In a recent study published in Blood Advances, Sekeres et al examined whether exposure to Agent Orange, a dioxin-contaminated herbicide used during the Vietnam War, is associated with the development and clinical characteristics of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Given the established links...
One-time low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer in a non–risk-based Chinese population led to a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality, according to the results of a prospective, nonrandomized, controlled study presented at the European Lung Cancer Congress 2026...
An interpretable machine-learning framework, called PRE-Screen-HCC, may predict risk levels for developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) more accurately than publicly available risk scores, according to findings from a large population-based multicentric study published in Cancer Discovery. “Our...
An artificial intelligence (AI) multiagent system demonstrated correct and complete reasoning in determining the use of immunotherapy for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the first-line setting, according to findings presented during the first European Society for Medical...
Researchers leading the LORD trial of active surveillance for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) described early results as “reassuring” in a presentation to the 15th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC15) in Barcelona (Abstract 2LBA). People diagnosed with DCIS have abnormal cells inside the milk ...
Last week, Dartmouth Cancer Center (DCC) and Fox Chase Cancer Center announced the appointments of new directors—both experts in the treatment of lung cancer. DCC has appointed Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, as the center’s sixth director. Temple Health announced the appointment of Robert A. Winn, MD, as...
In patients with CALR exon 9–mutated myelofibrosis who were resistant or intolerant to prior Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor therapy, or ineligible for such treatment, the first-in-class mutant calreticulin–specific monoclonal antibody INCA033989, given as monotherapy or in combination with...
Last October, the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA) announced the launch of its collaborative artificial intelligence (AI) platform powered by federated learning to train AI models with millions of de-identified patient datasets from participating cancer centers, while maintaining patient security,...
The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to provide highly personalized oncology care for patients and improve outcomes has been decades in the making. In a 1987 editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, pioneering nephrologist and health economist William B. Schwartz, MD,...
Women who are treated with mastectomy for breast cancer often choose to have breast reconstructive surgery using an implant. But hard, painful scar tissue can form around the implant, especially when women also receive radiotherapy as part of their treatment. Findings from the OPBC-09 PRExRT study, ...
In an interim analysis of a Chinese phase II/III trial (ZSAB) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Shi et al found that a neoadjuvant GOLP regimen (gemcitabine plus oxaliplatin, lenvatinib, and a PD-1 inhibitor [toripalimab]) improved event-free survival vs no neoadjuvant treatment in...
A multipronged artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted approach integrated into routine molecular profiling identified 3.1% of cases submitted as lung squamous cell carcinoma as metastases from other origins, revealing a meaningful rate of misdiagnosis in this patient population, according to a...
In a phase III trial (VIKTORIA-1) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hurvitz et al found that gedatolisib and fulvestrant both with and without palbociclib improved progression-free survival vs fulvestrant alone in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, PIK3CA wild-type...
For myelofibrosis, the treatment landscape is poised for change as new targets have emerged, and treatments are evolving beyond the standard Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors. Novel therapies are being paired with the commonly used JAK inhibitor ruxolitinib, as reflected by a wealth of studies...
On October 1, 2025, Benjamin L. Ebert, MD, PhD, celebrated the 1-year anniversary of being named President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He also holds the titles of Director of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, the Richard and Susan Smith Professor of ...
POEMS syndrome is a poorly understood and complex paraneoplastic plasma cell disorder characterized by peripheral neuropathy and multisystem involvement, including organomegaly, endocrinopathy, monoclonal plasma cell dyscrasia, and skin changes. Clinical manifestations are thought to result from...
Three education sessions presented during the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting showcased how artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly transforming cancer care from clinical trial planning and ambient scribes transcribing physician-patient conversations to therapeutic decision-making. The meeting also...
ASCO has published an updated guideline describing the latest evidence on using hematopoietic colony-stimulating factor (CSF) to support anticancer treatment, namely chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation.1 “We wanted to update these guidelines both to include the newer evidence as well as...
ASCO has released a guideline update addressing advances in the use of immunotherapy and targeted therapy for the treatment of advanced gastroesophageal cancer.1 The guideline, last updated in 2023 to include first-line therapy recommendations for patients with biomarkers such as PD-L1 and HER2,...
A deep learning model can diagnose thymic epithelial tumors with high sensitivity for thymic carcinoma detection, according to findings published in Annals of Oncology. The researchers suggested that the tool could be used to improve diagnostic consistency and support decision-making in settings...
For myelofibrosis, the treatment landscape is poised for change as new targets have emerged, and treatments are evolving beyond the standard Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors. Novel therapies are being paired with the commonly used JAK inhibitor ruxolitinib, as reflected by a wealth of studies...
Among patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were treated with intensive chemotherapy on clinical trials from the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN), Black race was found to be an independent predictor of inferior survival, with outcomes not being explained by cytogenetic risk....
Biomarker discovery in colorectal cancer has traditionally focused on identifying molecular alterations with broad prognostic or predictive utility. However, evidence is increasingly suggesting that biomarkers do not have universal prognostic or predictive value across patient sets but instead...
Two papers published in Nature reveal long-disregarded functions of the thymus in adulthood, showing that the overall health of the organ impacts aging and risks for cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as affecting response to immunotherapy in patients with cancer. “The thymus has been...
As reported in The Lancet by Rivera et al, 5-year results of a French phase III trial (UNICANCER HypoG-01) showed noninferiority of hypofractionated locoregional radiotherapy (RT) vs standard 5-week RT in reducing risk of postsurgery lymphedema in patients with early breast cancer. Study Details In ...
