“Nodal status remains the single most important prognostic marker in outcomes for women with estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. For that reason, it makes sense to think about optimizing adjuvant therapy, including endocrine treatments, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy,”...
In a study published by Abashidze et al in JAMA Network Open, the investigators found that Black men were at least 23.6% less likely than White men to undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) following an elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test result. They also found that Hispanic and Asian...
In a recent study published by Stacey Fedewa, PhD, and colleagues in the journal Cancer, unemployed individuals were less likely to have health insurance and be up to date on getting recommended cancer screening tests. Analyses revealed that their lack of health insurance coverage accounted for...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Apar Kishor Ganti, MD, MS, and colleagues found that the incidence of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has decreased in the United States in recent years. They also found that prevalence has increased, likely in association with more effective treatment and...
About 9% of patients with cancer experience complications while hospitalized that lead to a deterioration in their condition, a transfer to the intensive care unit, or death. A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis is developing a machine learning–based early...
New evidence suggests that adding the Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor ibrutinib to a standard chemotherapy regimen may improve survival among younger people with a specific form of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The findings, published by Wyndham Wilson, MD, PhD, in Cancer Cell,...
In a cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Mariana Chavez-MacGregor, MD, MSc, and colleagues found that patients with cancer infected with COVID-19 had poorer outcomes vs patients without cancer if they had received recent cancer treatment. Patients with cancer who had not received recent...
The invited discussant of the FIRSTMAPP study, Rocio Garcia-Carbonero, MD, of Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Madrid, emphasized that pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma are rare tumors, and once they become metastatic, which is even more rare, there are few treatment options. “This is very...
Results from the phase II FIRSTMAPPP study support the potential use of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor sunitinib in two rare neuroendocrine malignancies—pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma. Sunitinib significantly improved the primary endpoint of progression-free survival vs placebo, according to...
The immune checkpoint protein B7-H3 may be a potential new target in treatment-resistant prostate cancers, according to two studies presented recently at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021. “Virtually every prostate cancer cell expresses some degree of B7-H3, which...
Results of the European Society for Medical Oncology’s (ESMO) Women for Oncology monitoring and authorship studies were recently published by Berghoff et al in ESMO Open. They revealed that women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions despite making up an increasing proportion of...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yadav et al found that germline pathogenic variants in the cancer predisposition genes ATM, BRCA2, CDH1, CHEK2, and PALB2 were associated with an increased risk of invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast, with no association with BRCA1...
Amar U. Kishan, MD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, discusses findings from a meta-analysis of clinical trials in patients with localized prostate cancer. The phase III results suggest that the use of androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) or prolonged adjuvant ADT with radiotherapy may...
The invited discussant of the study on out-of-pocket costs of cancer care, Michaela A. Dinan, PhD, Co-Leader of Cancer Prevention and Control at Yale Cancer Center and Associate Professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Connecticut, underscored the study’s key...
Rising cost-sharing requirements from private insurance have exacerbated the financial burden for patients with cancer, according to research presented at the 2021 ASCO Quality Care Symposium.1 Analysis of claims data on the four most prevalent cancers in the United States—female breast,...
In a study published by Magenau et al in the journal Blood Advances, researchers found that patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who received a form of type I interferon after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant experienced reduced rates of disease relapse. Additionally,...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to agents for several kinds of lymphoma, as well as nasopharyngeal cancer; a Breakthrough Therapy designation for a treatment for patients with NTRK-positive advanced solid tumors; and Fast Track designation for...
The invited discussant of this study on patient-reported outcomes, Areej El-Jawahri, MD, Associate Director of Cancer Outcomes Research and Education Program and Director of Bone Marrow Transplant Survivorship Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said these findings underscore the importance...
According to data presented during the 2021 ASCO Quality Care Symposium,1 1-month changes in patient-reported outcomes may predict treatment response and survival outcomes in patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancers. The results of a prospective study of 159 patients with metastatic...
Survivorship care plans are an important tool to help cancer survivors transition from active treatment to follow-up care, but a study published by Timsina et al in Supportive Care in Cancer has found that a number of vulnerable groups have a lower likelihood of receiving such plans. Cancer...
Findings from a novel telemedicine effort to screen patients for lung cancer screening during the COVID-19 pandemic show that virtual single-visit screenings may be just as effective as single-visit screenings done in person, according to a study presented by Magarinos et al at the American College ...
On October 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 to include children aged 5 through 11 years. The authorization was based on the FDA’s thorough and transparent evaluation of the data that...
Cleveland Clinic researchers have shown that diet-associated molecules in the gut may be associated with aggressive prostate cancer, suggesting dietary interventions may help reduce risk. These findings were published by Reichard et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. While...
The incidence of pancreatic cancer—which historically has been higher in men than in women—has increased among both men and women during the past decade, with a significantly greater relative increase observed in women younger than age 55 years, and especially among those aged 15 to 34 years. These ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Bancroft et al, the first round of prostate cancer screening in the IMPACT study of men with pathogenic variants in mismatch repair genes showed an increased risk of prostate cancer in carriers of MSH2 and MSH6 variants compared with noncarrier controls. As...
