December Sixth AACR International Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically UnderservedDecember 6-9 • Atlanta, GeorgiaFor more information: www.aacr.org 55th ASH Annual MeetingDecember 7-10 • New Orleans, LouisianaFor more information:...
The adjuvant use of bisphosphonates in breast cancer continues to yield seemingly contradictory data despite a sound biologic basis and smaller pilot studies suggesting that dampening bone turnover with bisphosphonates can lessen the bone reservoir of micrometastases.1,2 Early adjuvant trials with...
In their retrospective analysis of German High-Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Study Group trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Held and colleagues assessed the effects of rituximab (Rituxan) and radiotherapy in patients with aggressive B-cell...
In a retrospective analysis of German High-Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Study Group trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gerhard Held, MD, of Saarland University Medical School in Homburg, and colleagues assessed the impact of rituximab (Rituxan) and radiotherapy on outcome in...
Progress in the treatment of gastric cancer has lagged behind advances in other solid tumor malignancies. A modest but clear survival benefit with the use of adjuvant therapy combined with surgery has been achieved, including the use of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy as shown in large-scale...
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)– and VEGF receptor-2 (VEGFR-2)–mediated signaling and angiogenesis seem to have an important role in the pathogenesis of gastric cancer. In the phase III REGARD trial reported in Lancet, Charles S. Fuchs, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston,...
From 12% to 15% of the approximately 45,000 patients diagnosed with pancreas adenocarcinoma undergo a potentially curative resection each year in North America, translating into roughly 5,000 to 7,000 patients who are candidates for adjuvant therapy. About 80% of these patients will relapse and...
In one study presented at ASCO’s second annual Quality Care Symposium in San Diego, patients receiving chemotherapy with palliative care intent were at high risk of side-effect–related hospitalization, which defeats the clinical purpose and adds preventable costs to health care.1 “There is an...
Excitement continues to build in the metastatic melanoma arena, as novel agents keep upping the ante for efficacy. The following news from the 2013 European Cancer Congress has added to the buzz. New MEK Inhibitor In the phase IB BRIM7 study, cobimetinib, a novel MEK inhibitor, when combined with...
Ibrutinib (Imbruvica) for mantle cell lymphoma Obinutuzumab (Gazyva) for chronic lymphocytic leukemia Pertuzumab (Perjeta) for breast cancer Paclitaxel protein-bound particles (Abraxane) for pancreatic adenocarcinoma Afatinib (Gilotrif) for non-small cell lung cancer, with Therascreen EGFR...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ibrutinib (Imbruvica) to treat patients with mantle cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma representing about 6% of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases in the United States. By the time mantle cell lymphoma is diagnosed, it...
Formal discussant of the AP26113 trial at the European Cancer Congress, Frances A. Shepherd, MD, FRCPC, Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Canada, explained that ALK...
Identifying ALK rearrangements as a cancer target in patients with lung cancer led to the development and FDA approval of crizotinib (Xalkori) to treat ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Several second-generation ALK inhibitors are in development, and these agents appear to work in...
Relapsed and refractory transplant-eligible Hodgkin lymphoma patients who achieve complete responses after treatment with brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) can often avoid more toxic salvage chemotherapy, according to investigators from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York....
Dr. Mason states that I implied that Dr. Telli supports the routine application of chemosensitivity assays. I have no knowledge regarding Dr. Telli’s views on this subject, nor did I in any way attempt to represent her views, much less imply that she was supportive of anything relating to...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted regular approval for crizotinib (Xalkori) for the treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive as detected by an FDA-approved test. The approval was based...
As reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology by Glenwood D. Goss, MD, of the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Center, and colleagues, the prematurely closed NCIC CTG BR19 study showed no apparent survival benefit of adjuvant gefitinib (Iressa, withdrawn from U.S. market) vs placebo in patients with completely ...
The use of high-dose chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic blood or marrow transplantation for high-risk aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma has been extensively evaluated over the past few decades. This treatment was originally used only for patients with relapsed aggressive lymphoma. However, as...
Autologous bone marrow or stem cell transplantation has had an important role in the treatment of aggressive lymphoma for several decades. The important results of the PARMA study1 demonstrated that patients in first relapse who remained chemosensitive had improved progression-free and overall...
The strategy of autologous stem-cell transplantation as consolidation in high-intermediate– or high-risk diffuse aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) has not been specifically examined in the rituximab (Rituxan) era. In the phase III Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG)-led intergroup 9704 trial...
As described in the December 15 issue of The ASCO Post, Stiff and colleagues treated patients with high-intermediate– or high-risk diffuse, aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma with five cycles of CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) or CHOP plus rituximab (Rituxan)....
With the headline, “Rare Cancer Treatments, Cleared by F.D.A. but Not Subject to Scrutiny,” a recent article in The New York Times reported that several medical centers were treating patients with cancer using a hyperthermia system that had received a Humanitarian Use Device approval from the U.S....
In 2012, ASCO issued a provisional clinical opinion addressing the integration of palliative care services into standard oncology practice at the time a patient is diagnosed with metastatic or advanced cancer and for patients with uncontrolled symptoms.1 However, despite ASCO’s provisional clinical ...
At a recent meeting in Washington, DC, Friends of Cancer Research and the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution officially announced activation of the Lung Cancer Master Protocol, a new research strategy that has the potential to hurdle or bypass known clinical trial...
