Novel targeted treatment strategies and new trial endpoints in recurrent, platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer were highlighted in a gynecologic cancer session at the Best of ASCO New Orleans. At the meeting, Karen McLean, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, presented...
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, and the global burden is on an inexorably upward trajectory. For the year 2012, there were 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths worldwide.1 It is predicted that by the year 2035, there will be 23.9 million new...
The updated results of the PIVOT1 study—reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Wilt et al and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—did not show a statistically significant difference between treatment and observation for the initial management approach to men with newly diagnosed...
New hematology research, presented at the Best of ASCO New Orleans meeting, may help to guide the use of stem cell transplant in hematologic malignancies. At the meeting, Guillermo Garcia-Manero, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and Tycel Phillips, MD, of the...
On September 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared the first 2D digital mammography system that allows patients to increase or decrease the amount of compression applied to their own breast before the mammogram x-ray is taken. “Regular mammograms are an important tool in...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg) for the treatment of adults with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) whose tumors express the CD33 antigen. The drug was also approved for the treatment of patients aged 2 years and older with...
New technology being developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Sunnybrook Research Institute is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help detect melanoma at earlier stages. The technology employs machine-learning software to analyze images of skin lesions and provide...
Although obesity and its associated metabolic dysregulation are established risk factors for many cancers, the biologic mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well understood. Now, the results from a systematic literature review by Himbert et al of human clinical studies exploring the...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued what it has called a “historic action,” making the first gene therapy available in the United States. The FDA approved tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for certain pediatric and young adult patients with a form of acute lymphoblastic...
The Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance (PSSCRA) will begin accepting applications for its 2018 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators on October 2, 2017. At least six New York City area–based scientists will each be awarded $200,000 per year—for up...
Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found a relationship between the genetics of tumors with germline BRCA1/2 mutations—and whether the tumor retains the normal copy of the BRCA1/2 gene—and risk for primary resistance to a common...
On August 21, Clinical Genomics announced they have implemented QIAGEN’s PAXgene circulating cell-free DNA tube blood sample collection in its Colvera colorectal cancer recurrence assay. Colvera, an integrated liquid biopsy solution, is designed to enable easy and accurate...
Vitamin C may “tell” faulty stem cells in the bone marrow to mature and die normally, instead of multiplying to cause blood cancers. This is the finding of a study led by researchers from Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health, and published by Cimmino et al in Cell....
THE WISTAR INSTITUTE has announced the appointment of scientist, medical oncologist, and National Academy of Medicine member Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, as Professor. Dr. Dang, the Scientific Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in New York, shapes scientific strategy at Ludwig, as...
In a bid to detect cancers early and in a noninvasive way, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, reported they have developed a test that spots tiny amounts of cancer-specific DNA in blood, and have used it to accurately identify more than half of 138 people with...
CARLOS L. ARTEAGA, MD, has been named Director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Dean of Oncology Programs at The UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Roles and Research at Vanderbilt DR. ARTEAGA IS CURRENTLY Director of the Center for Cancer Targeted...
BRACHYTHERAPY HAS a long track record in treating cancer, dating back to the first reported use of an implanted radioactive source in 1901, and brachytherapy for the treatment of prostate cancer dates back to 1914, when Pasteu and Degrais used a radium source inserted through a urethral catheter. ...
AS REPORTED by Joseph Chin, MD, of London Health Sciences Centre, London, Ontario, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO and Clinical Care Ontario (CCO) have issued a joint update to the prior CCO guideline on use of brachytherapy in patients with prostate cancer.1,2 The update ...
STAND UP TO CANCER (SU2C) and Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research are supporting a new translational research team to explore how chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy can be applied to pancreatic cancer. The approach uses specially modified immune cells to find and...
ALEX’S LEMONADE STAND FOUNDATION (ALSF) has announced the opening of the first-of-its-kind Childhood Cancer Data Lab (CCDL) with the mission of accelerating cures. ALSF first announced the CCDL at the National Cancer Moonshot Summit in Washington, DC, hosted by former Vice President Joe Biden and...
THE ADDITION of daratumumab (Darzalex) to a triplet induction regimen led to good responses in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, but not without toxicities. And in the treatment of myeloma bone disease, denosumab (Xgeva) in place of zoledronic acid preserved renal function and may be associated...
IMMUNOTHERAPY AND ANTIANGIOGENESIS were highlighted in a session on metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the Best of ASCO New Orleans meeting. Matthew Gubens, MD, MS, presented the selected abstracts from the ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Dr. Gubens is Associate Professor of Thoracic Medical...
Older adults continue to be proportionally underrepresented in oncology clinical trials, but the participation rate of adults aged 65 and older is increasing by “slow, incremental changes,” Stuart M. Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, noted in an interview with The ASCO Post. Prompting those changes are...
Angela H. Brodie, PhD, a pioneer in breast cancer research, passed away on June 7, 2017, from complications of Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer. An obituary for Dr. Brodie was published previously in the June 25, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post. Here, Dr. Balkees Abderrahman shares a...
On August 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) and granted Priority Review for brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) in patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). The sBLA and its acceptance is based on data from the phase III...
The following essay by Hope S. Rugo, MD, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. I was in...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Gary Deng, MD, PhD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present information on...