Patients with multiple myeloma lacking an antibody response to COVID-19 vaccine may also fail to mount a T-cell response, according to research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Concerningly, this scenario was most common among patients actively treated with anti-CD38 and...
A primary endpoint analysis of the NRG Oncology phase III NRG-GU003 clinical trial, which compared hypofractionated postoperative prostate bed radiotherapy (HYPORT) to conventional postprostatectomy radiotherapy (COPORT) for men with prostate cancer, determined that treatment with HYPORT yielded no ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Ademuyiwa et al, a survey of U.S. breast oncologists showed that physicians believe that Black women with breast cancer face more barriers to genetic counseling and testing compared to White women with breast cancer. Study Details The study...
Even though patients with metastatic colorectal cancer younger than age 50 tend to be more fit and receive more intensive treatment than older patients, survival for both groups is roughly the same, according to a study published by Lipsyc-Sharf et al in the Journal of the National Cancer...
Youssef Zeidan, MD, PhD, of Florida International University and the Lynn Cancer Institute, discusses the advances in radiotherapy planning and delivery that have reduced cardiac radiation exposure in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who are treated with radiotherapy and trastuzumab...
Both dose-escalated radiation therapy and short-course androgen-deprivation therapy (SADT) have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Researchers then posed a new question—is giving both modalities upfront to newly diagnosed patients of benefit? Findings ...
Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) awaiting liver transplantation may benefit from noninvasive treatment with external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) but are rarely given this therapy, according to a new analysis of U.S. national data. Findings were presented by Nima Nabavizadeh, MD, at the...
The novel WEE1 inhibitor adavosertib, given after induction chemotherapy, yielded a 65% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared with active monitoring in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and TP53/RAS mutations, according to the randomized phase II FOCUS4-C trial....
Part 2 of the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer—provided by the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries—has found that patients with cancer in the United...
“KRAS G12C inhibitors as monotherapy yield a relatively low overall response rate, but when you combine them with an EGFR [epidermal growth factor receptor] inhibitor, the response rate is nearly double,” said Federica Di Nicolantonio, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology at the University of Turin in...
Adagrasib, a covalent inhibitor of KRAS G12C, combined with cetuximab, showed activity in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer in the phase I/II KRYSTAL-1 trial, as presented during a Presidential Symposium at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021 by Jared Weiss, MD,...
The time required to secure prior authorization approvals for radiation therapy equates to a financial impact of more than $40 million annually for academic medical centers, according to a new study presented by Bingham et al at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual...
Moderator of the session on oncology drug pricing, Arjun Gupta, MBBS, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, observed that generics alone may be insufficient to slow the astronomical rise of drug prices. “The general thinking has always been that generics...
A study presented by Manning et al at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting (Abstract 53) showed that interventions to help Black patients overcome obstacles to completion of treatment can impact disparities in survival outcomes between Black and White patients...
Despite the promise of precision oncology, the cost-effectiveness of targeted treatments remains open to debate. According to Aakash Desai, MD, MPH, there is an urgent need for drug-pricing reform, given the average expenditure of Medicare Part D. An analysis of the Medicare database presented...
The first indication I had stage IV lung cancer was a persistent cough during the beginning of the cold-and-flu season in the fall of 2013. I was 35 years old, never smoked, and in otherwise excellent health, so I ignored the cough for several months until I noticed my breathing had also become...
The delivery of high-quality cancer care relies on a vast network of dedicated experts, some of whom work assiduously behind the scenes, building and modernizing the very architecture on which the cancer community operates. One such person was Clayton Dunklin Pruett, an engineer by training, who...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Siemens Healthineers recently announced the collaborative development of a global education program focused on enabling the implementation of consistent, high-quality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in radiation oncology. The program will...
Although overall cancer cases are declining, they are on the rise in older adolescents and young adults (AYAs). Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced the establishment of the Lisa and Scott Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers (the Stuart Center), expanding ...
Guest Editor’s Note: Cancer-related cognitive difficulties, experienced by many cancer survivors, include perceived or objective deficits in memory, attention, and concentration, which can negatively impact quality of life. Given the important role that healthful sleep plays in cognitive processes, ...
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,...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and BostonGene Corporation recently announced a strategic alliance to advance the development and clinical integration of multiplatform biomarker signatures. Expands Upon Existing Collaborations The alliance brings together BostonGene’s innovative...
The number of deaths related to breast cancer are increasing at an alarming pace worldwide. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) 2020 report, approximately 2,088,849 new cases and 627,000 deaths related to breast cancer occurred in 2018.1 More than 55% of these deaths occurred in low- to ...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced a $25 million gift from Louis V. Gerstner, Jr, to create the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr Physician Scholars Program. Designed to support the innovative research of physician-scientists who are early in their career at MSK, the program will...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Robert A. Winn, MD, Director of VCU Massey Cancer Center, Richmond, Virginia. In 2020, he became the first Black physician to lead a National Cancer Institute–designated cancer center. Among other...