Two novel treatments once thought to hold promise in the treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer have not proved to be effective in phase III trials, investigators reported at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. When combined with standard chemotherapy, a pegylated form of human...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to agents in lymphoma, lung cancer, gastrointestinal stromal tumors, and breast cancer, and granted Fast Track designation to a first-in-class radioenhancer hafnium oxide nanoparticle in head and neck cancer. Priority...
According to results from a phase II trial presented by Johann S. de Bono, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the 2020 Genitourinary (GU) Cancers Symposium (Abstract 119), treatment with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor talazoparib showed antitumor activity in patients with metastatic...
In studies to be presented at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (Abstracts 649 and 665), researchers examined the prevalence of fear of cancer recurrence in patients with renal cell carcinoma and evaluated the prognostic understanding patients with genitourinary cancer possess of their...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bhishamjit S. Chera, MD, and colleagues found that surveillance for circulating tumor human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA was accurate in identifying disease recurrence in patients with curatively treated HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell ...
Christopher B. Cole, MD, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute, discusses findings from a phase I study of intraperitoneal monocytes activated by interferons alpha and gamma in patients with ovarian cancer. Two of 11 patients had a partial response and 5 of 11 had stable disease; ongoing efforts...
A personalized approach to selecting antibody therapy for patients with newly diagnosed stage IV gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma resulted in a 1-year overall survival rate of 66% and a median overall survival of 16.4 months in the PANGEA study (see Table 1).1 The study used a novel clinical...
Your Stories, the podcast series from Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®, kicks off its third season with a conversation between oncologist Neil Iyengar, MD, and nutrition advocate Nadja Pinnavaia, PhD. The pair have joined forces to help reduce the risk of cancer and share the latest research...
In the release of its annual report on progress against cancer, Clinical Cancer Advances 2020, ASCO recognized progress in the refinement of the surgical treatment of cancer as the Advance of the Year. In particular, the emergence of novel systemic therapies—combined in new and better ways—has...
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 70% of deaths from cancer occur in low- and middle-income countries, where late-stage presentation and inaccessibility to diagnosis and treatment are common.1 In the sub-Saharan African country of Ethiopia, cancer is becoming an...
“They’re all charlatans,” my professor assured me when, in medical school in the mid-1970s, I expressed an interest in oncology. The treatment of cancer with drugs, despite popular but inaccurate descriptions of its history, began in 1944 when Goodman and Gilman at Yale conducted contract research...
In an exploratory biomarker analysis from the COMBI-AD trial, reported in The Lancet Oncology, Dummer et al found that tumor mutational burden (TMB) and interferon-gamma gene-signature profiles might be associated with an augmented benefit of adjuvant dabrafenib plus trametinib in resected BRAF...
A multicenter retrospective study investigating the incidence of pneumonitis and the incidence, risk factors, and clinical characteristics of radiation recall pneumonitis in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had received nivolumab found the incidence of radiation recall...
Once considered highly experimental, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is now an established third-line treatment option for B-cell lymphomas and leukemias. CAR T-cell therapy has saved the lives of people who would otherwise have run out of treatment options. But the question is...
In a recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Coleman et al released the results from the GOG-0213 trial, a multicenter, randomized prospective trial that compared secondary cytoreduction followed by chemotherapy with chemotherapy alone in women with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian ...
The phase II KEYNOTE-890 trial is a small but interesting study in patients with inoperable advanced triple-negative breast cancer. After one injection of intratumoral tavokinogene telseplasmid, a plasmid encoding the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12), followed by electroporation and...
The addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy achieves higher rates of pathologic complete response compared with placebo in patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to results of the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer...
Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, Director of the Jon and JoAnn Hagler Center for Lymphoma at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, commented on the study by Topp et al for The ASCO Post. “Earlier use of steroids with axicabtagene ciloleucel...
In a study to be presented by Tyan et al at the upcoming 2020 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium (Abstract 89), researchers found that vitamin D intake may be associated with reduced risk of colitis among patients being treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Retrospective Analysis In ...
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,...
In my 45 years of practicing hematology/oncology at a major urban academic medical center, I have observed a sea change in daily practice that contributes to physician burnout. Although the emotional stresses of caring for seriously ill people play a part in physician burnout, I find the daily...
In the release of its annual report on progress against cancer, Clinical Cancer Advances 2020, ASCO recognized progress in the refinement of the surgical treatment of cancer as the Advance of the Year. In particular, the emergence of novel systemic therapies—combined in new and better ways—has...
A simple test using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan may be used to predict how well people with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer will respond to treatment, according to the results of a new study published by Winfield et al in Radiology. In a large clinical trial, scientists have shown a...
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released two coordinated reports in light of World Cancer Day in response to government calls for more research into the scope and potential policies and programs to improve cancer control. WHO Report...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel immunotherapies for patients with different types of non-Hodgkin...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel therapies for myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), including the...
