Intertriginous areas refer to skin folds (such as axillae, inguinal creases, and inframammary creases), which are characterized by increased friction, temperature, and occlusion. Intertriginous drug reactions are an underrecognized side effect associated with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin...
Despite promising new agents and therapeutic approaches, 5-year lung cancer survival rates have lagged far behind those of most other malignancies. To shed light on some of the important issues facing lung cancer experts, The ASCO Post recently spoke with internationally recognized lung cancer...
The information in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of children with cancer. The studies include pilot and phase I and II studies evaluating new therapies, functional imaging tests, tests to measure the neuropsychological and behavioral function in...
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected people diagnosed with cancer are two to four times more likely to go untreated for their cancer compared to uninfected cancer patients, according to a large retrospective study from researchers in Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and the National...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On July 3, 2014, belinostat (Beleodaq) was granted accelerated...
Despite evidence from a number of prospective, randomized controlled trials showing that screening mammography reduces breast cancer mortality, screening mammography has been the subject of continual debate, controversy, and conflicting guidelines. Recently, the Swiss Medical Board, tasked with...
In a New England Journal of Medicine “Perspective” article, Nikola Biller-Andorno, MD, PhD, of the University of Zurich and Harvard Medical School, and Peter Jüni, MD, of the University of Bern, provide the rationale for a recent report by the Swiss Medical Board advocating the phasing out of...
Patients with radioactive iodine–refractory locally advanced or metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer have a poor prognosis. In the double-blind phase III DECISION trial reported in The Lancet, Marcia S. Brose, MD, PhD, of Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues ...
More than 400 abstracts—a record—were submitted for the 27th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in Chicago. Here is a small sampling of those studies, with comments from the abstract authors. Token Economy to Improve Compliance BMT Bucks form the basis of a...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to belinostat (Beleodaq), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma, a rare and fast-growing type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). “This is the...
The investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor lenvatinib reduced disease progression by 79%, as compared to placebo, in patients with metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer that is refractory to radioactive iodine in the phase III SELECT trial. These findings were presented at the 2014 ASCO...
Melphalan, prednisone, and thalidomide (Thalomid), or MPT, was a widely accepted regimen in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma when the E1A06 trial was launched, noted Philip McCarthy, MD, Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York....
At the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, one phase III trial confirmed the promise of a novel agent in advanced multiple myeloma, while another cooperative group trial returned some rather surprising results in newly diagnosed myeloma patients. Panobinostat Doubles Response, Prolongs Remission The phase...
Session moderator Howard A. Fine, MD, the Anne Murnick Cogan and David H. Cogan Professor of Oncology and Director of the Brain Tumor Center at New York University Cancer Institute, shared his enthusiasm over the findings of the RTOG 9802 study. “I don’t know of any other tumor type where the...
Higher-dose carflizomib (Kyprolis) “provided a high overall response rate with a remarkable duration of response in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma” in a phase II study, Nikoletta Lendvai, MD, PhD, and colleagues from Memorial Sloan Kettering Center, New York, wrote in Blood....
Patients with poor performance status have an increased incidence of adverse effects from therapy and worse overall outcomes than those with good performance status, but “a selected proportion may still benefit from standard therapy,” according to a review article published in the Journal of the...
Cancer patients need more than good health care: they need health caring, according to palliative care specialist Harvey M. Chochinov, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba and Director of the Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit, CancerCare Manitoba. Health ...
The term “telemedicine,” which is sometimes used interchangeably with “telehealth” and “m-health” (for mobile health) and is now collectively called “connected health,” involves the use of information and communications technology to connect patients with their providers through a variety of...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
Advances in cancer treatment have led to increasing numbers of long-term survivors, bringing greater attention to the needs of this growing population. Female cancer patients often experience difficult adjustments related to sexual health and intimacy. To better understand the complexity of this...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On July 23, 2014, idelalisib (Zydelig) was approved for use in...
Elevated circulating tumor cells are associated with poor prognosis in metastatic breast cancer. In a phase III trial (Southwest Oncology Group [SWOG] S0500) reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jeffrey B. Smerage, MD, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor in Medical Oncology at the University of...
In the 50 years since the American Society of Clinical Oncology was founded, the treatment of cancer has advanced dramatically, due to the work of researchers making important scientific breakthroughs, physicians responsible for delivering those advances to patients, and countless others who...
The most recent ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline update—summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post—represents the latest chapter in the ongoing evolution of adjuvant endocrine therapy for hormone-sensitive breast cancer.1 Rather than including a comprehensive review of the 2010 guidelines, this...
A large DNA analysis of people with and without pancreatic cancer has identified several new genetic markers that signal increased risk of developing the disease, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and other institutions worldwide. The markers are variations in the inherited DNA...