Despite optimal surgical resection and adjuvant chemotherapy with cisplatin-based doublets, the 5-year overall survival for patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains suboptimal. In the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) staging project, the...
This issue of The ASCO Post launches a Clinical Trials Resource Guide to increase awareness of NCI-funded phase I, II, and III clinical studies for your patients with advanced cancer. All of the studies are listed on the National Institutes of Health website at ClinicalTrials.gov. The clinical...
Numerous randomized trials have demonstrated that whole-breast irradiation plays an important role after breast-conserving surgery for invasive breast cancer. A recent meta-analysis of these trials indicated that whole-breast irradiation decreased the risk of total breast cancer relapse events and...
In the randomized noninferiority TARGIT-A trial reported in The Lancet, Jayant S. Vaidya, PhD, FRCS, and Michael Baum, MD, FRCS, of University College London, and colleagues compared risk-adapted radiotherapy using single-dose targeted intraoperative radiotherapy vs fractionated external-beam...
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column offering insight into the FDA and its policies and procedures. This installment addresses a changing paradigm in the treatment of lung cancer, exemplified by concurrent approval of a companion diagnostic with each of several new targeted agents or new...
The annual meeting of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG, www.siog.org) was held in Copenhagen from October 24 to 26. The theme of the meeting was the “Multidisciplinary Approach Towards Personalized Treatments.” The Society, which was founded in 2000, is a multidisciplinary...
Adjuvant use of bisphosphonates reduced the risk of bone recurrence by 34% and the risk of breast cancer death by 17% in postmenopausal women with early breast cancer in a large meta-analysis conducted by the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG). The potentially...
More than 18% of all lung cancers detected by low-dose computed tomography in the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) may be clinically insignificant. Overdiagnosis should be considered when describing the risks of [low-dose computed tomography] screening for lung cancer, according to a review of...
As published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Batchelor and colleagues1 and reviewed in a recent issue of The ASCO Post (November 15, 2013, page 106), the REGAL trial was a randomized, phase III, placebo-controlled, partially blinded trial evaluating the efficacy of cediranib, an...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for dabrafenib (Tafinlar) for the treatment of patients with metastatic BRAF V600E mutation–positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have received at least one prior line of platinum-containing...
Although many oncologists consider matched sibling donors as the best source of grafts for hematopoietic cell transplantation, two separate studies presented at the recent American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting support the use of alternative donor grafts for patients with lymphoma and acute...
More than 1,000 scientists from 66 countries, including 32 of the 52 African countries, attended the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) 9th International Conference on Cancer in Africa, held this past November in Durban, South Africa. The theme of the 2013 meeting was ...
Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, Chair of the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Guideline Panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and former Chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, commented on the study by Yamshon et al for The ASCO Post. He said the...
A correlative analysis of a study evaluating lenalidomide (Revlimid) plus rituximab (Rituxan) in patients with indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma found that increases in the levels of several cytokines correlated with response to treatment. The study by investigators from the University of California...
About one-third of the most important clinical advances in cancer last year were made possible at least in part through federal funding, according to ASCO’s annual report on progress in cancer, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 Significant Declines in Funding The report, “Clinical...
Reduced-intensity conditioning and myeloablative-conditioning regimens following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation in children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) resulted in comparable survival, according to a study published in Blood. The study evaluated 181 patients, 39 treated with...
Kava Scientific Name: Piper methysticum Common Names: Kava-kava, kawa, kavain, rauschpfeffer, intoxicating long pepper, tonga, yagona, and yaqona. Overview Kava, a perennial shrub indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Rim, is known for its relaxant effects and used for social and...
Study Type: Non-Randomized Phase I/Interventional Study Title: Multicenter Phase I Study of Th1/Tc1 Immunotherapy Following Autologous Hematopoietic Progenitor Cell Transplantation in High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Study Sponsor and Collaborators: National Cancer Institute; Hackensack University...
With the advent of Breakthrough Therapy designation, there are now four FDA programs to expedite the development of promising new agents: Fast Track, Breakthrough Therapy, Priority Review, and Accelerated Approval (Table 1). These programs complement one another and serve a common goal: to speed...
The Radiation Oncology Institute (ROI) has named Christopher G. Slatore, MD, recipient of a $200,000 award, distributed over 2 years, for a project to examine the comparative value of radiation therapy and patient outcomes among patients with lung cancer. Dr. Slatore is Assistant Professor in the...
Ibrutininb appears to be the most promising drug we have seen in Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia and will likely significantly change the therapeutic landscape,” according to Bruce Cheson, MD, Deputy Chief, Hematology-Oncology and Head of Hematology Research at Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center in...
The Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) is changing the landscape of treatment in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. New research with the drug in lymphoma, presented at the 2013 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, indicates it may be of benefit in...
Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, Chair of the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Guideline Panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and former Chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, put the latest maintenance trials into perspective for The ASCO Post....
PI3K-mediated activation of downstream effectors allows tumors to escape from negative growth control, and this action may be checked with PI3K inhibitors. At the 2013 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, researchers reported results in patients with relapsed or refractory lymphoma...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the New Drug Application (NDA) for idelalisib, a targeted, oral inhibitor of PI3K-delta, for the treatment of refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The FDA has granted a standard review for the NDA, with a target review date of...
The combination of nintedanib and docetaxel “is an effective second-line option” for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have received previous treatment with one line of platinum-based therapy, according to results from the phase III LUME-Lung 1 study published in The...