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Showing 4801 - 4850Expert Point of View: Novel Agents Improve Survival in Patients with Metastatic Melanoma
Discussing the melanoma studies at the Plenary Session, Kim Margolin, MD, of the University of Washington Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, noted that while the new therapies are welcomed, they are not without their challenges. “Ipilimumab now shows a survival benefit in...
Novel Agents Improve Survival in Patients with Metastatic Melanoma
Novel treatments for metastatic melanoma dominated the buzz at the 2011 ASCO Annual Meeting and across the major news outlets, with reports that two agents with entirely different mechanisms of action could extend survival. The studies’ inclusion in the ASCO Plenary Session attested to the...
Stalked by Cancer: One Woman’s Story
Cancer has been stalking me all my life. My mother’s mother had died of breast cancer at a relatively young age. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1960s, when she was 35 and I was just 5 years old. Although she was told that she probably wouldn’t live more than 2 years, she...
Is Subspecialization an Option or a Necessity in Community Practices?
Should oncologists in community practices subspecialize? What would that mean for them and for their patients? These are some of the issues tackled in a Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP) Strategies for Career Success article entitled “Subspecialization in Community Oncology: Option or Necessity?”...
Stephen Cannistra, MD, Takes Over as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Clinical Oncology
Since 1989, Stephen Cannistra, MD, has been working to make the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) the most credible, authoritative resource for disseminating significant clinical oncology research while acting as a reviewer, Consultant Editor, Associate Editor, Editorial Board Member, and as of...
ASCO University® Launches New Programs
A couple of convenient new educational opportunities are now available on the ASCO University® website (http://university.asco.org). Cardiac Comorbidity Boards ASCO University® is now offering a pilot series that focuses on cardiovascular disease and cancer treatment–related toxicities. Each module ...
NCI Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Awards: Conversations in Gynecologic Oncology
The National Cancer Institute recognized Cheryl Saenz, MD, and Linda R. Duska, MD, among others, late last year with a Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award. The 2-year award includes $50,000 in funding for cancer research programs at NCI-designated cancer centers. The ASCO Post...
Breast Cancer Studies Focus on Tailoring Therapy for Patient Subsets
As part of our ongoing coverage of the 2011 ASCO Annual Meeting, The ASCO Post has provided substantive reports on key breast cancer trials, but others deserve attention. Lapatinib/Capecitabine Controls Brain Metastases Results of the French phase II LANDSCAPE trial found lapatinib (Tykerb) plus...
Conflicts of Interest in Health-care Reform?
Last year’s health-care reform legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was designed to incrementally roll out major new bureaucratic entities, oversight, and mandates for the practice of medicine between its enactment and 2013, after the next presidential election. A new...
Exemestane Prevents Invasive and Preinvasive Breast Cancers in MAP.3 Trial
The aromatase inhibitor exemestane, taken for 5 years, significantly reduced invasive and preinvasive breast cancers in postmenopausal women at increased risk for the disease, in the large Canadian NCIC CTG MAP.3 randomized trial. Results of the trial were presented at the recent ASCO Annual...
Despite Advances, Little Overall Improvement Seen in Treatment of Older Adults with AML
The outcome of treatment of older adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains unsatisfactory, although certainly not a totally futile exercise. Patients satisfying the entry criteria for cooperative group clinical trials can be expected to have complete remission rates of 50% to 55%, with...
SIDEBAR: First International Conference on Integrative Care
Last March, nearly 250 oncology professionals and representatives of patient organizations, insurance companies, and government agencies from 12 countries attended the First International Conference on Integrative Care for the Future held in Amsterdam. Barrie R. Cassileth, PhD, chaired the event....
A Conversation with Barrie R. Cassileth, PhD
Barrie R. Cassileth, PhD, Chief, Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, recently spoke with The ASCO Post about her quest to stamp out the illegitimate use of alternative medicine in cancer care and the results from her latest research. A...
ASCO’s Oncology Slide Library Functions as a Share‑and‑Exchange Forum
ASCO’s Oncology Slide Library—which allows ASCO meeting attendees to upload and share their ASCO meeting presentation slides with slide-library subscribers—may only be a year old, but participation is already very high. This year’s Annual Meeting in June marked the first time ASCO gave each speaker ...
Intermittent or Continuous Androgen Suppression Produces Comparable Survival after Radical Therapy in Prostate Cancer
Men with prostate cancer who receive intermittent courses of androgen-suppressing therapy can live as long as those who are treated with continuous therapy, according to results of a recently concluded study. Until now, standard treatment has consisted of continuous therapy, but this is expected to ...
Bevacizumab Makes Inroads against Ovarian Cancer
Bevacizumab (Avastin) administered with chemotherapy and continued after chemotherapy improves outcomes in ovarian cancer, according to two multicenter, randomized, double-blind phase III investigations presented at the 2011 ASCO Annual Meeting. The first study, ICON7, incorporated bevacizumab as...
Expert Point of View: Patients with Early Breast Cancer Benefit from Regional Nodal Irradiation
Thomas Buchholz, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, commented that the “well conducted and analyzed” MA.20 study addressed a “simple clinically relevant question,” and the findings “add to the conclusive evidence that radiation eradication of local-regional...
