The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO is committed to supporting the research and career development of young researchers through its Grants & Awards Program. In October 2017, Conquer Cancer hosted its third Scientific and Career Development Retreat at ASCO Headquarters in Alexandria,...
On November 9, 2017, dasatinib (Sprycel) was granted regular approval for treatment of pediatric patients with Philadelphia chromosome–positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in chronic phase.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings among 97 pediatric patients with chronic-phase...
The roadside along the path to curing follicular lymphoma is riddled with the debris of failed cytotoxic regimens. For decades, clinical trials unsuccessfully pitted various chemotherapy combinations against each other. It took but a single, noncytotoxic molecule, rituximab (Rituxan), to forever...
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 November 6, 2017, vemurafenib (Zelboraf) was granted...
The inaugural Mary Pazdur Award for Excellence in Advanced Practice in Oncology was announced at the 2017 JADPRO Live at APSHO (Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology) conference. Jack Gentile, Chairman of Harborside, which sponsors the JADPRO Live at APSHO conference (and...
Future oncology drug development and approvals will be faster and more efficient as well as take the patient experience more into account, said Richard Pazdur, MD, Director of the Oncology Center of Excellence at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Center was established as part of...
The Tisch Cancer Institute and the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai Health System are part of a $215 million public-private Cancer Moonshot research collaboration launched by the National Institutes of Health and 11 leading pharmaceutical companies. The 5-year initiative, called...
Obesity has been established as a strong risk factor for the development of cancer. African Americans and Hispanics are particularly at risk, and their access to health care is often poor. How do racial and ethnic disparities in the development of obesity as well as access to care intersect to...
Cancer may be a disease of aging, but data suggest that older patients with cancer are undertreated, especially with respect to chemotherapy. One analysis showed that approximately 40% of patients in their 70s—and 60% of patients in their 80s—do not receive adjuvant therapy after surgery for colon...
Updated in 2016, the ASCO clinical practice guideline on the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care provides evidence-based recommendations to oncology clinicians, patients, family and friend caregivers, and palliative care specialists about providing high-quality care for...
In patients with hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer, the combination of targeted agents and hormone therapy is associated with a significantly increased risk of severe adverse events, according to research presented by Matteo Lambertini, MD, European Society for Medical Oncology...
As low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer has moved from clinical trials to clinical practice, management issues are growing more urgent for screening centers around the country: for instance, how to support referrals from and to other providers; how to ensure the quality of...
Formal discussant of this trial, Michael Boyer, MBBS, PhD, a medical oncologist at Sydney Cancer Centre, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, Australia, was enthusiastic about these results, with the caveat that overall survival data are needed. “Unresectable stage III non–small cell lung...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) presented the 2017 awards for outstanding service and public service on December 10 during the 59th Annual Meeting and Exposition in Atlanta. Tom Brokaw is the 2017 recipient of the ASH Outstanding Service Award, presented annually to an individual who has ...
With the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of two chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell products, this novel approach seems to be moving into the mainstream. The approvals were tisagenlecleucel (also known as CTL019; Kymriah) for the treatment of pediatric B-cell acute...
This year has been an important transitional period for oncology providers to start collecting their performance data to meet the requirements of the Quality Payment Program outlined in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). The Quality Payment Program is a...
Increasing the dose intensity of chemotherapy—by either shortening the intervals between the cycles or by sequential administration instead of concurrent administration of the drugs—reduced the risk of early-stage breast cancer recurrence and death compared with standard chemotherapy...
On November 30, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the FoundationOne CDx (F1CDx), the first breakthrough-designated, next-generation sequencing–based in vitro diagnostic test that can detect genetic mutations in 324 genes and 2 genomic signatures in any solid tumor type. The ...
When choosing their preferred treatment, patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) place the highest value on treatments that deliver the longest progression-free survival, but they are willing to swap some drug efficacy for a reduced risk of serious adverse events, according to a study...
A study by Blackburn et al investigating the risks of aging-related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes among thyroid cancer survivors has found that although younger and older survivors had an increased risk for these diseases, those younger than age 40 had a higher risk for hypertension,...
Donald Coffey, PhD, a distinguished Johns Hopkins Professor and prostate cancer expert, who was the former Director of the Brady Urological Research Laboratory and Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, died on November 9, 2017, at the age of 85. In his more than 50 years at...
The following essay by Robert J. Green, MD, 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...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor James R. Downing, MD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with the 2017 E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize for his discoveries related to the hematopathology and molecular biology of childhood leukemia. This lectureship and prize is named...
Cancer memoirs come in a variety of literary styles and voices. Not surprisingly, the most poignant cancer memoirs are by those who are writing, in essence, their final words before departing this earth. The most widely read of that variety has been the beautifully written best seller When Breath...
ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2017, nivolumab (Opdivo) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients previously treated with sorafenib (Nexavar).1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data APPROVAL WAS based on findings in a 154-patient subgroup of the CheckMate 040 trial consisting...
“WE’VE GOT A CHALLENGING TIME right now, trying to relieve pain during the time of an opioid epidemic,” Judith A. Paice, RN, PhD, acknowledged at the 2017 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago.1 She cited a recent study reporting that up to 40% of cancer survivors are living with pain, and...
