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Showing 4951 - 5000Breast Density Legislation: An Opportunity for Better Risk Assessment
Dense breasts are not an automatic indication for additional imaging. Instead, breast density generally provides an opportunity for improved risk assessment, according to Kevin Hughes, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “More than 20 states have mandated that women be informed of...
The Importance of Listening to Patients
My experience with cancer, or more accurately, cancers, is complicated. In 2002, after returning from a medical mission to Honduras, I noticed a bean-sized lymph node above my left clavicle. As an oncology-certified nurse, I knew not to ignore any unusual nodules that pop up on the body and asked...
Low-Dose Chemical Exposure and Cancer
According to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), environmental toxic exposures are responsible for between 7% and 19% of human cancers. However, the 2008–2009 President’s Cancer Panel Annual Report estimated that the “true...
FDA Approves New Diagnostic Imaging Agent to Detect Recurrent Prostate Cancer
On May 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved fluciclovine F-18 (Axumin), a radioactive diagnostic agent for injection. Fluciclovine F-18 is indicated for positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging in men with suspected prostate cancer recurrence based on elevated...
SIRIUS Trial Heralds a New Era of Promise in Treating Resistant Myeloma
Multiple myeloma cells uniformly overexpress CD38.1 Daratumumab (Darzalex), a CD38-targeting human IgG1 kappa monoclonal antibody, has been evaluated in a series of phase I/II trials involving patients with relapsed or relapsed and refractory myeloma who have received at least two or more prior...
American Cancer Society Report Assesses Progress Against Goals Set for Nation 25 Years Ago
A new report assesses how the nation fared against the ambitious goal set by the American Cancer Society (ACS) to reduce cancer death rates by 50% over 25 years ending in 2015. The report finds areas where progress was substantial, and others where it was not. Published by Byers et al,1 the report ...
Combined-Modality Therapy for Low-Grade Gliomas: Balancing Toxicity, Delivery Logistics, and Survival Benefit
Low-grade gliomas account for 15% of all primary brain tumors and represent a heterogeneous group of glial neoplasms. Although these tumors have been termed low-grade, this is a misnomer, especially for some grade II gliomas, which may exhibit a more aggressive behavior and variable natural...
Improvement in Overall Survival With Addition of Chemotherapy to Radiotherapy in Low-Grade Glioma
Final results of the RTOG 9802 phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Jan C. Buckner, MD, of Mayo Clinic, Rochester, and colleagues, showed that the addition of chemotherapy with procarbazine, lomustine, and vincristine to radiotherapy significantly prolonged overall...
Moving the Needle on HPV Vaccination
In 2012–2013, members of the President’s Cancer Panel (prescancerpanel.cancer.gov) focused their efforts on accelerating widespread acceptance of and use of approved human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines to prevent cancer. The topic is important, because HPVs cause most cases of cervical cancer and...
Expert Point of View: Stuart A. Grossman, MD, and Deborah Schrag, MD
Formal discussant of this trial Stuart A. Grossman, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, commented that the trial did not include a best standard-of-care arm. The pivotal trial defined optimal radiotherapy as 60 Gy over 6 weeks, but this...
Rising Breast Cancer Incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities
The incidence of new cases of breast cancer in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is rising, and it will take a concerted effort from the international cancer community to counteract this troubling upward trend. It has been estimated that of the 15 million cancer ...
Survey Finds Most Americans Unlikely to Enroll in Clinical Trials
According to a new survey of more than 1,500 consumers and nearly 600 physicians conducted for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), only 35% of Americans indicated that they were “likely” to enroll in a clinical trial. Clinical research is increasingly dependent upon larger numbers of...
Prognostic Impact of Recurrence Score and Estrogen Receptor Expression in Breast Cancer After 5 Years of Tamoxifen
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Wolmark et al, higher 21-gene recurrence score (RS) was strongly predictive of late disease recurrence among patients with high quantitative estrogen-receptor expression (ESR1) receiving tamoxifen for 5 years in two NRG Oncology/NSABP (National...
