In a study of data from men in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kelly et al found that body mass index (BMI) increases during adulthood that lead to obesity are associated with an increased risk of...
The most comprehensive study of its kind to date found that older women enjoy the same benefits from breast reconstruction following mastectomy for breast cancer as younger women, without a significant increase in the risk for complications. As with patients across all age groups, the benefits of...
Medical researchers at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington have found evidence for a link between prostate cancer, which affects millions of men aged 50 and older, and Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that affects children and young adults. The results of the study, reported by Kedage et al...
Patients with disseminated advanced cancer who undergo surgery are far more likely to endure long hospital stays and readmissions, referrals to extended care facilities, and death, University of California (UC) Davis researchers have found. Their study, published by Bateni et al in PLOS One,...
CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly-owned nonprofit of ASCO, announced on October 20, 2016, that more than 1 million patient records are now in the CancerLinQ™ platform. In addition, 70 practices have signed agreements to participate in CancerLinQ, representing more than 1,500 oncologists. “We...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Laura Q. Chow, MD, of the University of Washington, and colleagues, a fixed-dose reduced-frequency pembrolizumab (Keytruda) regimen produced durable responses in the phase IB KEYNOTE-012 expansion cohort of patients with recurrent or metastatic...
In the spring of 2011, I was feeling so fatigued I needed to rest after walking just a few steps to the kitchen and not doing anything more strenuous than making a cup of coffee. Fortunately, I have a wonderful primary care physician who takes me seriously when I have a complaint about my health,...
A first-of-its-kind joint report from the American Cancer Society and the Alliance for Childhood Cancer has compiled the latest information related to pediatric cancer, including statistics and trends; a current list of drugs used to treat pediatric cancers; ongoing pediatric cancer clinical...
Two major developments in oncology—the dramatic success of some immunotherapies and targeted drugs and an equally dramatic rise in the cost of care—have created policy issues, more serious than ever, regarding access to care. It is a time “of extraordinary opportunities combined with inequities in ...
Could the quality of life of patients with advanced-stage cancer be improved by personal delivery of nutritious, medically tailored meals? Researchers at the New York University School of Medicine Perlmutter Cancer Center think so, and they have set out to prove it in a randomized clinical trial....
Although clinical trials are helpful in determining the effectiveness of a specific drug across a patient population, they are not as reliable at pinpointing how well a particular patient will respond to the drug or dosing regimen or how the drug may impact the patient’s quality of life from...
The field of cancer vaccines may be reinvigorated by a new understanding, and the therapeutic leveraging, of neoantigens. Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston are exploring this novel approach as a means of protecting patients with high-risk melanoma from recurrence. Early...
Perhaps more than any other book in recent memory, When Breath Becomes Air has struck a chord among readers, both inside the medical community and among the public, desiring an honest and philosophical consideration of death. The autobiographical account of Paul Kalanithi, MD, a physician diagnosed ...
In the phase III CheckMate 141 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Ferris et al found that nivolumab (Opdivo) increased overall survival vs standard therapies in patients with recurrent platinum-refractory squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Study Details In this...
ASCO Answers Palliative Care is an informative booklet that shows how palliative care is used to manage symptoms and side effects; help with practical concerns; address spiritual questions; and support family, friends, and caregivers at any stage of cancer. It also gives practical advice about...
By including a planned gift to the Conquer Cancer Foundation in your estate plans, you can help make a dramatic difference for cancer patients years—even decades—into the future. With just one small change to your will or trust, your planned gift of any size will deliver a big impact, and: Your...
Arti Hurria, MD, a geriatric oncologist at City of Hope in Duarte, California, is the first graduate of ASCO’s Leadership Development Program to be elected to ASCO’s Board of Directors. Within 5 years of completing the program, Dr. Hurria went from learning leadership skills to applying them to...
As part of ASCO’s ongoing effort to fully support all members of the cancer care team, it recently created three new member categories: Advanced Practice Providers, Practice Administrators, and Patient Advocates (see sidebar). Originally part of the Affiliated Health Professionals member category, ...
ASCO is pleased to announce that oncology practices can now complete all of their Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS)1 requirements through the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) platform. All users will be able to use the QOPI system to fulfill the Oncology Measures Group set of 7...
“Early intervention might prevent lymphedema progression,” Alphonse Taghian, MD, PhD, said at the 18th Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago, but the lack of a universal definition of lymphedema and agreement on how to optimally measure it impedes phase III studies to test that...
In a study using SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) data reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Welch et al found that screening mammography has resulted in a substantial increase in detection of small breast tumors, many of which represent overdiagnosis, accompanied by...
In the phase III S-TRAC trial reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Ravaud et al, adjuvant sunitinib (Sutent) significantly prolonged disease-free survival vs placebo in patients with high-risk renal cell carcinoma after...
In patients with advanced lung or thymus carcinoid receiving everolimus, pasireotide LAR, or the combination of the two drugs, statistically significant positive impact was seen on proportion of patients’ progression-free rate at 9 months (primary endpoint) in all three arms, more relevant in ...
Two separate randomized trials presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) affirmed the value of stereotactic radiosurgery as an option for postoperative treatment of the surgical cavity of resected brain metastases, potentially avoiding the cognitive...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On September 13, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...