The American Medical Association Foundation (AMAF) recently announced a new initiative to create a cadre of LGBTQ health specialists through the AMA Foundation LGBTQ Fellowship Program—a national fellowship program to promote best practices and shared outcomes, while improving the quality of LGBTQ ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Robert L. Coleman, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III trial Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG)-0213 trial has shown no overall survival benefit with secondary surgical cytoreduction followed by chemotherapy with or...
Cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors are changing the landscape of the treatment of hormone receptor (HR)-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer. Three CDK4/6 inhibitors are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—ribociclib, palbociclib, and abemaciclib—as first- or...
In a Chinese phase III trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Shen et al found that dasatinib was associated was superior event-free survival vs imatinib when combined with intensive chemotherapy in pediatric patients with Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) not receiving...
Unlike ASCO’s Annual Meeting, symposia, and conferences, which highlight the current scientific advances in specific cancers and how they are improving cancer outcomes for the more than 18.1 million people worldwide diagnosed with cancer each year,1 ASCO Breakthrough: A Global Summit for Oncology...
Joshua Brody, MD, Director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, commented on where zanubrutinib might fit in once the drug is approved. “The two abstracts presented at ASH 2019 …demonstrated remarkably high response rates, durations of...
The Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTK) zanubrutinib continues to achieve high overall response rates for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), even in the presence of high-risk cytogenetics, according to findings from two different trials...
In men, prostate cancer has the highest incidence of any neoplasm and is the second-leading cause of cancer-related mortality. A plethora of tissue-based biomarkers are available to inform the diagnosis and prognosis for men with newly diagnosed, clinically localized prostate cancer. However, to...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to a treatment for lung and thyroid cancers with a RET fusion or mutation; gave Breakthrough Therapy designation to a doublet therapy for TP53-mutated myelodysplastic syndromes; and issued an update to their...
In a single-institution phase II study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kelly et al found that the combination of talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) and pembrolizumab produced durable responses in patients with previously treated advanced sarcoma. As noted by the investigators, T-VEC has been found to...
A study using data from two major melanoma centers in the United States and Australia, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Haydu et al, has shown a 5-year cumulative incidence of central nervous system (CNS) metastasis of 15.8% among patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer...
Capecitabine is often used to treat breast cancer, but the best use of capecitabine is open for discussion. According to a large meta-analysis of the effects of capecitabine in early breast cancer, capecitabine improves disease-free and overall survival for patients with triple-negative breast...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kichenadasse et al found that high body mass index was associated with improved overall survival in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with atezolizumab. As noted by the investigators, there are data showing that high BMI is...
With nearly all patients who undergo treatment for cancer of the head and neck experiencing oral mucositis, effective pain control is one of the main goals of physicians and care teams. Looking to provide more effective relief for patients—while also reducing the need for opioid painkillers—a team...
In a phase I study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Max S. Topp, MD, and colleagues found the maximum tolerated dose of the investigational anti–B cell maturation antigen (BCMA) bispecific T-cell engager (BiTE) molecule AMG 420 elicited a high response rate in patients with relapsed or ...
In 2017, breast cancer expert Gabrielle Rocque, MD, MSPH, received an American Cancer Society Mentored Research Scholar Grant for her work in enhancing shared decision-making for patients with advanced breast cancer. “I come from three generations of physicians,” shared Dr. Rocque. “My father (Dr. ...
Advanced mantle cell lymphoma appears to be a good target for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Treatment with KTE-X19, an anti-CD19 CAR T-cell product, led to unprecedented outcomes in patients with relapsed or refractory disease in the phase II ZUMA-2 study presented at the 2019 ASH ...
Advanced-stage cancer diagnoses declined following health insurance expansion in Massachusetts, likely due to increased access to screening and diagnostic services that identified cancers earlier, according to new research published by Sabik et al in the journal Medical Care. The analysis...
Some patients with cancer celebrate the end of a course of radiation or chemotherapy by ringing a bell. Indeed, many patients say they love the graduation-like ceremony and the sense of closure it gives them. However, a study published by Williams et al in the International Journal of Radiation...
In a phase Ib/II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Taylor et al found the combination of the VEGF inhibitor lenvatinib and the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor pembrolizumab showed activity across a range of advanced solid tumors. As stated by the authors, there is ...
As first-line treatment of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation, cisplatin plus gemcitabine yielded high response rates and encouraging survival, establishing this doublet as a standard approach in this subset of patients, according to Eileen M....
The antibody-drug conjugate ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) failed to show improved safety when compared with paclitaxel plus trastuzumab as adjuvant therapy in patients with stage 1 HER2-positive breast cancer. These results of the randomized, phase II ATEMPT trial were presented at the 2019 San ...
Positive findings from three Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) study cohorts on the potential benefit of various molecularly targeted drugs in patients with advanced colorectal cancer were presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. The TAPUR study is the first ...
Three decades after the first Surgeon General's report on smoking cessation, the Surgeon General has released a new report that reviews and updates evidence on the importance of quitting smoking. The report finds that more than two-thirds of U.S. adult cigarette smokers report an interest in...