James Kochenderfer, MD, on Inducing Remissions in B-Cell Lymphoma
James Kochenderfer, MD, of the National Cancer Institute, discuss results of a small study on genetically modified CAR-T cells, which may well become a standard lymphoma treatment (Abstract LBA3010).
ASCO 2016: Vast Differences Globally in Cancer Drug Retail Prices
A pilot study revealed large differences in median retail prices for 23 cancer drugs in 7 different countries, with the highest retail prices identified in the United States and the lowest, in India and South Africa. Notably, after the monthly drug price is expressed as a percentage of domestic...
ASCO 2016: Many Younger Cancer Patients Receive Aggressive End-of-Life Care Despite ASCO’s Choosing Wisely Campaign
An analysis of health claims data from 2007–2014 on more than 28,000 patients under the age of 65 found that a large proportion of patients with advanced solid tumors received at least one form of aggressive care within the last 30 days of life. The study was presented by Chen et al at...
ASCO 2016: Novel Antibody Significantly Improves Survival in Patients With Advanced Gastric Cancer
Findings from the European phase II FAST study showed that the novel, first-in-class antibody IMAB362 can significantly extend median survival when added to standard chemotherapy (13.2 vs 8.4 months) for patients with advanced gastric cancer. This therapy targets a protein called claudin-18 splice...
ASCO 2016: New Antibody-Drug Conjugate Shows Early Promise in Small Cell Lung Cancer
Early findings from a first-in-human clinical trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate rovalpituzumab tesirine (Rova-T) shows promising efficacy against recurrent small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The treatment, which combines a novel anti-DLL3 antibody with a powerful anticancer agent, halted...
ASCO 2016: Liquid Biopsy May Help Guide Treatment Decisions for Patients With Advanced Solid Tumors
A large-scale genomic analysis found that patterns of genetic changes detected in blood samples (liquid biopsy) closely mirror those identified in traditional tumor biopsy. With blood samples from more than 15,000 patients and 50 different tumor types, this is one of the largest cancer genomics...
ASCO 2016: Precision Medicine Approach May Expand Therapeutic Options for Patients
Researchers reported encouraging early results from a phase II trial that matches patients with molecular abnormalities in the tumor to corresponding targeted treatments. Twenty-nine of 129 patients with 12 different types of advanced cancers responded to drugs outside of U.S. Food and Drug...
ASCO 2016: Chemotherapy Improves Outcomes for Certain Patients With Anaplastic Glioma
For a more in-depth look at these data, please click here. Patients with anaplastic glioma without 1p/19q codeletion benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy, according to early results from a European phase III trial. The estimated 5-year survival rates were 56% with radiation therapy and...
ASCO 2016: Biosimilar Shows Comparable Efficacy and Safety to Trastuzumab in HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer
A biosimilar trastuzumab antibody (MYL-1401O) is comparable in efficacy and safety to trastuzumab (Herceptin) in women with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer, according to a randomized phase III study. The response rates were comparable among women who received trastuzumab and among...
Vulnerable Hospitals, Cancer Surgery Readmissions, and Penalizing Payment Programs
Readmission rates after complex cancer operations tend to be higher in hospitals that are considered to be vulnerable because they serve as safety nets in their communities or have a high number of Medicaid patients. Reasons for higher readmission rates are highly complex and involve socioeconomic...
FDA Approves New Diagnostic Imaging Agent to Detect Recurrent Prostate Cancer
On May 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved fluciclovine F-18 (Axumin), a radioactive diagnostic agent for injection. Fluciclovine F-18 is indicated for positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging in men with suspected prostate cancer recurrence based on elevated...
Breast Cancer Risk From Modifiable and Nonmodifiable Risk Factors Among White Women in the United States
A model developed to estimate the absolute risk of breast cancer suggests that a 30-year-old white woman in the United States has an 11.3% risk, on average, of developing invasive breast cancer by the age of 80, according to a new study published by Maas et al in JAMA Oncology. Breast cancer is a...
