Natural killer (NK) cells derived from donated umbilical cord blood and activated with a novel bispecific antibody known as AFM13 (which targets CD16A and CD30) were shown to be effective in patients with pretreated and refractory CD30-positive lymphoma. The overall response rate was 89% in...
During the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients with pediatric cancer from lower- and middle-income countries faced a higher risk of all-cause mortality than those in high-income countries, according to data presented by Elhadi et al at the American Association for Cancer Research...
A variant of the CTLA-4 gene associated with autoimmune disease was found to be more frequent in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who experienced an exceptionally high response to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy and a higher rate of immune-related side effects than in a comparable cohort of ...
More than 10% of cases of recurrent ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast were de novo tumors that occurred independently of the primary lesion and had distinct genetic alterations, according to data presented by Kader et al during the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual...
An artificial intelligence (AI) model trained using sequential health information derived from electronic health records identified a subset of individuals with a 25-fold risk of developing pancreatic cancer within 3 to 36 months, according to results presented by Placido et al at the American...
Over the past decade, an improved understanding of kidney cancer biology together with the development of novel systemic therapies have substantially improved the outcomes of patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).1 Following extensive clinical investigations, combinations...
Recently, I had the honor of coauthoring a chapter with Eric P. Winer, MD, President-Elect of ASCO, on the evolution of clinical cancer care since the enactment of the National Care Act of 1971 for the book A New Deal for Cancer: Lessons From a 50-Year War, by Abbe R. Gluck and Charles S. Fuchs,...
“OlympiA is clearly a practice-changing trial, and olaparib should be offered to patients meeting the entry criteria for the study,” said Mark E. Robson, MD, Chief of the Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Dr. Robson was invited to discuss the findings of...
The OlympiA trial of adjuvant olaparib in patients with HER2-negative, high-risk early-stage breast cancer and BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations has now demonstrated a significant overall survival benefit, reducing the risk of death over placebo by 32% and yielding an absolute improvement of 3.8% at 3...
A rapid recommendation update to an ASCO guideline offers revised parameters for adjuvant therapy in patients with resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have stage IB to IIIA disease.1,2 The new guidance reflects the findings from two randomized clinical trials that assessed the use of...
“Refugees and displaced people may see their cancer treatment interrupted, or they may develop a new cancer while they are in host countries. They often present with advanced disease and suffer more complications. These patients have poor outcomes because of poor hygiene and living conditions, as...
Somatic genomic testing should be a routine part of clinical care for many patients with metastatic or advanced solid tumors, according to a new ASCO provisional clinical opinion.1 As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the expert panel found that genomic testing in oncology practice has...
Three grants for research that could transform cancer therapies have been awarded by the AACR-MPM Oncology Charitable Foundation Transformative Cancer Research Grants Program, an innovative partnership between the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the UBS Oncology Impact Fund...
When St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital was opened in 1962, childhood blood cancer, especially acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), had an exceptionally grim prognosis. However, years of unflagging clinical research led by Donald P. Pinkel, MD, the pediatrician who developed an aggressive...
Nothing can really prepare you for cancer, but it helped that I have dedicated my life in service to others as a minister and advocate for social justice and health equity in breast cancer survivorship. Before my own breast cancer diagnosis in 2016, I had spent years as a volunteer for several...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Yen Nien (Jason) Hou, PharmD, DiplOM, LAc, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on ...
Although The Social Conquest of Earth was published a decade ago, it is worth revisiting, because, as oncology luminary Harold Varmus, MD, stressed: “It is a tour de force that we ignore at our planet’s peril.” Its author, Edward O. Wilson, PhD, known as “the father of sociobiology,” died at the...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present the Hematology Expert Review, an occasional feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Abutalib, Kröger, and Mikulska focus on the challenges of providing cancer care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Here they present two...
On February 28, 2022, ciltacabtagene autoleucel was approved for treatment of adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma after at least four lines of therapy, including a proteasome inhibitor, an immunomodulatory agent, and an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody.1 Ciltacabtagene autoleucel is a...
In the recently published results of the RELATIVITY-047 trial,1 summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, the addition of relatlimab to nivolumab monotherapy was associated with improved progression-free survival compared with nivolumab alone in patients with previously untreated advanced,...
In a phase II/III trial (RELATIVITY-047) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hussein A. Tawbi, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues found that the addition of relatlimab, a lymphocyte-activation gene 3 (LAG-3)–blocking antibody, to nivolumab...
The Hamoui Foundation and LUNGevity Foundation recently announced the 2022 recipients of the first The Hamoui Foundation/LUNGevity Clinical Research Award for RET-Positive Lung Cancer. RET is a driver mutation found in approximately 1% to 2% of people with non–small cell lung cancer. The goal of...