Ipilimumab (Yervoy) was associated with prolonged progression-free survival—but not overall survival—compared with placebo in men with asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic chemotherapy-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer without visceral metastases, according to a...
As reported by Langer et al in The Lancet Oncology, findings in a phase II cohort of the multicohort KEYNOTE-021 study showed that the addition of first-line pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to carboplatin/pemetrexed (Alimta) significantly increased the response rate in patients with advanced nonsquamous...
The addition of the CD38-targeted antibody daratumumab (Darzalex) to lenalidomide (Revlimid)/dexamethasone improved progression-free survival in patients with previously treated multiple myeloma, according to the results of the phase III POLLUX trial reported by Dimopoulos et al in The New England...
The combination of the selective CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib plus letrozole significantly improved progression-free survival in hormone receptor–positive advanced breast cancer. When ribociclib was added to letrozole, progression-free survival improved by 44% compared with letrozole alone,...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) significantly improved progression-free and overall survival vs platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with previously untreated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ≥ 50% PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) expression and no sensitizing EGFR...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Loehrer et al found that the 2006 Massachusetts health-care reform has resulted in increased rates of resection and reduced emergent resection for colorectal cancer. The study used the Hospital Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient...
In a phase III trial reported at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Mirza et al, maintenance therapy with the PARP (poly ADP ribose polymerase) 1/2 inhibitor niraparib significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo...
In a phase III trial reported at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Hortobagyi et al, first-line treatment with ribociclib, a selective inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6), resulted in significantly longer...
In the phase III IMPRINT trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Rini et al found no overall survival benefit of adding the multipeptide cancer vaccine IMA901 to sunitinib (Sutent) in the first-line treatment of locally advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma. IMA901 contains 10 tumor-associated ...
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy with an anthracycline plus ifosfamide was associated with significant survival gains in patients with soft-tissue sarcoma of the trunk or extremities who are at high-risk of recurrence, in an interim analysis that led to the early discontinuation of a trial presented by...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Etienne et al, long-term follow-up in the French Stop Imatinib (STIM1) study indicates imatinib can be safely stopped in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) with undetectable minimal residual disease sustained for at least 2 years. Study...
The addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to letrozole therapy significantly improved progression-free survival in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive advanced breast cancer, reported Hortobagyi et al at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology...
A partnership that added health navigation services to 2-1-1 call centers helped a significant number of underserved Texans receive cancer control measures such as Papanicolaou (Pap) tests and smoking cessation help, according to a study (PR12, C49) presented at the 9th Association for Cancer...
Triple-negative breast cancer in African American women is much more likely to lack the androgen receptor protein compared with triple-negative breast cancer in European American women, and this may contribute to the racial disparity in survival outcomes among these two populations, according to a...
In a Chinese phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Sun et al found that adding induction treatment with cisplatin, fluorouracil (5-FU), and docetaxel (TPF) to concurrent chemoradiotherapy improved failure-free survival in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Study Details...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Luo et al found that a modified staging classification based on the European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS) and the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging classifications may improve distinction among risk groups in pancreatic...
The release of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety Communication “alerting women about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests”1 and recommending against using these tests comes not as a result of startling new studies, but from an...
Despite my breast cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I feel really lucky. My cancer was detected relatively early, stage IIB, during a routine mammogram screening—a test that many of my lesbian friends skip because they don’t want to deal with a medical system steeped in a heterosexual culture that is...
We pass them every day on our way to the hospital, the street dwellers of our town in India. Their home consists of a plastic sheet suspended between four poles on the pavement. One day, two women sat under the plastic sheet in happy conversation. It had rained heavily the previous night, and I...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently announced a collaboration with the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation to incorporate the Foundation’s wealth of genomic and clinical data about the disease into the NCI Genomic Data Commons. NCI’s Genomic Data Commons is a publicly available database...
Susan M. O’Brien, MD, one of the nation’s foremost leukemia experts, told The ASCO Post that she wanted to become a doctor since her earliest memories. “The idea of being able to help sick people always appealed to me,” said Dr. O’Brien, who was born in Manhattan but spent her formative years in...
With impeccable timing, as well as considerable forethought and planning, Dr. Paice and colleagues have produced a superb evidence-based guideline on “Management of Chronic Pain in Survivors of Adult Cancers.”1 (See this issue of The ASCO Post.) This summary of well-informed and thoroughly...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Judith A. Paice, PhD, RN, of Northwestern University, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on management of chronic pain in survivors of adult cancers.1 The guideline was based on literature review by an expert panel,...
In a phase III trial (CA184-156) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Martin Reck, MD, PhD, of LungenClinic Grosshansdorf, Germany, and colleagues, the addition of the anti–CTLA-4 (cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated protein 4) checkpoint inhibitor ipilimumab (Yervoy) to...
The advent of more effective systemic therapies, which extend patients’ lives, has also resulted in an increasing incidence of brain metastases, for which clinicians must determine appropriate treatment. Whole-brain radiotherapy has been the traditional treatment modality, but stereotactic...