The treatment paradigm for multiple myeloma continues to evolve at a rapid pace with the introduction of new drugs and the development of drug combinations, particularly the initial approach to the treatment of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma.1 One major shift in the treatment of newly diagnosed...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Oliver Sartor, MD, of the School of Medicine, Tulane University, and colleagues, the phase III VISION trial has shown prolonged progression-free and overall survival with lutetium-177–PSMA-617 (LuPSMA) radioligand therapy plus standard care vs...
Patients who had advanced gastroesophageal cancer but were considered unsuitable for full-dose chemotherapy because of their advanced age and/or frailty “had an improved patient experience with no significant detriment in cancer control” when treated with reduced-intensity chemotherapy in the phase ...
I read with great interest the results from the phase II ZUMA-12 study of axicabtagene ciloleucel, presented during the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1 But the results raised several questions for me. Axicabtagene ciloleucel, an autologous anti-CD19...
In an observational retrospective study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Seymour et al describe a strategy used by Karmanos Specialty Pharmacy (KSP) to successfully decrease patient copayments for high-cost cancer drugs. Study Details The study involved data from the KSP claims data set, accessed ...
In a study of Quest Diagnostics data reported as a research letter in JAMA Network Open, Kaufman et al found significant decreases in monthly new cancer diagnoses during the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the prepandemic period. As stated by the investigators, “We previously ...
Chloe Atreya, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her mother is a poet, and her father is a planetary physicist and a professor at the University of Michigan. “Some of my early memories that influenced my decision to go into medicine stem from conversations I had with my father...
A set of compounds developed by scientists at Scripps Research target estrogen-sensitive breast cancer cells in new ways, potentially creating better options for patients with treatment-resistant cancers. More information on these dual-mechanism estrogen receptor inhibitors was published by Min et...
Even before my breast cancer diagnosis in early 2002, the year was shaping up to be life-altering for me and my family. We had moved from Seattle to Houston for a new career opportunity for my husband and were just settling into our new home when I felt a pea-sized nodule in my left breast during a ...
For the treatment of relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma, updated data from the ZUMA-5 trial, as compared with the findings of the external control cohort of SCHOLAR-5, showed substantial improvement in all key clinical endpoints with axicabtagene ciloleucel, ZUMA-5 investigators reported in ...
Too many “exhausted” T cells left in the wake of aggressive chemotherapy regimens for patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) make it more challenging for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy to do its job. Now, a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of...
Researchers have determined how a highly aggressive type of breast cancer may evade treatment with the compound sacituzumab govitecan-hziy, according to findings published by Coates et al in Cancer Discovery. Their results could help improve therapy and ultimately prolong survival for patients with ...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Scott et al found that application of the genomic-adjusted radiation dose (GARD) model to cohorts of patients with different types of cancer showed a significant association of GARD with benefit of radiotherapy. As stated by the investigators, “We...
Pancreatic cancer remains an incorrigible foe, but recent advances in genomic profiling and targeted drug development are slowly improving the outlook for patients, according to Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, Winthrop Rockefeller Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology and Section Head,...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted applications for agents aiming to treat non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), differentiated thyroid cancer, renal cell carcinoma (RCC), hypersensitive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), mucosal melanoma, and endometrial carcinoma....
The 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting was presented totally virtually again due to the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the meeting held widespread interest, and we were able to attend an event with important changes for the practice of oncology. Compared with 2020, fewer “next-generation ...
The 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting was presented totally virtually again due to the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the meeting held widespread interest, and we were able to attend an event with important changes for the practice of oncology. Compared with 2020, fewer...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Michael Gnant, MD, and colleagues found no difference in disease-free survival with 2 vs 5 years of treatment with the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole in postmenopausal women with early hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Ashraf Zaghloul, MD, DrPH, Professor at the National Cancer Institute of Egypt and President of the Egyptian Society of Surgical Oncology. Dr. Zaghloul was born in 1956 in ...
The session’s invited discussant Surbhi Sidana, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University, said CAR T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies targeting myeloma are emerging as potentially effective options for patients with highly refractory disease. For this population of triple...
A meta-analysis of nearly 200,000 men revealed 22 new genetic locations that could be susceptible to inherited testicular germ cell tumors—a 40% increase in the number of regions known to be associated with the cancer. The new findings, published by Pluta et al in Nature Communications, could help...
Chemotherapy has helped make acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) one of the most survivable childhood cancers. Now, a research team has shown how thiopurines may lead to mutations that set patients up for disease relapse. These findings were published by Yang et al in Nature Cancer. The research...
Canada’s publicly funded health-care system has a complex drug approval and funding process. Due to multiple assessment steps and bureaucratic processes, newly developed cancer drugs can often experience long delays before oncologists may use them to treat their patients with cancer. Several...
In a retrospective study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Gafita et al developed nomograms for predicting overall survival and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) progression-free survival outcomes in men receiving lutetium-177–PSMA (LuPSMA) treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate...