This past fall, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle opened an all-encompassing 9,222-square foot outpatient cellular immunotherapy clinic, specifically designed to serve patients participating in the center’s novel immunotherapy clinical trials, which mainly focus on chimeric...
Administering a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan and a blood test to patients with metastatic colorectal cancer may help to select those who would benefit from a targeted cancer treatment, a new study published by Khan et al in Gutreported. Researchers found that after only 2 weeks on the...
Through a 5-year observational study recently published by McElory et al in PLOS One, researchers at the University of Missouri (MU) found that women with increased levels of cadmium—a metal commonly found in foods such as kidney, liver, and shellfish, as well as tobacco—had an...
On August 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would pursue a strategic, new public health education campaign aimed at discouraging the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) by children. The agency plans to expand its “The Real...
On August 3, the leadership of Kids v Cancer, an advocacy group promoting pediatric cancer research, issued the following statement: Today, the U.S. Senate passed the FDA Reauthorization Act and with it, the RACE for Children Act. Now, new cancer drugs will be developed not only for...
Most cancer-related deaths are the result of postsurgical metastatic recurrence. A new Tel Aviv University (TAU) study published by Shaashua et al in Clinical Cancer Research found a specific drug regimen administered prior to and after surgery significantly reduces the risk of postsurgical cancer...
ASCO launched its Practice Engagement Program to help administrators, physicians, and other members of the care team navigate ASCO tools, programs, and resources available to help oncology practices respond to the changes occurring in the cancer care delivery system. The Practice Engagement...
Dedicating one’s career and livelihood to the pursuit of treating and possibly curing cancer is, for many, a decision that stems from deeply personal and, often, tragic experience. For 2017–2018 ASCO President Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, the event that greatly influenced his decision was the...
IN THE PHASE III TOWER TRIAL reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hagop Kantarjian, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues found that blinatumomab (Blincyto) treatment improved overall survival vs chemotherapy in heavily pretreated patients with B-cell ...
PERLMUTTER CANCER CENTER at NYU Langone has announced the creation of a multidisciplinary center of excellence to develop innovative approaches to diagnose, treat, and prevent pancreatic cancer. The new Pancreatic Cancer Center brings together laboratory researchers, surgeons, oncologists,...
In July, ASCO issued a comprehensive set of recommendations to remedy the problem of escalating drug pricing on cancer therapies.1 ASCO’s position statement comes at a time when new cancer drugs are routinely priced at $100,000 a year or more—imatinib (Gleevec) costs up to $146,000 a year2—causing...
Virtually every region and country in the world are experiencing population aging. Although developed regions still have the largest proportion of older persons, the absolute number of older adults is higher in developing regions of the world. Globally, more than 60% of all persons aged 65 now...
A phase I study reported by Howard A. Burris, MD, of Sarah Cannon Research Institute, Tennessee Oncology, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology has shown that the first-in-class agonist anti-CD27 antibody varlilumab is well tolerated and active in patients with advanced solid tumors....
Roswell Park Cancer Institute graduate student Danielle Twum has received the prestigious Emerging Scholars Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), who recognized her among the distinguished alumni of its Continuing Umbrella for Research Excellence (CURE) programs. The CURE programs are...
“In the sufferer let me see only the human being.” So said Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher and physician who espoused treating the patient rather than the illness, a philosophy that modern oncology had to relearn. This brief quote greets readers of a new book called Extreme Measures:...
The seemingly impossible-to-cure maladies of our $3 trillion per year health-care system have been hyperanalyzed, fiercely debated, and voluminously written about by the country’s leading public health experts, opinionated doctors, and policymakers on Capitol Hill. The Affordable Care Act extended ...
I first noticed a lump in my left breast in 2001 while taking a shower and shrugged it off. After all, men don’t get breast cancer. To assuage my wife’s concern that I at least have the lump examined, I consented to see our family physician, who agreed that men don’t get breast cancer because, he...
The text and photograph on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photo below is from the volume titled “The X-Ray Era: 1901–1915.” The photograph appears...
The websites listed here provide educational resources for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer and health-care providers on cancer-related fertility risks and treatment options, as well as financial assistance programs for fertility preservation services. Alliance for Fertility...
GUEST EDITOR Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology explores the unique physical, psychosocial, social, emotional, sexual, and financial challenges adolescents and young adults with cancer face. The column is guest edited by Brandon Hayes-Lattin, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine and Medical Director...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Sukhbinder Dhesy-Thind, MD, MSc, FRCPC, of Juravinski Cancer Centre, Hamilton Health Sciences, and colleagues, Cancer Care Ontario and ASCO have issued a clinical practice guideline on the use of adjuvant bisphosphonates and other bone-modifying...
WITHIN THE SPECTRUM of breast cancer subtypes, triple-negative disease is “particularly troubling,” but better scientific understanding of this malignancy is leading to advances in its treatment, according to breast cancer expert Nancy Davidson, MD. Triple-negative breast cancer does not express...
IS IT POSSIBLE to identify patients with cancer who are at risk for financial stress and intervene to reduce that risk? And could reducing financial stress—or financial toxicity, as it is often called in the context of cancer care—improve both health-related quality of life and physical health?...