Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has named three investigators as recipients of this year’s Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research. The award recognizes promising investigators aged 45 or younger for their efforts in advancing cancer research. The winners are Bradley E. Bernstein, MD,...
Ask any U.S. academic investigator whether research is hindered by duplicative or confusing federal regulations, and the answer is usually a resounding “Yes.” Now comes a report written by representatives of research administrators, former federal government officials, and principal...
Check out the latest ASCO Answers fact sheet on understanding blood test results. This one-page guide has information on complete blood count, white blood cell count, white blood cell differential, red blood cell count, platelet count, terms to know, and questions to ask the doctor. Download a...
FOEDUS, the Italian Foundation of Culture and Science, awarded the Supreme Medal of Excellence to oncologist Philip A. Salem, MD, Director Emeritus of Cancer Research at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston and President of the Salem Oncology Center at the Texas Medical Center. The...
Researchers have determined just how many lives are lost when effective investigational drugs are not approved in a timely manner. These delays in the process of anticancer drug approvals result in thousands of premature deaths each year, according to an analysis presented at the 16th World...
Discussant William J. Gradishar, MD, the Betsy Bramsen Professor of Breast Oncology at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University in Chicago, endorsed Dr. Shafaee’s conclusions, while highlighting caution in interpreting the results. “At first blush, it certainly is...
Cora N. Sternberg, MD, FACP, Chief of Medical Oncology at San Camillo Forlanini Hospital, Rome, Italy, discussed the implications of the METEOR trial. Everolimus (Afinitor) is considered standard second-line therapy, with a benchmark progression-free survival of 4.9 months in the RECORD-1 trial,...
Patient: “Doc, how much are these drugs going to cost me?” Physician: “They are expensive, and you can see our financial counselor to help you understand the costs.” Cancer care is not a black-and-white endeavor, and costs are considered a distasteful subject to be passed over in tactful silence. ...
Cora N. Sternberg, MD, FACP, Chief of Medical Oncology at San Camillo Forlanini Hospital in Rome, Italy, formally discussed CheckMate 025 at the Presidential Session of the 2015 European Cancer Congress as well as findings from the METEOR trial of cabozantinib (Cometriq) in metastatic renal cell...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
Although genetic testing has not turned up any inherited mutations that might explain the number of cancers that have plagued my immediate family, over the past 15 years, I have lost my father, aunt, and sister to the disease. In 2001, my husband, Wayne, died of acute promyelocytic leukemia, and...
The following essay by S. Vincent Rajkumar, 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. It was...
Bookmark Title: Pick Your Poison: How Our Mad Dash to Chemical Utopia Is Making Lab Rats of Us All Author: Monona Rossol Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Publication date: October 2015 Price: E-book, 210 pages Monona Rossol is a chemist and “industrial hygienist” who is a frequent contributor to...
Bookmark Title: AIDS Between Science and Politics Author: Peter Piot Publisher: Columbia University Press Publication date: May 2015 Price: $29.95; hardcover, 216 pages AIDS is a global phenomenon that recognizes neither national boundaries nor social strata. The AIDS pandemic was one of the...
S. Gail Eckhardt, MD, FASCO, is a tenured Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where she also holds the Stapp Harlow Chair in Cancer Research. She has been a faculty member at the institution since 1999 and was Division Head of Medical Oncology from 2006–2014. Currently, she...
Aromatase inhibitors have demonstrated efficacy in reducing the risk of breast cancer recurrence in hormone receptor–positive patients, but medication compliance can be limited by uncomfortable side effects, including musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. Musculoskeletal symptoms have been reported ...
In Europe, the field of geriatric oncology has a long history of development, and its organization and implementation continue to improve every day. This would not have happened without the strong commitment of national authorities to health policies, a critical success factor. Four Missions In...
The incidence of melanoma among children, adolescents, and young adults has reached epidemic proportions, increasing more than 250% over the past 4 decades, with young females at highest risk for the deadly cancer, according to a study1 by researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo,...
In 2014, the Institute of Medicine report Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life called for more conversations about improving care for those who are dying. Improving the care of the imminently dying is an important issue in the oncology...
Treatment decision-making for oncologists and their patients may become simpler through the use of graphic NCCN Evidence Blocks™, which were unveiled at the NCCN 10th Annual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies™ sponsored by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN¨). The first of the NCCN...
Ovarian cancer clinical trialists are forming a working group to develop a standard definition of pathologic complete response in ovarian cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Such agreement within the field potentially would enable the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider...
While inhibitors of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) or its ligand (PD-L1) are becoming established in melanoma, non–small cell lung cancer, and renal cell carcinoma, their efficacy is also being evaluated in numerous other tumor types, with promising results, according to studies presented...
Despite the proliferation of new drugs to treat prostate cancer, further progress is proving somewhat elusive, according to three trials presented at the 2015 European Cancer Congress. One study had positive results with orteronel maintenance therapy in patients with metastatic castration-resistant ...
You don’t need high-tech interventions to prove value. Sometimes we can use a medication that has been around a long time,” declared press conference moderator Brian D. Kavanagh, MD, MPH, FASTRO, of the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, Denver. “It is better to prevent the problem of ...
