On February 15, updated results were made available from the phase III JAVELIN Lung 200 trial comparing avelumab (Bavencio) to docetaxel in patients with unresectable, recurrent, or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease progressed after treatment with a...
At the heart of every ASCO program—every clinical practice guideline, every policy statement, every scientific meeting—is evidence. What do the data say? Evidence informs decision-making across the spectrum of cancer care, from the question a bench researcher will investigate to the treatment a...
Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah has been awarded a $2.4 million 2-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to help continue its research in breast cancer. Alana Welm, PhD, and Bryan Welm, PhD, investigators at Huntsman Cancer Institute, along with Michael Lewis, PhD, a...
When Yelak Biru was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1995, he and his physicians had one main posttreatment goal: to detect and treat any relapse early and to prolong survival as long as possible with the limited drugs available. Then, in the early 2000s, came newer treatments. Myeloma survival...
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) has announced a “Convergence 2.0” research initiative that awards $11 million to 7 multidisciplinary research teams to investigate immune system response to cancer. The multi-institutional teams were announced at SU2C’s Scientific Summit. Each team comprises experts in...
The BBVA Foundation awarded its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category to American immunologist James P. Allison, PhD, whose innovative research has almost single-handedly transformed cancer treatment. His seminal research in immunotherapy has paved the way for the development of ...
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood had an accuracy of up to 88% in detecting colorectal cancer and 84% in identifying adenomas, in a study from Taiwan presented at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium by Wen-Sy Tsai, MD, of Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taipei.1 “The study ...
In the December 10, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post, I authored an article in which I raised the possibility of curing follicular lymphoma without the dreaded chemotherapy. Clearly, no good deed goes unpunished: My good friend and The ASCO Post’s editor Jim Armitage, MD, challenged me to defend that...
ASCO has released its review of leading oncology pathway vendors in the United States. “Oncology Clinical Pathways: Charting the Landscape of Pathway Providers,” published in the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP), examines the clinical pathways offered by six commercial vendors using...
Immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors is the first of a new generation of immunotherapy treatments, revolutionizing treatment for many different types of cancer. By unleashing the body's immune system to attack cancer, these treatments can send even the most hard-to-treat cancers into...
Gateway for Cancer Research has renewed and expanded its support for the Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award Program. The organization will underwrite the Gateway for Cancer Research Young Investigator Award (YIA) for each of the next 3 years to enable promising physician-scientists...
CancerLinQ LLC and the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC), the professional society for genetic counselors, announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance. With the collaboration, NSGC leaders and members will provide expertise to CancerLinQ®, ASCO’s health information...
AS 2017 came to a close, ASCO offered the oncology community’s perspective to federal agencies—including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—in response to open comment periods before rules and plans for 2018 and 2019 programs and ...
AS REVIEWED in this issue of The ASCO Post, Patel and colleagues have presented data from the phase I JAVELIN study evaluating avelumab (Bavencio) in platinum-refractory patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma.1 The drug is active with durable responses when compared with historical...
A phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Traina et al showed activity of the androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) in triple-negative breast cancer expressing the androgen receptor (AR). Study Details The study involved 118 patients from 45 sites in seven...
IN INTERVIEWS with The ASCO Post and in discussions held during the meeting, several breast cancer experts weighed in on the findings of GeparSepto and CALGB 40502. Eric P. Winer, MD, FASCO, Chief of the Division of Women’s Cancers and the Thompson Senior Investigator in Breast Cancer Research at ...
TWO IMPORTANT STUDIES, both updates of earlier findings and presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, provided different findings as to the relative benefit of nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane), vs solvent-based paclitaxel in breast cancer. “The two studies...
ALTHOUGH PRECISION medicine may be a recent discovery in some fields, it is an old story in the field of breast cancer, and one that has been exceptionally important in terms of managing the disease, according to George Sledge, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine and Medical Oncologist at the...
DARATUMUMAB (DARZALEX) may be an effective treatment for systemic amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis, according to phase II studies reported at the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1,2 While the cohorts were small and the arms uncontrolled, the findings...
The ongoing phase III CheckMate-227 study met its coprimary endpoint of progression-free survival with a combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) vs chemotherapy in patients with first-line advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have a high (≥ 10...
IN PATIENTS undergoing treatment of multiple myeloma, the prophylactic use of levofloxacin significantly reduced febrile episodes and deaths, without increasing healthcare-associated infections or carriage of key nosocomial pathogens, in a large multicenter study from the United Kingdom.1 The...
Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer worldwide, with an estimated 456,000 new cases in 2012, and the sixth most common cause of death from cancer with an estimated 400,000 deaths, according to data from GLOBOCAN, which provides statistics on the incidence and mortality of cancer...
Patients with breast cancer may be at an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure, and may benefit from a treatment approach that weighs the benefits of specific therapies against potential damage to the heart, according to a new scientific statement from the American...
In a phase III clinical trial of patients with previously untreated metastatic renal cell cancer combining the immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq) with the targeted therapy bevacizumab (Avastin) delayed cancer growth by about 3 months longer than sunitinib, another targeted therapy. The benefit...