Long-term analysis of the Short-HER trial showed that 9 weeks of adjuvant trastuzumab conveyed benefits comparable to a 1-year course in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer deemed to be at low or intermediate risk for recurrence. High-risk patients, however, derived considerably more...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Casolino et al identified the prevalence of homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) genes in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and found that the reported prevalence of HRD was higher with...
Today, ASCO and the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) jointly released new Oncology Medical Home (OMH) standards, which provide a comprehensive roadmap for oncology practices to deliver high-quality, evidence-based cancer care. These standards, which were published by Woofter et al in JCO Oncology...
In a Chinese phase II/III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Qin et al found that donafenib, a multikinase inhibitor and deuterated sorafenib derivative, improved overall survival vs sorafenib in the first-line treatment of unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma. As...
About 80% of breast cancer cases are hormone receptor–positive, according to the American Cancer Society. Patients with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer generally are treated using therapy that inhibits both estrogen levels and cell-cycle activity, but about 90% of patients with metastatic...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Oliver Sartor, MD, and colleagues, the phase III VISION trial has shown prolonged progression-free and overall survival with lutetium-177–PSMA-617 (Lu-177–PSMA-617) radioligand therapy plus standard care vs standard care alone in previously...
Given the rarity of salivary gland malignancies—neoplasms that account for less than 1% to 5% of all head and neck cancers—limited evidence exists to support informed treatment guidance. The overall variability in the biologic behaviors of these neoplasms has further complicated clinical...
Gauri Varadhachary, MD, Clinical Professor in Gastrointestinal (GI) Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, died on June 5, 2021. She was 52. A member of the MD Anderson community for nearly 20 years, Dr. Varadhachary was remembered for her dedication to her patients, ...
Morocco is an Arab country in North Africa. It covers 716,550 square kilometers and has a population of nearly 36 million. The median age is 29.3 years. Morocco’s estimated gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 was $122 million. As of 2019, Morocco’s health budget was equivalent to 4.5% of the total ...
In the Korean phase III PRODIGY trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yoon-Koo Kang, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of neoadjuvant docetaxel, oxaliplatin, and S-1 (DOS) to D2 gastrectomy followed by adjuvant S-1 was associated with improved progression-free survival in...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Priority Review to therapies for multiple myeloma, cervical cancer, chemotherapy-induced neutropenia, and myelofibrosis. The FDA also granted a number of Breakthrough Therapy designations, including those for treatments in ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Eric Pujade-Lauraine, MD, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Ovarian 200 trial showed no significant improvement in progression-free or overall survival with avelumab alone or in combination with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) vs PLD alone in patients ...
In the treatment of relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma, a comparison of data from the ZUMA-5 trial with those of the external control cohort of the SCHOLAR-5 trial showed substantial improvement in all clinical endpoints with axicabtagene ciloleucel. John G. Gribben, DSc, FRCP, FRCPath,...
In an analysis from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) and the Dutch Hodgkin Late Effects and LATER cohorts reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Moskowitz et al developed a model for predicting the risk of breast cancer among childhood cancer survivors treated with chest...
In order to understand and eliminate disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes among transgender people, clinicians and researchers must have data. However, these data are very difficult to obtain because gender identity data are not routinely collected in oncology practice health records. A new ...
A simple, risk-assessment algorithm may change practice when it comes to selecting patients with advanced ovarian who can tolerate complex primary debulking surgery, according to data presented during the virtual edition of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021 Annual Meeting on Women’s...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on acute myeloid leukemia (AML), such as the use of venetoclax added to...
The use of palliative care in hospitals in the United States has steadily risen over the past decade, with almost universal access to services in large hospitals and academic medical centers. Despite this increased access and recommendations from ASCO that all patients with advanced cancer receive...
A research team has found that sufficient vitamin D levels at the time of diagnosis may be associated with improved outcomes among people with breast cancer. These findings were presented by Yao et al during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 10510). These findings are based on Kaiser...
A clinical trial in a racially diverse group of postmenopausal women with early breast cancer to study severe pain in the bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and nerves caused by aromatase inhibitor treatment has found that the symptoms were more commonly reported in Black and Asian patients than...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
In the face of old school mores, self-motivation and perseverance were needed to build a career as a nationally regarded blood and bone marrow transplant expert. “I was born and reared in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest of seven children of Irish-Italian parents who did not espouse professional...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
Even among a large group of cancer survivors who were mostly insured, college-educated, and had annual incomes above the national average, up to 10% delayed care in the previous 12 months because they simply could not afford out-of-pocket expenses like copays and deductibles. These findings were...
The U.S. right-to-die movement took root in the mid-1970s, when Derek Humphry helped his wife, who was dying of breast cancer, take her own life. Five years later, Mr. Humphry founded the Hemlock Society, the first right-to-die organization in the United States,1 and set off a firestorm of...
Although the National Cancer Act of 1971 has resulted in tremendous advances in cancer research, which have led to sharp declines in cancer mortality in the United States—from 1991 to 2018, there has been a 31% decrease in overall cancer death rates—and more than 17 million cancer survivors,1 much...