International Prognostic Index for Patients With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
The International Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia–International Prognostic Index (CLL-IPI) working group has developed an IPI for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia based on a meta-analysis of individual patient data, as reported in The Lancet Oncology. Study Details The meta-analysis...
DDW 2016: Low-Residue Diet Prior to Colonoscopy Shows Improved Tolerance and Bowel Preparation vs Clear Liquid Diet
A new study finds that patients who ate certain solid foods, considered “low residue,” were better prepared for their colonoscopies than individuals who followed the conventional liquid diet. Additionally, researchers saw that these patients who ate foods such as eggs, white bread,...
New ASCO Cervical Cancer Guidelines Address Global Resource Disparities
On May 25, ASCO issued its first clinical practice guideline on invasive cervical cancer. This resource-stratified guideline is the first of its kind from ASCO, offering treatment recommendations tailored to resource availability. Access to cervical cancer care varies between regions of the...
External Validation of a Prediction Tool for Chemotherapy Toxicity in Older Patients With Cancer
Hurria et al validated a prediction tool for chemotherapy toxicity in cancer patients aged ≥ 65 years in an external cohort, according to a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The predictive model had been developed in a prior study in 500 patients. Study Details The study...
Leisure-Time Physical Activity Reduces Risk of Multiple Cancer Types
In a study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, Moore et al found that greater leisure-time physical activity was associated with a reduced risk for many types of cancer. Study Details The study used pooled data on 1.44 million adults from 12 prospective U.S. and European cohorts with...
Lisa A. Newman, MD, MPH, FACS, FASCO, Balances Her Passions of Surgical Breast Oncology and Breast Cancer Disparity Research, Both Home and Abroad
Lisa A. Newman, MD, MPH, FACS, FASCO, Director of the Henry Ford Health System’s Breast Oncology Program, was born in New York, New York and, according to her, was blessed to have had parents who lived the African American version of the “American Dream.” Dr. Newman’s father was the son of...
A Pioneer in Lung Cancer Research, James L. Mulshine, MD, Champions Early Population-Based Lung Cancer Screening
A neighborhood doctor who told a good story was an unwitting mentor to internationally regarded lung cancer expert James L. Mulshine, MD. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Dr. Mulshine relocated with his family to West Hartford, Connecticut, when he was a year old, and except for a brief hiatus on...
Celebrating ASCO 2016 Awards Recipients
Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO, Immediate Past President of ASCO and Chair of the Special Awards Selection Committee, announced the recipients of this year’s special awards. “The exceptional accomplishments of each of our awardees reflect their exemplary dedication to furthering cancer research and ...
Allen S. Lichter, MD, FASCO, Reflects on His Career Path and His Tenure as ASCO CEO, and Predicts a Bright Future for Radiation Oncology
Choosing a career path is one of life’s most challenging decisions, but for Allen S. Lichter, MD, FASCO, deciding to become a doctor was inherently natural. He was born with a great mentor and role model: his father. “I was born and raised in Detroit. My father was a general practitioner in...
A Perilous Time for Refugees With Cancer
The numbers are difficult to fathom. According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2015, over 60 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced as a result of conflict, persecution, generalized violence, or human rights violations.1 Over 9 million of those ...
Eribulin in Liposarcoma: A Closer Look at the Comparative Data
Sarcoma therapy is a challenge for oncologists. Soft-tissue sarcomas encompass more than 50 different histologies, resulting in limited familiarity of management for many treating physicians. In addition, there have been few available effective therapies. The phase III trial of eribulin (Halavan) ...
Atezolizumab in Previously Treated Advanced Urothelial Carcinoma
The recent study by Rosenberg et al in The Lancet—summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post—is a very important paper in the field of bladder cancer therapy.1 It is the first phase II trial in metastatic transitional cell carcinoma that demonstrates the single-agent activity of the...