Bone is a common site of metastasis for prostate, breast, and lung cancers, and palliative radiotherapy is often used to treat these metastases. Although it is an effective therapy, severe pain flare following radiation occurs in about one-third of patients. It usually resolves within 10 days, but...
In 1997, after surviving a storm of high-court legal challenges, Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act went into effect, making Oregon the first American state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no right to assisted suicide in the Constitution but implied that...
Mercy Killers is a one-man show that details the consequences of a medical health-care catastrophe (breast cancer) in a family.1 This disturbing fictional account is actually a daily event in cancer centers: losing insurance for technicalities, losing a home because of an inability to pay the...
At a press conference held during the ASTRO Annual Meeting, ASTRO President-Elect Brian D. Kavanagh, MD, MPH, FASTRO, interim Chair of Radiation Oncology at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, Denver, said, “This study provides an important lesson for the field. We are lucky to...
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy appears to be preferable to three-dimensional (3D) conformal radiation therapy as part of treatment for patients with locally advanced (stage III) non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Compared with 3D conformal radiotherapy, intensity-modulated radiotherapy...
The reactions to the updated breast cancer screening guideline from the American Cancer Society (ACS) have been many, varied, and not consistently favorable but not surprising to Kevin C. Oeffinger, MD, who chaired the ACS panel that issued the guideline. Breast cancer screening “is an area that...
Bookmark Title: Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern MedicineAuthor: Cristin O’Keefe AptowiczPublisher: Gotham BooksPublication date: September 8, 2015Price: $17.00, paperback; 384 pages In the late 1740s, John Wesley—a British evangelist and...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
I have always prided myself on being healthy and fit, so when I started experiencing a chronic cough, difficulty breathing, and pain in my ribs and back, I thought they were the inevitable symptoms of a severe cold. At 42 and the mother of three children, it was inconceivable to me that I could...
Two years ago, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer of ASCO, proposed a unique clinical trial concept during an educational session on the challenges of delivering precision medicine services in a community setting at ASCO’s Annual Meeting. The idea was to design a clinical...
A Century of Progress The text and photographs 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. The photos below are from the volume titled “The X-ray Era: 1901–1915.” To view additional...
Bookmark Title: Shrinks: The Untold Story of PsychiatryAuthor: Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, with Ogi OgasPublisher: Little, Brown and CompanyPublication date: March 10, 2015Price: $28.00, hardcover; 352 pages Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, is the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at...
Launched in 2002 as a pilot program to promote excellence in oncology care, the origins of ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) date as far back as 1997, when the Institute of Medicine (IOM) created a National Cancer Policy Board to assess the state of cancer care in the United...
The genetic basis for inherited colorectal cancer is proving to be a much bigger and more complicated “pie” than was appreciated just a few years ago, according to Michael Hall, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Risk Assessment at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. “With next-generation...
New research shows that paired primary tumor and brain metastases share a common ancestor, but as the metastases develop in the brain, they exhibit novel genetic alterations that can activate a number of signaling pathways. More than half of the mutations represent potential therapeutic targets....
The 2015 European Cancer Congress (ECC), held recently in Vienna, represented the combined efforts of the European Cancer Organisation (ECCO), the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), and other partner organisations, constituting the largest European platform for oncology education. At...
A new study shows that deintensification of chemoradiation therapy translates to excellent pathologic complete response rates in low-risk human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated oropharyngeal cancer.1 Patient-reported outcomes showed that side effects declined after 8 weeks. The hope is that these...
Prostate cancer has been slow to catch up with breast cancer in terms of using biomarkers, but a new study represents progress in this regard. A genomic classifier called Decipher® provides important information that can be used to make treatment decisions for men with prostate cancer and a rising...
The treatment of Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia has been greatly impacted by an understanding of its genomics, according to Steven P. Treon, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Boston. Dr. Treon brought listeners up to date on ...
Discussant Clifford Hudis, MD, Chief of Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, highlighted neratinib’s benefits while also advocating caution in interpreting the results due to incomplete data, the serious side effect of diarrhea, and the potentially...
Treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) with tyrosine kinase inhibitors is “the golden child success story of targeted treatment,” Jerald P. Radich, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle, Washington, told attendees at the National...
Bookmark Title: The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives Author: Theresa Brown, RN Publisher: Algonquin Books Publication date: September 22, 2015 Price: $15.59; hardcover, 272 pages If health care were looked at through an architect’s eyes, nurses would be the girders holding the...
An evaluation of national treatment trends for ductal carcinoma in situ from 1991 to 2010 and their impact on survival revealed “a substantial shift in locoregional treatment patterns for ductal carcinoma in situ,” Mathias Worni, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, and...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
My diagnosis of pleural mesothelioma early in 2015 couldn’t have been more surprising. In one day, I went from being a healthy, vibrant woman with a busy career and the excitement of launching a promising new business venture to a woman facing the greatest challenge of her life. The fact that my...
Bookmark Title: Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book Author: Susan M. Love, MD Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books Publication date: September 8, 2015 Price: $24.00; paperback, 704 pages For more than 25 years, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book has been the best source of information for women with breast...