STEPHEN LEONG, MD, of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center, Aurora, discussed the RAINFALL findings at the symposium, commenting, “The study did meet its primary endpoint of progression-free survival; however, it was disappointing not to see a benefit in overall survival or...
BASED ON EFFICACY seen in the second-line setting for the treatment of metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, ramucirumab (Cyramza) was evaluated as first-line therapy in the international phase III RAINFALL trial. Although the study met its primary endpoint, with a 25%...
City of Hope recently announced the appointments of four new scientists to its research faculty. Jianjun Chen, PhD, joins the staff as Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Systems Biology. Before joining the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Dr. Chen had been serving as...
“For patients with early-stage breast cancer, we’ve seen a significant decline in chemotherapy use over the past few years without a real change in evidence,” or in national guidelines and recommendations, reported Allison W. Kurian, MD, MSc, lead author of a study on chemotherapy recommendations ...
What I thought after feeling a large, hard lump—similar to the feel of a granola bar—in my left breast was that I probably pulled a muscle while playing with my two young children, ages 7 and 5. Cancer never entered my mind until I asked my husband to feel the lump, and he immediately said, with...
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,...
Oncology drug labels, especially those that have been on the market for more than 15 years, may not always be up-to-date. Critical data about safety, efficacy, or prescribing information may be missing. Modernizing the labeling process can correct inaccurate information, add data for indications ...
Neil Johnson, PhD Richard Pomerantz, PhD Vasily Studitsky, PhD Italo Tempera, PhD Kuang-Yi Wen, PhD The Fox Chase Cancer Center is pleased to announce the first winners of its new privately funded pilot project grants. The program supports cutting-edge...
The text and photograph 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 photo below is from the volume titled “The Antiseptic Era: 1876–1900.” The photograph...
On May 23, 2017, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) solid tumors progressing following prior treatment and who have no...
The following essay by Shaker R. Dakhil, MD, FACP, is adapted, with permission, from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and...
This past September, Olivier Elemento, PhD, Associate Director of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine and Director of the Laboratory of Cancer Systems Biology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, was named Director of Weill Cornell’s Englander Institute for Precision Medicine. In this...
Now that we have entered 2018, let’s take a moment to reflect on how far we have come and what lies ahead in integrative oncology care. Overview To cope with the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of cancer, and in search of relief from symptoms that their conventional treatments have not...
Updated results from the ELIANA clinical trial of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), formerly CTL019, in relapsed or refractory pediatric and young adult patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have been published by Maude et al in The New England Journal of Medicine. New data include...
As part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) efforts to enhance transparency around its drug-approval decisions, the FDA is exploring new ways to build on its obligation to share information about product approvals, as announced by FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD. The FDA is...
Holly G. Prigerson, PhD, Co-Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Research on End-of-Life Care, was born in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, where her father had been a resident. Her family moved to Long Island, first living in Islip, where Dr. Prigerson’s father practiced medicine...
A type of cancer that occurs in the lower stomach has been increasing among some Americans under the age of 50, even though in the general population, the incidence of all stomach cancers has been declining for decades. These findings were published by Anderson et al in the Journal of the National...
A new and unique new way to treat cancer—chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy—is poised to transform the outlook for children and adults with certain otherwise incurable cancers. ASCO named this type of adoptive-cell immunotherapy the Advance of the Year in its annual...
Fox Chase Cancer Center and the Lewis Katz School of Medicine are pleased to announce the winners of its American Cancer Society (ACS) Institutional Research Grant Pilot Project Competition for Junior Investigators. The competition was open to eligible junior faculty at Fox Chase Cancer Center and ...
Mark A. Israel, MD, a pediatric oncologist, translational scientist, and a recognized leader in cancer research has been appointed National Executive Director of the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), a nonprofit organization dedicated solely to funding cancer research in Israel. Dr. Israel joins ...
ROBERT W. DAY, MD, the longest-serving President and Director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the leader who brought into being its campus overlooking Seattle’s South Lake Union, died in his Seattle home on January 6, 2018 of lung cancer. He was 87. “It is a tragic loss for all of...
FROM WILHELM RÖNTGEN’S groundbreaking discovery of x-rays in 1895, the history of radiotherapy has been rich with colorful paradigm-changing researchers and physicians who over the past century have transformed the field into one of the pillars of cancer treatment. One such trailblazer who...
Understanding what consciousness is, and why and how it evolved, is perhaps the greatest mystery known to science. With its 100 billion or so neurons and a processing rate of about 4 billion bits per second, the human brain is a miraculously complicated entity, much of which is still under...
THE COMMUNITY ONCOLOGY ALLIANCE (COA) is pleased to announce the election of new members to the Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Additionally, the COA Board has launched and nominated participants for a dedicated standing committee on Government Affairs and Policy as well as Payment...
This past December, nearly 400 medical professionals from a variety of fields—including medical oncology, palliative care, science, nursing, social work, and psychology—and 23 countries traveled to Atlanta, to attend the 2nd Global Adolescent & Young Adult (AYA) Cancer Congress. The 3-day...
The days leading up to our daughter Emily’s diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on May 28, 2010, when she was just 5, offered few clues about the terrifying, life-and-death months and years we were about to experience. She was happy and seemingly healthy, literally until the day before...