarks are...
White men older than age 65 will have the greatest burden of oropharyngeal cancer by the year 2030, according to Maura L. Gillison, MD, PhD, Professor and Endowed Chair at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But there is some good news, she said at the 2019 Winship Cancer Institute of Emory...
Hyperglycemia may induce DNA damage and inhibit DNA repair, which may explain why individuals with diabetes may have an increased risk for developing cancer, according to a researcher from City of Hope, Duarte, California, who presented these findings at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall...
ASCO has announced the three recipients of its CancerLinQ Discovery® Research Support Grant. The awardees will undertake research projects using data from CancerLinQ Discovery®, an offering of ASCO’s CancerLinQ® initiative that provides deidentified data from patients to academic researchers,...
ASCO’s global vision is, “A world where cancer is prevented or cured, and every survivor is healthy.” In its work toward achieving this vision, the Society offers a robust portfolio of programs that are continually expanding around the world that improve access to quality cancer care, support...