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Showing 5251 - 5300Circulating Tumor Cells in Metastatic Breast Cancer: Are We Afraid of the Truth?
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” —Galileo Galilei There are several “truths” in breast oncology that have been discovered over the years, become widely understood, and changed the way we practice. Prospective randomized studies have...
FDA Approval of Ceritinib for the Treatment of ALK-Positive Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, FDA oncologists Sean Khozin, MD, MPH, and Dikran Kazandjian, MD, discuss anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell...
Our First Charge: Fostering the Next Generation of Oncologists and Cancer Researchers
Gary H. Lyman, MD, MPH, FASCO, is Co-Director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research, a Full Member of the Divisions of Public Health Sciences and Clinical Research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Pharmacy at the...
More Collaboration Needed Between Oncologists and Primary Care Physicians
One of the most important cancer survivorship issues is the transition from oncologist to the primary care setting. With a growing population of cancer survivors, patients need to feel secure about their primary care provider having the tools to address their special needs. To shed light on this...
Patience Remains a Virtue: The Ongoing Quest to Optimize Adjuvant Endocrine Therapy in Breast Cancer
The most recent ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline update—summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post—represents the latest chapter in the ongoing evolution of adjuvant endocrine therapy for hormone-sensitive breast cancer.1 Rather than including a comprehensive review of the 2010 guidelines, this...
Adjuvant Endocrine Therapy for Hormone Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer: ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline Focused Update
ASCO has released a focused update of its clinical practice guideline on adjuvant endocrine therapy in women with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer.1 The focused update, formulated by Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues in the ASCO Update...
The Evolving Role of Surgery in Germ Cell Tumors
Over the past several decades, the role of postchemotherapy surgery for advanced testicular cancer has evolved with regard to patient selection, surgical planning, lymph node dissection, and surgical technique. To add clarity to this complex clinical setting, The ASCO Post recently spoke with...
No Overall Survival Improvement but Some Palliative Benefit With Gefitinib in Esophageal Cancer Progressing Postchemotherapy
In what may be the first randomized trial of systemic therapy in this setting, Susan J. Dutton, MSc, of University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and colleagues evaluated the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor gefitinib vs placebo in patients with esophageal cancer...
Supportive Care in Pediatric Patients With Cancer: Recent Developments in Treating Febrile Neutropenia
Recent developments in supportive care for children with cancer can be broken down into three categories: doing the simple things well, applying evidence-based medicine to daily practice, and extending the benefits to everyone, according to Scott C. Howard, MD, of St. Jude Children’s Research...
NEPA for Chemotherapy-Induced Nausea and Vomiting: Key Endpoints and Additional Analyses Show Strong Efficacy
For the prevention of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, NEPA, a novel combination of a neurokinin-1 (NK1) receptor antagonist and the 5-HT3 receptor antagonist palonosetron (Aloxi), has been studied in three pivotal trials that were recently published in the Annals of Oncology.1-3 Further...
Rational Strategies Are Advancing Combination Lymphoma Therapies
Rational strategies informed by knowledge of a drug’s molecular mechanisms are helping to bring new combinations of lymphoma therapies to the clinic, according to Anas Younes, MD, Chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The Challenge of Too Many Drugs...
Expert Point of View: Lauren C. Harshman, MD
In her discussion of the renal cell carcinoma studies at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Lauren C. Harshman, MD, Assistant Professor of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, suggested, “Given the plateau in efficacy with current treatments, there is space and need for agents with new...
Who Will Care for Patients With Cancer?
The workforce numbers show a disturbing trend. According to a recent study by ASCO, by 2025, overall demand for oncology services is projected to grow by 40%, but physician supply is predicted to increase by only 25%, generating a shortage of 2,258 oncologists providing full-time equivalent...
Does the United States Have the Best Health-Care System in the World?
Many concerns were raised and dire speculations predicted during the further implementation of the Affordable Care Act this year. So far, the trickling news is good: An estimated total of 20 million people gained coverage under the new law as of May 1,1 about 6 million enrolled in the law’s...
Jesse L. Steinfeld, MD, Past Surgeon General, ASCO President, Dies at 87
The 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health started a culture change in the way Americans viewed tobacco and their health, and has saved countless million of lives. But the 1964 Report remained scientifically ambiguous on certain vital issues, such as the effect smoking had on the...
Expect Questions and Perhaps Unrealistic Expectations
A recent study reporting the absolute 20-year survival benefit from contralateral prophylactic mastectomy was less than 1% for women with stage I and II breast cancer without BRCA mutations runs counter to common perceptions about the risk of contralateral breast cancer among these women and the...
Survival Benefit of Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy Less Than 1% at 20 Years, but Numbers of Procedures Have Increased
For women with stage I and II breast cancer without BRCA mutations, the absolute 20-year survival benefit from contralateral prophylactic mastectomy was less than 1%, regardless of age, estrogen receptor status, and cancer stage, according to a decision analysis study using a Markov model to...
