Brian C. Baumann, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, discusses study findings suggesting postoperative radiotherapy may be an option for patients with locally advanced bladder cancer after radical cystectomy who are unable or unwilling to use adjuvant chemotherapy (Abstract 4507).
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence announced a new pilot program to assist oncology health-care professionals in requesting access to unapproved therapies for patients with cancer. A new call center designated Project Facilitate will be a single point...
The randomized Norwegian OSLO-COMET trial found that laparoscopic surgery did not change chances of survival compared to open resection to remove metastases that had spread to the liver in patients with colorectal cancer. Overall, patients lived more than 6.5 years after surgery, regardless of...
A study that examined 10,500 health records of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer from ASCO’s CancerLinQ database found that the use of expanded clinical trial inclusion criteria—as proposed by ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research in 2017—would nearly double...
The randomized phase III POLO trial found that maintenance therapy with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor olaparib significantly delayed the progression of metastatic pancreatic cancer in patients with germline BRCA gene mutations compared with placebo (median...
A new study analyzing demographic statistics from the National Cancer Database presented by Chamoun et al at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract LBA107) identified multiple socioeconomic factors—including private insurance, living in a regionally higher-income area, and receiving treatment ...
The international, randomized phase III MONALEESA-7 trial found that the addition of ribociclib to standard-of-care endocrine therapy significantly improved overall survival for premenopausal women with advanced hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer compared with endocrine...
In a study presented by Wasp et al at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 6507) studying variation in end-of-life care across cancer centers in the United States, researchers found quality of care was lower at centers that served a greater concentration of minorities. However, end-of-life care...
Breast cancer specialist Julie Gralow, MD, FASCO, Director, Breast Medical Oncology, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, has a straightforward philosophy about her career: “Cancer is about living, not dying. I enjoy helping my patients with breast cancer take control of their health through leading-edge ...
Internationally recognized breast cancer expert Lisa A. Carey, MD, FASCO, was born in New Jersey and moved to Montreal, where she attended an all-girls school (Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramp’s School for Girls) until age 8. When she was 9 years old, her father’s business ventures took the family back ...
New research published by Bagley et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network used a large real-world data set to demonstrate a modest but consistent survival benefit associated with adding bevacizumab to carboplatin/pemetrexed in advanced nonsquamous non–small...
The Phillip A. Sharp Awards for Innovation in Collaboration, are named for Phillip A. Sharp, PhD, Nobel Laureate, and molecular biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in recognition of his emphasis on collaboration across research institutions and different teams. Stand Up To Cancer...
Nationally regarded cancer immunologist Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Georgetown, Guyana, on South America’s North Atlantic coast, noted for being the only South American country in which English is the official language. Her parents were descendants of indentured immigrants...
Over the past year (May 2018–May 2019), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval and accelerated approval to a number of new oncology drugs and biosimilars. Here we list the new FDA-approved labels and indications. AVELUMAB (BAVENCIO) and AXITINIB (INLYTA) has been approved as a ...
On May 23, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the NovoTTF-100L System in combination with pemetrexed plus platinum-based chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of unresectable locally advanced or metastatic malignant pleural mesothelioma. NovoTTF-100L is a noninvasive,...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Rita S. Mehta, MD, and colleagues, the final overall survival results of the phase III SWOG S0226 trial show that the addition of first-line fulvestrant to anastrozole was associated with improved overall survival in postmenopausal women with...
THE PANCREATIC Cancer Collective, which is the strategic partnership of the Lustgarten Foundation and Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), recently announced that it has awarded $1 million grants to each of 2 projects that are using artificial intelligence (AI) computational approaches to identify high-risk...
CITY OF HOPE recently received $7.5 million in grant awards to study the rare blood cancer cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded two grants valued at $6.3 million over 5 years to City of Hope’s Steven Rosen, MD, and Christiane Querfeld, MD, PhD, so they can develop...
Despite the increasing public awareness of the danger of the overuse of prescription opioids, drug overdose deaths continue to rise in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 1999 to 2017, nearly 400,000 people died of an overdose involving...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently awarded Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH, with the 2019 AACR–Waun Ki Hong Award for Outstanding Achievement in Translational and Clinical Cancer Research during the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting. Dr. Chan is recognized for his work on the molecular...
Miami Cancer Institute has announced the opening of its Multidisciplinary Skin Cancer Clinic, along with the region’s first three-dimensional (3D), whole-body, photo-imaging system, designed to improve the accuracy of diagnosing melanoma and other skin cancers. This system is reportedly 1 of 12...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Otis W. Brawley, MD, MACP, FASCO, a global leader in cancer research and health disparities. Dr. Brawley, who served as Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS) and...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Shelly Latte-Naor, MD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, explore the use of...
The Global Burden of Disease Study was initiated in 1990, commissioned by the World Bank. At that time, the study was conducted mainly by researchers at Harvard and the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then the study has gone through many iterations to its present structure, which is a...