The androgen receptor axis is a validated target for the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer. Several perturbations in this pathway are postulated to lead to androgen-independent growth, including androgen receptor mutation and amplification as well as the autocrine production of...
In her discussion of the renal cell carcinoma studies at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Lauren C. Harshman, MD, Assistant Professor of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, suggested, “Given the plateau in efficacy with current treatments, there is space and need for agents with new...
Renal cell carcinoma can be added to the growing list of tumors that respond to programmed death (PD)-1 immune checkpoint inhibitors, according to the results of the CheckMate trials, presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting. The phase II CheckMate-010 trial evaluated three doses of nivolumab as a ...
Many concerns were raised and dire speculations predicted during the further implementation of the Affordable Care Act this year. So far, the trickling news is good: An estimated total of 20 million people gained coverage under the new law as of May 1,1 about 6 million enrolled in the law’s...
Recent approvals announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have led to increased treatment options for managing several difficult-to-treat hematologic B-cell cancers. The newly approved drugs and/or their indications include the oral PI3K delta inhibitor idelalisib (Zydelig) for the...
On December 11, 1969, a soft-spoken pathologist wearing outsized spectacles answered a long and complex series of questions by the legal team representing Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, the maker of Chesterfield cigarettes. The tobacco lawyers contended that one Leslie Thayer—a lifelong...
Progression to castration-resistant prostate cancer after androgen ablation therapy is primarily due to deregulated androgen receptor signaling. Treatment with agents that target such signaling, such as abiraterone (Zytiga) and enzalutamide (Xtandi), has been successful. However, durable response...
For women with stage I and II breast cancer without BRCA mutations, the absolute 20-year survival benefit from contralateral prophylactic mastectomy was less than 1%, regardless of age, estrogen receptor status, and cancer stage, according to a decision analysis study using a Markov model to...
Significant weight loss, cachexia, and being bedbound signal that a cancer patient is dying. However, identifying the specific signs that give physicians the ability to predict death is not well described in the literature. To better understand why predicting death is an important part of the care...
In the first phase III trial assessing the combination of an insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF-1R) inhibitor with chemotherapy as first-line treatment for advanced nonadenocarcinoma non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the addition of the fully human immunoglobulin G2 monoclonal antibody...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On August 8, 2014, the approved use of bortezomib (Velcade) in...
With the emergence of molecular diagnostics and new therapeutics, the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is entering a new era. Hugo F. Fernandez, MD, Associate Chief of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, spoke with The ASCO Post about how he...
The use of cutting-edge technology and bioinformatics to inform clinical decision-making in oncology is still a ways off, according to Mark Pegram, MD, the Susy Yuan-Huey Hung Professor of Oncology and Director of the Stanford Breast Oncology Program, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. At...
Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is safe and effective in early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as it confers local control in 90% or more patients with T1 disease, according to Roy Decker, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale Cancer...
Use of a preventive surgical site infection bundle that spanned the phases or perioperative care “was associated with a substantial reduction in [surgical site infections] after colorectal surgery,” according to results of a retrospective study of 559 patients who underwent major elective...
Cancer seems to have an endless supply of people who want to write about it. Why not? It’s an intriguing subject of life and death and struggle and hope, one that touches virtually every person of a certain age. However, the bookshelves are filled with cancer survivorship books, so to stand out, an ...
We read the letter to the editor in the July 24, 2014, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “A Randomized Trial of Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Radical Cystectomy,” with great interest.1 Provocative Results In the letter, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Bochner and...
Postoperative radiation therapy, given after adjuvant chemotherapy, significantly increased overall survival in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared to chemotherapy alone, according to a study reported at ASCO’s 2014 Annual Meeting.1 That study, an analysis of records in the National Cancer...
The 13-year follow-up of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC), reported by Fritz H. Schröder, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Urology at Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues in The Lancet, showed that prostate-specific...
Last month, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) released its 2014 Cancer Progress Report: Transforming Lives Through Research, which highlights the quickening pace of drug development and approval, especially in molecularly targeted agents, that are leading to increased numbers of...
Several faculty members at Roswell Park Cancer Institute have been awarded nearly $5 million in grant funding from public and private organizations to further their efforts to find new and better ways to detect and treat cancer and improve patients’ quality of life. The 13 awards, including two for ...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
Primary androgen-deprivation therapy has been widely used in localized prostate cancer, despite the absence of definitive evidence of benefit in early-stage disease. In a large population-based cohort study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, Grace L. Lu-Yao, MPH, PhD, of Rutgers Cancer Institute...
Researchers in Germany report that nearly a third of more than 2,100 patients with cancer interviewed at inpatient and outpatient care centers experienced a clinically meaningful level of mental or emotional distress that meets the strict diagnostic criteria for mental disorders including anxiety...
A new report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization, urges health authorities of countries with high stomach cancer burden to include stomach cancer in their national cancer control programs and allocate more resources to control the...