Cancer Has Given Me Courage
In 1986, I was pregnant with my third child and excited to be interviewing for a job on the assembly line at a General Motors plant near my home in Brodhead, Wisconsin. Hiring requirements included a physical examination and a chest x-ray, which was done by my obstetrician to avoid any radiation...
Mark Del Beccaro, MD, Named Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer of Seattle Children’s Hospital
Seattle Children’s has announced that Mark Del Beccaro, MD, has been appointed as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) effective October 1, 2014. Dr. Del Beccaro, who currently serves as Vice President of Medical Affairs, will replace David Fisher, MD, who is retiring. “Mark has...
NIH Awards Two New Grants to Explore the Understanding of Genomics Research in Africa
Two grants totaling more than $300,000 will support studies on genomic literacy among Africans as it relates to research conducted in Africa by African investigators. The 3-year grants are part of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) program, funded by the National Institutes of...
Gynecologic Cancer Care: Collaboration With Resource-Challenged Ethiopia
Over the past 40 years, largely because of universal Pap screening, cervical cancer deaths have been drastically reduced in the United States and other wealthy industrialized countries. However, cervical cancer is still a leading cause of cancer death among women in resource-challenged areas of the ...
How Pharmaceutical Companies Are Partnering With Patient Advocates to Ensure Access to Oncology Care
Thomas P. Sellers, MPA, has been a tireless advocate for patients’ rights for more than 20 years. A 15-year prostate cancer survivor and only child, Mr. Sellers said it was his mother’s death from lung cancer when she was 51, followed by the death of his father from glioblastoma multiforme that led ...
A New Book Explores an Old Subject: Aging
Title: Lighter as We Go: Virtues, Character Strengths, and AgingAuthors: Mindy Greenstein, PhD, and Jimmie Holland, MDPublisher: Oxford University Press Publication date: September 2014Price: $27.95; Hardcover, 320 pages Death is the universal experience shared by Earth’s 7 billion or so...
Identifying Impending Death Helps Patients and Caregivers
Significant weight loss, cachexia, and being bedbound signal that a cancer patient is dying. However, identifying the specific signs that give physicians the ability to predict death is not well described in the literature. To better understand why predicting death is an important part of the care...
Program Offers Unique Intervention for Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia
If Anand P. Jillella, MD, has his way, no future patient with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) will experience a delay in treatment or lack for an expert consult—and few, if any, will die of this condition. Mortality from APL is much higher than most oncologists think, especially during the first ...
ASCO Experts Discuss the Latest Advances in Breast Cancer Care
The 2014 Breast Cancer Symposium will take place September 4 to 6. Direct your patients to www.cancer.net/blog to listen to ASCO Experts explain some of the research announced prior to the meeting and discuss what this research means for patient care. They can also read a summary of the research...
#WeConquerCancer: Creative Fundraisers From Committed Conquerors
Conquer Cancer Foundation donors are a consistently creative bunch when it comes to encouraging others to help conquer cancer: Tyler invited his friends and family to a charity spin class; elementary school students in Malibu, California, sold bracelets in honor of their principal; Steve competed...
A Conversation With Lidia Schapira, MD, the New JCO Art of Oncology Editor
The popular Art of Oncology (AOO) section of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) brings a human perspective to the art and science of practicing oncology. Lidia Schapira, MD, FASCO, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, became the Art of Oncology...
The Role of Integrated Palliative Care in Radiation Oncology
Three years ago, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, launched a Supportive and Palliative Radiation Oncology (SPRO) program to integrate generalist palliative oncology services, including the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of care, into radiation...
Best Way to Treat Mediastinal Lymphomas Is Still Unclear
A variety of treatment options used today can achieve good outcomes in patients with mediastinal lymphomas, according to James O. Armitage, MD, the Joe Shapiro Professor of Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He discussed some of the current evidence helping to refine...
Understanding the Impact of Results From CALGB/ SWOG 80405 and Other New Data in Colorectal Cancer
The Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB)/Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) 80405 trial, presented during the Plenary Session at this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, demonstrated that cetuximab (Erbitux) and bevacizumab (Avastin) confer similar benefits as first-line treatment with chemotherapy for KRAS...
Emerging Approaches in Acute Myeloid Leukemia
With the emergence of molecular diagnostics and new therapeutics, the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is entering a new era. Hugo F. Fernandez, MD, Associate Chief of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, spoke with The ASCO Post about how he...
Quest for Targeted Therapeutic ‘Cocktails’ Hits Roadblocks
The use of cutting-edge technology and bioinformatics to inform clinical decision-making in oncology is still a ways off, according to Mark Pegram, MD, the Susy Yuan-Huey Hung Professor of Oncology and Director of the Stanford Breast Oncology Program, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. At...