Acting on Fear
When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1979 there was no global movement to raise awareness of the disease, there were no pink ribbon pins to show support, and there was no Internet with which to search for information. My doctor gave me the news on a Friday night, and the following...
A Clinician Weighs In on the National Lung Screening Trial
The results of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) will have important implications for practicing oncologists if low-dose helical CT screening is used routinely in the clinic. First, we will begin to find many more small tumors than we do now. This will pose new sets of questions for...
Cancer Care in the UK: A Conversation with Chris Parker, MD
In the contentious debate over rising health-care spending, the cancer care policies of the British National Health Service (NHS) are often cited by U.S. policymakers as an example of how health-care rationing denies patients life-prolonging treatments based on costs. The ASCO Post recently spoke...
A Conversation with Constance M. Chen, MD, MPH
Although incidence data vary widely, breast cancer–related lymphedema may affect as many as 54% of the 2.3 million survivors of breast cancer in the United States. The condition is often disabling and can result in both long-term devastating physical consequences for survivors, including the loss...
Congressional Hearing Highlights Oncology Drug Shortages
Some oncology drugs are in such short supply that the situation is now critical, with almost 200 drugs affected—triple that of 2003. This was the background described by speakers at a July 2011 congressional briefing sponsored by the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), ASCO, and other...
Genomic Researchers Identify Weak Points in Breast Cancer Cells
A large-scale project in genetic profiling has identified weak points in breast tumor cells that not only represent potentially new “druggable” targets but could lead to an entirely new classification of all cancers. The findings were recently reported in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American ...
Fixing the Drug Shortage: It’s About Time
I have spent the past 30 years trying to improve the results of treatment for advanced cancer. I had the privilege of working with Sir Michael Peckham when the late Professor Tim McElwain and he were evolving variants of the PVB (cisplatin, vinblastine, bleomycin) and PEB (cisplatin, etoposide,...
Expert Point of View: World Conference on Lung Cancer
The EURTAC study provides additional evidence of the efficacy of the oral EGFR inhibitors in the first-line treatment of patients with mutated EGFR—and, importantly, in Western patients, rather than Asians, for whom data are more abundant. “The findings speak to the fact that all patients with...
World Conference on Lung Cancer: Personalized Approaches to Treatment
The 14th World Conference on Lung Cancer hosted more than 7,000 attendees in Amsterdam recently, with the theme “Better Care through Personalized Medical Approaches.” The following are brief summaries of key data presented at the conference, with perspective provided by Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, of...
Keeping a Positive Attitude
I’ve been in alcohol and drug recovery for 20 years, and my wife of nearly 50 years, Arlene, and I have been through a lot together during that time. So 2 years ago, when my doctor told us that I had stage III prostate cancer and a Gleason score of 8, we both looked at him and asked if we could...
Unexpected Results May Push Breast Cancer Research toward More Productive Approaches
Two recent articles on breast cancer prognostic factors in the Journal of Clinical Oncology “do not jibe with accepted—and profoundly influential—notions of malignant progression,” according to an editorial accompanying the articles in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. One of the articles found...
Patients with HER2-positive Breast Cancer Benefit from Trastuzumab plus Chemotherapy
Adding trastuzumab (Herceptin) to standard anthracycline/taxane–based chemotherapy continued to produce disease-free and overall survival benefits in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer enrolled in the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) N9831 and the National Surgical Adjuvant...
Long-term Data Show Benefit of Degarelix Beyond 3 Years in Advanced Hormone-dependent Prostate Cancer
Degarelix (Firmagon) is effective and well tolerated beyond 3 years in patients with advanced prostate cancer, according to a recent study published in The Journal of Urology.1 The new study (CS21A) extends the conclusions of the pivotal phase III study (CS21) in which the risk of prostate-specific ...
Many Women Treated for High-risk Breast Cancer Do Not Receive Recommended Postmastectomy Radiation Therapy
Despite major studies showing that postmastectomy radiation therapy improves survival for women with high-risk breast cancer and evidence-based guidelines supporting the use of postmastectomy radiotherapy, 45% of these patients do not receive such treatment, according to an analysis of data from...
Integrative Oncology Modalities Supported by Varying Levels of Evidence, but More Research Needed Overall
Over the past couple of decades, unregulated nonstandard oncology approaches have gained growing popularity among cancer patients. The relatively new field of integrative oncology was established to promote a more holistic and multidisciplinary approach to cancer care and to encourage scientific...
Lifestyle Changes Can Benefit Patients with Cancer
Oncologists may successfully manage their patients with cancer by following treatment guidelines, but they come up short when it comes to prescribing simple measures to enhance their patients’ health, according to Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, who spoke on the...
New ASCO in Action Website
For the past 2 years, ASCO members and others who have looked to ASCO for insight on policy issues have turned to the ASCO in Action section of the Society’s website for up-to-date information. Now, ASCO has launched a whole new website devoted entirely to policy issues and ASCO’s specific efforts...