It has been well documented that noncommunicable diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, now pose the greatest health threat to people living in low- and middle-income countries, surpassing infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS as the leading cause of death and disability.1...
The statistics are alarming: according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 70,000 adolescents and young adults (AYAs) are diagnosed with cancer each year1—a recent report by the University of California put that figure at 87,000.2 Although overall cancer survival rates continue to improve ...
External-beam radiation therapy (EBRT) is a standard treatment option for men with localized prostate cancer and confers long-term prostate cancer control outcomes equal to radical prostatectomy. Technologic advances in imaging and computing during the past 20 years have led to a number of...
Immunotherapies are radically changing outcomes, but while helping patients, they are creating complexities surrounding their cost. At the 2019 Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), a roundtable of experts, including clinicians and payers, discussed how chimeric...
On April 12, 2019, erdafitinib was granted accelerated approval for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma with susceptible fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) or FGFR2 genetic alterations, when the disease has progressed during or following platinum-containing...
On May 2, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded its approval of ivosidenib (Tibsovo) to include newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a susceptible IDH1 mutation, as detected by an FDA-approved test, in patients who are at least 75 years old or who have comorbidities that ...
With increasing knowledge on the key role of the tumor microenvironment in lymphomagenesis, treatments for indolent B-cell lymphoma, especially follicular lymphoma, are mechanistically moving toward a more immunomodulatory approach. Chemotherapy-free regimens are an attractive alternative to...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has shown remarkable efficacy in the treatment of certain hematologic malignancies, including several types of large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved...
In just 5 years since its launch in 2014, CancerLinQ®, ASCO’s big-data, rapid-learning, health information technology platform, has grown from 37 vanguard oncology practices to 58 participating practices in 2016 to 100 diverse oncology practices nationwide this year. CancerLinQ...
For recurrent, previously irradiated brain tumors, innovative treatment with surgically targeted brachytherapy yielded good local control and overall survival, as compared to historic controls, neurosurgeons reported at the 2019 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Association of Neurological...
In a retrospective analysis published in European Urology, Sandler et al examined the protocol for treating aggressive prostate cancer. Researchers aimed to study the impact of whole-pelvis radiation on men with Gleason grade 5 disease who had been treated with external-beam radiotherapy with...
In the phase III OPTIMISMM trial, reported by Richardson et al in The Lancet Oncology, researchers found that the addition of pomalidomide to bortezomib/dexamethasone improved progression-free survival in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma previously treated with lenalidomide. Study Details...
Join the discussion: Use #ASCO19 on Twitter and Instagram to follow and participate in conversations about the ASCO Annual Meeting in real time. During last year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, more than 17,000 health-care professionals, researchers, news outlets, patients, and advocates sent more than...
A must-attend event in cancer care, the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting will bring thousands of oncology professionals from around the world to Chicago. The theme for this year’s meeting, selected by 2018–2019 ASCO President Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, sets an exciting tone for the...
In a clinical practice guideline released April 15, an ASCO Expert Panel outlined the latest recommendations for the duration of adjuvant chemotherapy with a fluoropyrimidine and oxaliplatin for patients with completely resected stage III colon cancer.1 New recommendations were based on the results ...
ASCO and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) have released an update to existing guidelines for use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents to manage anemia in patients with cancer.1 “The current update aims to increase awareness of recent developments regarding the use of...
The sequencing of trastuzumab administration with chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting seems to have no effect on outcomes for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, according to data presented at the 2019 Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Cancer Symposium.1 The results of a phase III...
The discovery of trastuzumab has been revolutionary in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer, both in the metastatic and early-stage settings.1-6 This cannot be disputed. In the early-stage setting, the addition of trastuzumab to standard chemotherapy has led to a 50% gain in...
“MYSTIC is the second phase III trial to compare a first-line immune checkpoint inhibitor with platinum that failed to meet the primary endpoint. However, both MYSTIC and CheckMate 026 identified patients who benefited from an immune checkpoint inhibitor based on tumor mutational burden,”...
The search for biomarkers to identify patients who are likely to respond to immunotherapy continues. According to biomarker tissue and blood analysis of patients enrolled in the phase III MYSTIC trial, high tumor mutational burden in both tissue and blood identified patients with non–small cell...
The 24th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) was held this past March in Orlando, Florida. Updates to a number of Clinical Practice Guidelines (NCCN Guidelines®) were reported, including three relevant to the field of genitourinary oncology: kidney cancer,...
May 14, 2019: Avelumab (Bavencio) plus axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). April 19, 2019: Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). April 12,...
Adding enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to the results of the ...
Efrat Dotan, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Hematology/Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, commented on this study. “This abstract presents the interim analysis of a phase II study evaluating the use of maintenance therapy with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase PARP inhibitor...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis in the phase III LATITUDE trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of abiraterone acetate plus prednisone to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in newly diagnosed,...
The poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib holds promise as maintenance therapy for advanced, platinum-sensitive, BRCA- or PALB2-mutated pancreatic cancer, according to an interim analysis of an ongoing phase II clinical trial presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American...