As the number of solid organ transplants in the United States rises, cancer in this patient population is a growing concern. In fact, solid organ transplant recipients have an up to 50 times greater risk than the general population of developing skin cancers, and for kidney transplant recipients,...
New research suggests that regular exercise may improve the well-being of African American cancer survivors, but most survivors do not meet current recommendations for physical activity. The findings were published by Jennifer Beebe-Dimmer, MPH, PhD, and colleagues in the journal Cancer. Because...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology, Clark et al have developed radiation dosimetric models that can be used to predict the risk of acute ovarian failure in female survivors of childhood cancer. Study Details The cohort study involved 5,886 eligible 5-year survivors in the Childhood Cancer Survivor ...
ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) Round 1 of reporting is open for data abstraction. Round 1 will close on June 5, 2020, and final reports will be available approximately 4 weeks later. To get started, go to the registration portal at myqopi.asco.org/registration/login.aspx and...
Beginning this year, oncology specialists will have the opportunity to pursue a more flexible and less burdensome path to maintaining recertification. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)/ASCO Medical Oncology: Learning & Assessment (MOLA) is a lower-stakes Maintenance of...
OCE Insights is an occasional department developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this installment, Mitchell Chan, PharmD, BCPS, Regulatory Project Manager; Tamy Kim, PharmD, Associate Director of Regulatory ...
Given as maintenance therapy, the checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab significantly improved overall survival in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer and yielded a numerical but not significant benefit as well for patients expressing programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1), in...
With the motto of “leaving no one behind,” 420 delegates from 40 countries and 61 faculty members from 19 countries attended the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) in Geneva on November 14–16, 2019. SIOG serves as a platform to discuss a myriad of aspects...
George A. Fisher, Jr, MD, PhD, the Colleen Haas Chair in Medicine-Oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine, commented on the cell-free DNA methylation blood-based test from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study. The findings presented by Dr. Wolpin, he said, “lead us to the ...
AS A YOUNG CLINICIAN, I was interested in making a difference; it did not matter how much of a difference, as long as I could claim some patient benefit. And I really didn’t care what benefit: better survival, less local recurrence, shorter hospital stays, fewer narcotics—the specifics did not...
Studies have shown that all patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma had a preceding asymptomatic expansion of clonal plasma cells, clinically recognized as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance or smoldering multiple myeloma. According to C. Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, Professor of...
The invited discussant of the IMbrave150 trial, A. Craig Lockhart, MD, Professor of Medicine, University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, applauded the study for making patient-reported outcomes a prespecified endpoint and described the value of having this information. “The U.S....
ASCO recently endorsed the Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) guideline “Bone Health and Bone-Targeted Therapies for Prostate Cancer,” which was originally approved by CCO in 2017.1 The recommendations were based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of relevant research and clinical trial reports...
Previous studies have shown that men with low prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels (< 1.0 ng/mL) between ages 44 to 60 have a very low risk of developing prostate cancer in the future. A study published by Heijnsdijk et al in JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute investigated benefits ...
A new ASCO clinical practice guideline provides clinicians and other health-care professionals with evidence-based recommendations on genetic and tumor testing for women diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer.1 “We wanted to go over the evidence and make strong statements and recommendations...
Using antioxidants and other dietary supplements before and during adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer may increase the risk of recurrence and “to a lesser extent, death,” according to an analysis of dietary and nutritional data from a phase III trial, published in the Journal of Clinical...
On February 19, 2020, ASCO issued a news release about a position statement on state drug repository programs, outlining the Society’s support for drug repository programs solely for oral medications provided they are maintained within a closed system. The Society also makes recommendations to help ...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to treatments for non–small cell and small cell lung cancers, as well as for diffuse large-B cell lymphoma (DLBCL); Breakthrough Therapy designation to an antibody-drug conjugate for bladder cancer; and a double Fast...
Growing up on the Seneca Nation in Western New York, Rodney Haring, PhD, MSW, learned the concept of “The Good Mind,” largely from the matrilineal voices in his community. He calls this philosophy, which is one of the shaping principles of the Haudenosaunee people, “a strength from awareness of...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
At the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Nadine Tung, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, presented a multisite study called INFORM, run by the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium.1 It compared single-agent cisplatin with a “classic” combination of doxorubicin and...
Despite research showing that among patients with cancer, early advance care planning conversations lead to care that is in alliance with patients’ goals and wishes, especially at the end of life,1 most patients die without having discussions about their treatment goals and end-of-life preferences ...
Chetasi Talati, MD, Assistant Member in the Department of Malignant Hematology at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, commented on the study by Borthakur et al. “[Core-binding factor] acute myeloid leukemia (AML) represents a favorable-risk group of patients who are more chemosensitive and may...
Functional status impairment, limited mobility, comorbidities, polypharmacy, and other aging-related manifestations are common in older individuals. These conditions complicate the oncologic management of older adults, who are underrepresented in clinical trials, even though they form the majority ...
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) recently announced that an international team of experts will take a new approach to fighting gastric cancer. The SU2C Gastric Cancer Interception Research Team: Early Detection and Interception of Diffuse and Intestinal Gastric Cancer was introduced at the SU2C Scientific ...