ASCO’s International Clinical Trials Workshop Educates Nascent Researchers on the Inner Workings of Clinical Trials
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly conducting drug development research outside of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Attracted to the perceived lower costs, easier patient recruitment, and market potential, drug developers are now conducting more phase III clinical trials in...
We Can Conduct Clinical Trials of Protons
A great deal has been written about proton therapy, with a good deal of heat and only a modest amount of light. I would like to comment on an aspect of the proton vs photon controversy that I believe has not been adequately addressed: Should we run clinical trials that would allow us to prove that...
Giving Women a Fighting Chance When They Have Breast Cancer
I knew there was a chance I could get breast cancer, I just never thought it would really happen to me. I am one of 2.5 million breast cancer survivors living in our country today. Just weeks after getting a clean mammogram and my 41st birthday, I felt a lump in my breast. As a young and otherwise...
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: ‘Unrealistic Optimism’ or Losing Sight of the Forest for the Trees?
The article: “Unrealistic Optimism Poses Ethical Challenges, May Affect Informed Consent Process” (The ASCO Post, September 1, 2011, page 35) seems to be delving into a subject with an intent that is unclear. I agree fully with Dr. Jimmie Holland that discrimination between “optimism” and...
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Treating Cancer or Fear?
I read the article by Deb Stewart, “Acting on Fear” (The ASCO Post, August 15, 2011, page 1) with interest, disappointment, and empathy. “Acting on fear” in cancer treatment generally, and particularly in breast cancer, is not uncommon. Hence, I was most interested in the article’s major thrust, as ...
‘Hot Chemotherapy’ Generates Heated Debate about Its Use with Cytoreductive Surgery to Manage Peritoneal Metastases
"Hot chemotherapy” has become the common term for hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), which together with cytoreductive surgery is being used by some surgeons to treat patients with carcinomatosis from colorectal cancer. While HIPEC is not considered the most important component of...
ASCO Issues Policy Statement to Reduce Cancer Care Disparities
Last August, ASCO issued the policy statement, “Opportunities in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to Reduce Cancer Care Disparities” in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 The statement builds on ASCO’s policy on disparities in cancer care released in 2009. It calls on both the...
Yoga, Geriatric Assessment, and Nausea/Vomiting Addressed in Session on Supportive Care and Survivorship Issues
Marie E. Wood, MD, of the Familial Cancer Program at the University of Vermont, Burlington, addressed clinically relevant issues in supportive care and survivorship at the Best of ASCO® Annual Meeting ‘11 in Miami. Delayed Nausea and Vomiting Two studies addressed the problem of...
Improvements Highlighted in Treatment of Leukemias and Preleukemias
Certain preleukemic conditions and leukemia in high-risk patients have remained challenging to treat despite advances in hematology, according to Wendy Stock, MD, of the University of Chicago. But studies reported at the Best of ASCO® Annual Meeting ‘11 in Seattle show progress even in these ...
New Features Added to Cancer.Net’s Popular ‘Find an Oncologist’ Database
When patients need to find an oncologist, Cancer.Net is there to help with the Find an Oncologist database, at www.cancer.net/findanoncologist. This database is made up of ASCO members who have made their contact information public. In addition to location and specialty, patients can now search by...
ASCO Study Shows Integrating Nonphysician Providers into Oncology Practices Is a Win for Patients and Providers
Is the expanded use of nonphysician providers (NPPs) a viable way to help ease the challenges oncology practices could feel if the number of oncologists entering the field does not keep pace with potential growth in the demand for their services? The ASCO Workforce Advisory Group thought the...
Short-term Androgen Deprivation plus Radiotherapy Improves Outcomes in Intermediate-risk Prostate Cancer
The addition of short-term androgen-deprivation therapy to external-beam radiation therapy improved overall and disease-specific survival in men with nonbulky localized prostate cancer and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels up to 20 ng/mL, as reported recently in The New England Journal of...
SIDEBAR: Expert Q and A
D. Neil Hayes, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, discusses the role of HPV status in head and neck cancer. Are you convinced human papillomavirus (HPV) positivity is associated with better prognosis? Dr. D. Neil Hayes: The HPV story influences almost everything we do in...
New Therapies and Prognostic Techniques Highlighted in Head and Neck Cancer
D. Neil Hayes, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, described efforts to position the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor cetuximab (Erbitux) in head and neck cancer treatment. Surprisingly negative results came from the phase III Radiation Therapy Oncology...
Novel Approaches and Agents Making Headway against Sarcoma
Novel approaches and agents reported at the ASCO 2011 Annual Meeting are improving outcomes in sarcoma, a heterogeneous disease with historically poor outcomes, according to William D. Tap, MD, Section Chief of Sarcoma Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr. Tap...
SIDEBAR: Using Axitinib in Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma
With a new tyrosine kinase inhibitor joining the armamentarium, the question is how to optimize targeted agents for advanced renal cell carcinoma. The AXIS trial demonstrated strong clinical activity for axitinib, which was superior to second-line sorafenib (Nexavar) and generally appears most...