Curb Your Enthusiasm: No Benefit of Adjuvant Sorafenib or Sunitinib in Nonmetastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma
Renal cell carcinoma is the most common cancer of the kidneys. Up to 30% of patients present with advanced/metastatic disease, and recurrence can develop in patients at high risk treated by nephrectomy for localized tumors. Renal cell carcinoma is notoriously resistant to chemotherapy and...
No Disease-Free Survival Benefit of Adjuvant Sunitinib or Sorafenib in High-Risk Nonmetastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma
In the phase III ECOG-ACRIN E2805 trial reported in The Lancet by Naomi B. Haas, MD, of Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues, no benefit of adjuvant vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) inhibitor treatment with sunitinib or sorafenib (Nexavar) was...
Survey Finds Most Americans Unlikely to Enroll in Clinical Trials
According to a new survey of more than 1,500 consumers and nearly 600 physicians conducted on behalf of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), only 35% of Americans indicated that they were “likely” to enroll in a clinical trial. Other studies have shown that only 4% of cancer...
Body Mass Index and Mortality in Patients With Colorectal Cancer
Overweight colorectal cancer patients were 55% less likely to die from their cancer than normal-weight patients who have the disease, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published by Kroenke et al in JAMA Oncology. Of cancers affecting both men and women, colorectal cancer is the...
Expect Questions About the New Rule on E-Cigarettes
“There are a lot of myths around new and emerging tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, and unfortunately, the biggest misconception is that these products are fairly or entirely harmless and risk-free,” Alexander V. Prokhorov, MD, PhD, said in an interview with The ASCO Post about a new...
New FDA Rule Prohibits Sale of E-Cigarettes to Anyone Under Age 18 and Requires Warning Labels
A new rule extending U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight to all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), and banning the sale of these products to anyone under the age of 181 was hailed as a major advanced by many leaders of medical and health organizations....
Crizotinib Active in Orphan Kidney Malignancy
Crizotinib (Xalkori) achieved overall and durable responses in advanced inoperable papillary renal cell carcinoma type 1 characterized by somatic MET mutations, according to an investigator-initiated trial conducted by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC).1 “To...
Highlights From the 2016 AACR Annual Meeting
This year’s Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) featured outstanding research in the field of cancer, as well as an inspiring talk by Vice President Joe Biden (see the May 10 issue of The ASCO Post). Here are some summaries of studies that warrant attention; they...
NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®): 2016 Guidelines
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology® (NCCN Guidelines®), covering eight tumor types. The NCCN Guidelines® are now published for more than 60 tumor types and topics. Some of the key updates for 2016 were...
Recent Reports on Treatment for Leukemias, Sinusoidal Obstruction Syndrome, and Graft-vs-Host Disease
In this installment of Hematology Expert Review, I will summarize five studies from the recent literature addressing important questions about leukemias and their treatment, anticoagulant therapy with the new agent defibrotide (Defitelio), and the use of antilymphocyte globulin to prevent chronic...
Meta-analysis of Breast Cancer Studies Demonstrates Value of Pathologic Complete Response
In a meta-analysis of neoadjuvant studies totaling over 18,000 patients, achievement of pathologic complete response was associated with significantly reduced disease recurrence and mortality across the various breast cancer subtypes. Laura Spring, MD, a senior medical oncology fellow at...
What ASCO Can Do for You—and for Our Patients
This is an exciting time to be an oncologist. I often say I wish I were 30 again and just starting out in my oncology career. Never before have we had such sophisticated technology for evaluation of the tumor or such a potent arsenal of targeted and effective therapies to treat cancer. Further, the ...
Use of ROS1 Immunohistochemical Staining in Screening for ROS1 Translocations in Lung Cancer
Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is an effective tool that can be used for identifying proto-oncogene 1 receptor tyrosine kinase (ROS1) gene rearrangements and screening patients for the administration of the targeted therapy crizotinib (Xalkori), a small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Chromosomal...