In a study (PREDICT-DNA) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hunter et al found that an ultrasensitive assay for circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) to detect measurable residual disease after neoadjuvant therapy in patients with breast cancer did not distinguish pathologic complete response...
Overall cancer incidence is similar between women who have used medically assisted reproduction and the general population, but certain cancers may occur at slightly higher rates, according to an Australian population–based cohort study published in JAMA Network Open by Vajdic et al. The...
Adding hormone therapy to postprostatectomy radiotherapy may provide little survival benefit for most men with prostate cancer, especially those with very low prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels before treatment. In the study, reported at the 2026 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium,1 men with...
As the incidence of cancer among reproductive-age people continues to increase in the United States—with approximately one out of every 1,000 pregnancies complicated by cancer—the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) has issued its first evidence-based clinical guidance for diagnosing and...
The members of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) have elected Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, as the AACR President-elect for 2026–2027. Dr. Vonderheide will become President-Elect on Monday, April 20, during AACR’s Annual Business Meeting of Members at the AACR Annual Meeting...
The combination of the NECTIN4-directed antibody drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin-ejfv and the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab is the established first-line standard-of-care treatment for patients with locally advanced/metastatic urothelial carcinoma. The results from the randomized phase III...
A novel KRAS G12D inhibitor produced disease control in almost 80% of patients with heavily pretreated advanced or metastatic KRAS G12D–mutated pancreatic cancer in an early-phase study reported at the 2026 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. Of 41 evaluable patients treated with single-agent...
On March 10, 2000, it was a cold Friday morning in Washington, DC. As usual, we the oncology fellows and faculty crowded into a conference room at the NIH Clinical Center in Building 10 for our weekly conference. Before the session formally began, a senior faculty member walked in holding the New...
New research assessing the efficacy of optical genome mapping (OGM) in a group of patients with acute leukemia has demonstrated that the method provided reliable and robust analytical performance with high sensitivity and specificity in detecting genetic alterations. In nearly 20% of cases,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a new platform, called the FDA Adverse Event Monitoring System (AEMS), for analyzing adverse events from drugs and products. The platform consolidates multiple prior reporting systems in an effort to modernize and increase transparency into...
In a phase I trial (PYNNACLE) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dumbrava et al described the toxicity and preliminary activity of rezatapopt in TP53 Y220C–mutated solid tumors. The agent is an investigational, first-in-class, oral, selective p53 reactivator that specifically binds to ...
In a Chinese phase II study (CAREMM-001) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yan et al found that B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy was highly active in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who were ineligible for or did not proceed...
Significant differences were found in advanced-stage diagnoses of breast cancer in rural populations according to geographic location in the United States, which were further influenced by demographic factors of race and insurance status, according to findings from an analysis of the National...
A population-level cohort study of 264.4 million deaths across 20 countries found that females born since the 1930s had higher cancer mortality than males between the ages of 35 and 60 years, largely due to breast and gynecologic cancers. Although females live longer than males on average, these...
T-cell lymphomas are notoriously difficult to treat because immunotherapy, despite being one of the most effective therapies for treating cancer, can’t easily distinguish cancerous T cells from healthy ones. Now, scientists at The Wistar Institute have designed a two-vaccine approach that not only...
A structured exercise program in patients with cancer receiving chemotherapy led to a reduction in self-reported cognitive impairment vs those receiving chemotherapy who were not on an exercise plan, according to findings from a nationwide, randomized phase III trial published in JNCCN—Journal of...
Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into screening workflows increased the detection of breast cancer by 10.4% in the United Kingdom, according to the results of the GEMINI study published in Nature Cancer. Additionally, use of AI in different workflows led to reductions in workload by up...
The Pezcoller Foundation–American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research will be presented to Douglas R. Lowy, MD, and John T. Schiller, PhD, during the AACR Annual Meeting 2026, in San Diego. Drs. Lowy and Schiller Dr. Lowy is...
In an Italian single-center phase II trial (SURE-02) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Necchi et al found that neoadjuvant sacituzumab govitecan-hziy plus perioperative pembrolizumab produced a “promising” clinical complete response rate in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer who were...
In a study of adults with advanced prostate cancer taking androgen-receptor pathway inhibitors (ARPIs) and different types of anticoagulants, investigators found no evidence of an increase in patients’ bleeding or clotting risks, despite previous lab results that raised alarms. These findings were...
Researchers have identified that the reporting of venous and arterial thrombotic events in cancer clinical trials is inconsistent and potentially inaccurate, according to a comments article published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 “Mandatory and uniform reporting of all [venous and arterial...
Quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination led to a significantly reduced risk of invasive cervical cancer that was sustained through long-term follow-up, according to the results of a Swedish nationwide, register-based cohort study published in The BMJ. “This study provides evidence of...
A novel KRAS G12D inhibitor produced disease control in almost 80% of patients with heavily pretreated advanced or metastatic KRAS G12D–mutated pancreatic cancer in an early-phase study reported at the 2026 ASCO Gastrointestinal (GI) Cancers Symposium.1 Of 41 evaluable patients treated with...
In a retrospective study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Lalchungnunga et al tested the classification accuracy of a molecular inference–based artificial intelligence (AI) model (Neuropath-AI) in central nervous system (CNS) tumor diagnosis. Study Details The multi-institutional study included...
A large national study in Denmark following nearly 1,900 patients over almost a decade found that minimally invasive ablation is as effective as surgery for treating small kidney cancers, with faster recovery and fewer complications. Results of the study were published by Ahrenfeldt et al in...