Treating Multiple Myeloma in 2014
The field of multiple myeloma is rapidly changing, and the shifts that are occurring impact the management of these patients, from initial diagnosis through multiple relapses. At the 9th Annual New Orleans Summer Cancer Meeting, Sergio A. Giralt, MD, Chief of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplant...
Targeting KRAS Mutations in Lung Cancer: No Longer Impossible
The KRAS mutation has long been considered “undruggable,” but new approaches in drug development may change this. The end result could be effective new treatment options for KRAS-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to David R. Gandara, MD, who described the emerging findings at...
Study Estimates Risk of Premature Menopause After Treatment for Hodgkin Lymphoma
Previous research has suggested that women with Hodgkin lymphoma who receive certain types of chemotherapy or radiotherapy are at increased risk of future infertility, but there was insufficient information to provide patients with detailed advice. In a study published in the Journal of the...
Jury Still Out on Interim PET for Response-Adapted Therapy in Hodgkin Lymphoma
Interim positron-emission tomography (PET) scans provide good prognostic information in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, but more research is needed to determine whether patients benefit when the findings are used to alter treatment, according to Oliver Press, MD, PhD, Professor at the University of ...
Oncology Practice: What Are the Factors Driving Change?
Clinical practice changes in response to new medical evidence, but not always immediately or all at once. So what else determines whether and how quickly practice changes in response to evidence, for instance, that a widely used drug is effective only in patients with a certain biomarker? In a new...
My Priorities for the Year Ahead
I am honored and privileged to lead ASCO during its 51st year, a year that promises to bring both challenges and opportunities to our members and our patients. As the theme for my Presidential term, I’ve chosen Illumination and Innovation: Transforming Data Into Learning, because we are positioned...
Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy an Effective Option for Early-Stage Lung Cancer Patients
Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is safe and effective in early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as it confers local control in 90% or more patients with T1 disease, according to Roy Decker, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale Cancer...
How Evolutionary Game Theory Is Offering Clues to Disrupt Cancer Cell Metabolism
Kenneth J. Pienta, MD, and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore are using the principles of evolutionary game theory to learn how cancer cells cooperate within a tumor to gather energy and metastasize. Game theory, the mathematic study of strategic decision-making that is commonly...
News of Mutations in PALB2 Gene Raising Risk of Breast Cancer Offers Opportunity to Explain Limits of Genetic Testing
The response among patients to news reports about mutations in a gene known as PALB2 raising the risk of breast cancer “has been predictable,” Theodora Ross, MD, PhD, wrote in The New York Times.1 As an example, Dr. Ross, Director of the Cancer Genetics Program at The University of Texas...
I Work for You
The following essay by James O. Armitage, MD, is excerpted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was co-edited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and at thebigcasino.org. The ...
Cancer Frontier: Bringing the New Sciences to an Old School
Cancer seems to have an endless supply of people who want to write about it. Why not? It’s an intriguing subject of life and death and struggle and hope, one that touches virtually every person of a certain age. However, the bookshelves are filled with cancer survivorship books, so to stand out, an ...
Potential of Liquid Biopsies in Detecting Cancer and Establishing Prognosis
Tests in development to detect circulating tumor cells that escape from solid tumors and travel through the blood, spreading cancer to new sites, may serve as an alternative to conventional tissue biopsy for early cancer diagnosis and gene-expression analysis over the next decade. According to...
Delivering Cancer Care in Low-Income Countries
In eealthy industrialized nations like the United States, escalating costs of cancer care have put the term “cost-effective care” on the forefront of health-care policy discussions. However, the cost issues we wrestle with in our $3 trillion health-care system are vague abstractions for much of the ...
Using Electronic Health Records to Improve Communication With Patients
Clinicians may argue that electronic health records (EHRs) interfere with the patient-physician relationship, and patients may complain about “distracted doctors,” too busy with computer screens to make eye contact, but according to Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, MA, of Duke University School of Medicine...
Ongoing Clinical Trials Actively Recruiting Patients With Intraocular Cancer
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of children and adults with intraocular cancers. The studies include pilot, phase 0, phase I, phase II, and observational trials evaluating new combination therapies, vaccines, optical...
Immunotherapy Research of James P. Allison, PhD, Has Led to a Paradigm Shift in the Treatment of Cancer
James P. Allison, PhD, has been bucking the status quo since he was a teenager growing up in the small agricultural town of Alice, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He first butted heads with authority figures when he was in high school and learned that his biology class had omitted the teaching of...
National Cancer Institute Launches the National Clinical Trials Network to Expedite Scientific Advances
In March, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) transformed its Cooperative Group Program into the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). Spurred by recommendations in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2010 report, A National Cancer Clinical Trials System for the 21st Century: Reinvigorating the NCI...