On January 8, 2020, pembrolizumab was approved for treatment of patients with bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive, high-risk, non–muscle invasive bladder cancer with carcinoma in situ with or without papillary tumors who are ineligible for or have elected not to undergo cystectomy.1,2...
Patients with BRAF-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer “pose clinical challenges for us every day,” said Christopher M. Booth, MD, Professor of Medical Oncology and the Canada Research Chair in Population Cancer Care at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, the invited discussant of the...
The ASH 2019 Annual Meeting & Exposition featured countless important sessions and lectures. It would be impossible to attend all the symposia, oral presentations, poster presentations, and special events. Below, we have selected some presentation highlights to supplement our coverage of the...
Thierry Facon, MD, of Lille University Hospital in France, and Michael Jain, MD, PhD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, were interviewed by The ASCO Post on the second-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell products for treating multiple myeloma. According to Dr. Facon, essentially...
Two separate studies are investigating brentuximab vedotin plus nivolumab combination therapy for adults with Hodgkin lymphoma: one as first-line therapy and another as salvage therapy for relapsed/refractory classic disease, according to data presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting & Exposition...
FT596, a novel off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor natural killer cell (CAR-NK) product, was as effective as existing CAR T-cell platforms in killing cancer cells in vivo, and the combination of FT596 plus rituximab killed lymphoma cancer cells that were no longer responding to CAR T-cell...
Mosunetuzumab, an investigational bispecific antibody, demonstrated activity in preliminary studies of patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), including those who are refractory to or relapsed after third-line chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. With further study, mosunetuzumab,...
Among children, adolescents, and young adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the bispecific T-cell engager blinatumomab improved event-free survival and overall survival, compared with standard chemotherapy, as post-reinduction consolidation therapy at first relapse prior to...
Basem M. William, MD, MRCP (UK), FACP, Director of the T-Cell Lymphoma Program and Member of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, said many of the new-generation bispecific antibodies are “highly promising.” He said they “are...
Are second-generation bispecific antibodies the next big thing in lymphoma? Studies of these drugs were among the highlights of the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition. Years ago, the bispecific T-cell engager blinatumomab validated the concept of bispecific...
Julie N. Graff, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University and Knight Cancer Institute, discusses study findings that show pembrolizumab plus enzalutamide after progression on enzalutamide produced clinical activity and can lead to durable responses, with a manageable safety profile. The phase...
The addition of the checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to chemotherapy with carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel failed to significantly improve pathologic complete response rates compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with early high-risk, locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer. According...
In a study published by Frankenfeld et al in Cancer Epidemiology, researchers found racial disparities in how the presence of cancer-related diagnostic and treatment technology is related to colorectal cancer patient outcomes in Georgia. The findings suggest that the hospital capacity and...
A comprehensive molecular study of endometrial cancer published by Dou et al in Cell has further defined the contributions of key genes and proteins to the disease. The overview suggests new treatment approaches that could be tailored for each patient, as well as potential biologic targets for...
ASCO and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have published an update to a joint guideline on systemic therapy for stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without driver mutations.1 “The treatment of stage IV NSCLC has become increasingly more complicated, and, with the advent of immunotherapy and the...
Andrea Wang-Gillam, MD, PhD, Clinical Director of the GI Oncology Program and Director of Developmental Therapeutics at Washington University in St. Louis, was the invited discussant of SEQUOIA and HALO 109-301. She tried to make sense of the two negative studies of pegylated agents in advanced...
In patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma, platinum chemotherapy is the standard of care in the first-line setting; however, for patients who are ineligible for platinum treatment, the alternative standard—gemcitabine plus carboplatin—can be poorly tolerated and have limited durability and...
In a phase I/II trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Liu et al found that anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) natural killer (NK) cells produced rapid responses in patients with CD19-positive lymphoid tumors, without the toxicities associated with CAR T-cell therapy in this...
The use of bridging therapy before treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel was associated with worse overall survival in univariate, multivariate, and propensity score–matched analyses performed on data from the U.S. Lymphoma CAR T Consortium, investigators reported at the 2019 American Society of...
A novel, first-in-class, small molecule, hypoxia-inducible factor 2 alpha (HIF2A) inhibitor showed single-agent activity in heavily pretreated patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma. These results from a phase I/II study will be presented by Toni Choueiri, MD, and colleagues at...
A report published by Biller et al in Cancer Prevention Research provides new details about a recently discovered condition in which childhood cancer survivors develop numerous colorectal polyps, despite not having a hereditary susceptibility to the condition. The condition—known as...
Marcia Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico and Adjunct Professor of Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, congratulated the investigators on the conduct of the PANGEA trial and the outcomes it achieved for patients. “When...
A personalized approach to selecting antibody therapy for patients with newly diagnosed stage IV gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma resulted in a 1-year overall survival rate of 66% and a median overall survival of 16.4 months in the PANGEA study (see Table 1).1 The study used a novel clinical...
As reported by James L. Mulshine, MD, and colleagues in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) is developing the Early Lung Imaging Confederation (ELIC) “to serve as an open-source, international, universally accessible environment to...
Compared to individuals without a history of dengue virus infection, those previously infected with the virus had over twice the risk of developing leukemia, with the highest risk occurring between 3 and 6 years after infection. The results of a study conducted in Taiwan were published by Chien et...