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEMATOLOGY (ASH) will honor Luigi Naldini, MD, PhD, of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan, and Marina Cavazzana, MD, PhD, of Paris Descartes University, Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, and Imagine Institute of Genetic Diseases, AP-HP, Inserm in...
Timothy Gilligan, MD, FASCO, Co-Chair of ASCO’s Expert Panel on Patient-Physician Communications Guideline and Vice-Chair for Education and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, spends half of his professional time treating patients with urologic...
In September 2017, ASCO published a new guideline in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that outlines best practices for communicating effectively with patients and their family members.1 The guideline is the result of recommendations from a multidisciplinary panel of experts in a number of fields,...
Although it has long been known that certain cancer types disproportionately affect individuals from underserved and underrepresented populations, the sources of these disparities are still not entirely clear. In a “Facebook Live” session at the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)...
Individuals and organizations looking to contribute to advancements in metastatic breast cancer research can now do so by participating in Susan G. Komen’s inaugural crowdfunding initiative. Through this initiative, donors have the opportunity to contribute directly to the pioneering work of four...
A deeper understanding of biology has allowed significant advances in the treatment of breast cancer. In the early-stage setting, standard pathology measures can help identify which subset of patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancers are more likely to experience benefit from...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Losk and colleagues from Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center report their institution’s implementation of a protocol of surgeon-initiated genomic profiling of estrogen receptor–positive tumors in women with early breast cancer that resulted in ...
AT THE 2017 ASCO ANNUAL MEETING, the leaders of the newly formed Value in Cancer Care Consortium (vi3c; vi3c.org) met to discuss the group’s plan to study how to improve the affordability of cancer drugs and make them more accessible to patients. The goal of the Value in Cancer Care Consortium is...
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Medical School in Ann Arbor recently received a $1,167,943 5-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to launch the Integrative Oncology Scholars Program. The goal of the program is to teach oncology health-care providers how to evaluate the scientific evidence of...
A new study has shed light on how palliative care interventions may improve patient outcomes. According to data presented at the 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium,1 patients with incurable cancer who received early integrated palliative care had an increased use of active...
For 50 years, clinicians in the United States have had a legal duty to disclose to patients with cancer the risks, benefits, and alternatives to a proposed cancer treatment. Until recently, however, it has been unclear whether clinicians have a similar duty to discuss the costs of that treatment....
NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) researchers have found that for the most common high-risk type of human papillomavirus (HPV) to cause cervical cancer, an important viral gene may need to have a precise DNA sequence. The findings, published by Mirabello et al in Cell,1 contribute to a better...
Nicaragua, situated between Costa Rica and Honduras, is the poorest country in Central America. Following the U.S. occupation in 1912, the Somoza family began a brutal political dynasty that would end in 1979 during the bloody Nicaraguan Revolution. Marcela G. del Carmen, MD, MPH, Chief Medical...
Addressing the need to integrate palliative and supportive care practices into medical specialties to ensure optimal patient-centered care across the cancer continuum and the evidence-based remedies to accomplish that goal were the focus of the nearly 300 study abstracts presented at the 2017...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Sheila N. Garland, PhD, R Psych, and Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, present...
On September 22, 2017, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of recurrent locally advanced or metastatic, gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with tumors expressing programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1), as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug...
It had been an uneventful Sunday morning, and I was writing my final note for the day, hopeful to make a stealth exit and perhaps join my family at church. But as I closed the chart and looked up, I saw Ruthie, my oncology fellow, approaching with a grim expression. “I just left the room of a...
MOFFITT CANCER CENTER recently announced that Andriy Marusyk, PhD, was awarded a $450,000 research grant from Susan G. Komen. Dr. Marusyk is receiving 1 of 37 research grants looking into novel treatments for aggressive types of breast cancer. This year, Susan G. Komen is focusing on new...
Oncologists are apt to give patients the worst news of their lives: You have cancer. Yet studies show that, by and large, despite the stressful aspects of treating people with a life-threatening disease, oncologists report one of the highest percentages of professional satisfaction among medical...
Bloodless stem cell transplantation, performed without the transfusion of allogeneic blood or blood products, has numerous clinical advantages, especially among populations of patients who prefer, for religious or other reasons, no blood methods of medical and surgical treatment. Patricia A. Ford, ...
THE INFORMATION contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies focused on geriatric oncology. These studies highlight psychological interventions, managing cancer symptoms, the surgical process, fall prevention, and making treatment decisions; as well ...
ON OCTOBER 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), a cell-based gene therapy, to treat adult patients with certain types of large B-cell lymphoma who have not responded to or who have relapsed after at least two other kinds of treatment....
The Formal discussant of this presentation, Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, said, “Tailoring treatment to biology results in incremental improvements in outcome.” She continued: “This analysis gives us excellent data on the natural history of mostly hormone...
CLINICIANS ARE now well acquainted with BRAF mutations in advanced melanoma, but there is more to genomics in this disease than identifying BRAF and prescribing a BRAF inhibitor. At the 2017 Debates and Didactics Conference, held at Sea Island, Georgia, Melinda L. Yushak, MD, MPH, of Emory...