The American Cancer Society has awarded more than $16 million in grants to establish Cancer Health Equity Research Centers (CHERC) at minority-serving institutions. The inaugural cohort of institutions includes the Arizona Board of Regents–University of Arizona, the University of Illinois at...
Guru P. Sonpavde, MD, Director of the Bladder Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, said the therapeutic landscape of urothelial cancer has been altered by PD-L1 inhibitors and antibody-drug conjugates. “The rationale for Cohort 3 was based on high response rates seen with a...
The combination of the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy and the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab yielded antitumor activity as second-line therapy in patients with platinum-refractory, checkpoint inhibitor–naive, metastatic urothelial cancer, according to the results of...
A novel screening platform flagged more than 95% of stage I pancreatic cancers, in addition to other early-stage malignancies, according to a pilot study published by Hinestrosa et al in Nature Communications Medicine. If validated by future studies, the approach may offer a new way to detect the...
New research published by Lowry et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found the rate of mammography participation by breast cancer survivors has been steadily declining since 2009, particularly among younger survivors. The researchers reviewed a nationwide commercial...
Gary Walker, MD, MPH, MS, a head and neck radiation oncologist at Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, Arizona, expressed concern about the disparities identified in the adoption of advanced radiation therapy techniques for patients with head and neck cancer. “Despite widespread availability of...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III IMmotion151 trial has shown no significant difference for the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sunitinib in patients ...
Advanced radiotherapy techniques may reduce the risk of severe and debilitating toxicity associated with radiation, but not all patients have equal access to these modalities, according to data presented at the 2022 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium.1 Retrospective analysis of the...
In this edition of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Antônio Drauzio Varella, MD, a Brazilian oncologist, educator, scientist, and medical science popularizer in the press and television, as well as a best-selling author. Antônio Drauzio Varella, MD, was born in 1943 in ...
Young women with nonmetastatic breast cancer have similar survival rates whether they are treated with mastectomy or lumpectomy, despite tumors that are typically more aggressive and discovered at a later stage compared to their older counterparts. These findings were from a recent study examining...
Positive lymph node status may not be a reliable indicator of the need for adjuvant chemotherapy, and sentinel node biopsy may be unnecessary in older women with certain low-risk cancers, according to a new study presented by Nicholson et al at the American Society of Breast Surgeons 23rd Annual...
The 1-year local COVID-19 restrictions negatively impacted breast cancer stage at presentation, time to treatment, and time to surgery at an urban safety-net hospital, increasing the vulnerability of an already high-risk population. These findings were from a recent study presented by Kapp et al at ...
In a Dutch retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, de Jong et al found that higher levels of stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) were associated with “excellent prognosis” in young women with node-negative triple-negative breast cancer who did not receive...
In the phase III TAPPAS trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Jones et al found that the addition of carotuximab to pazopanib did not improve progression-free survival in patients with advanced angiosarcoma. Carotuximab is an IgG1 antibody that binds endoglin, which is highly expressed on proliferating...
COVID-19 may have caught the world off guard in 2020, but in the 2 years since the pandemic began, several effective monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs have emerged to protect the most vulnerable patients. The ASCO Post spoke with Gunjan L. Shah, MD, a hematologic oncologist at Memorial...
In the phase II ARCS-M trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Hedy L. Kindler, MD, FASCO, and colleagues found that the antimesothelin antibody–tubulin inhibitor conjugate anetumab ravtansine did not improve progression-free survival vs vinorelbine as second-line treatment for patients with...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Maron et al, a retrospective study found that use of EGFR inhibitor therapy was associated with benefit in patients with unresectable or metastatic EGFR-amplified gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma. As stated by the investigators, “Subset analyses...
In a long-term follow-up of a Chinese phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wang et al found that the combination of anti–B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) and anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells produced durable responses and favorable survival outcomes in...
Two studies presented at the 2022 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium explored the role of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors in urothelial cancer: ATLANTIS and BAYOU.1,2 Results suggest that PARP inhibitors may be useful in certain genetic subgroups and perhaps in combination with...
Black adult patients are more likely than White patients to receive substandard gastrointestinal cancer surgery, according to a large study led by researchers at Yale Cancer Center published by Bakkila et al in JAMA Network Open. “The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light previously reported race...
In a population-based cohort study reported in JAMA Network Open, Schonfeld et al identified the incidence of immune-related adverse events among White patients aged ≥ 65 years with newly diagnosed melanoma treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. They compared the risk of these adverse events...
Guideline-directed medical therapy for the prevention and treatment of cardiotoxicity is improving quality of life and oncologic outcomes associated with breast cancer treatment, according to Jean-Bernard Durand, MD, FACP, FCCP, FACC, FHFSA, Professor of Medicine at The University of Texas MD...
In a single-institution retrospective study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Uppal et al found that telemedicine postoperative visits during the COVID-19 pandemic did not result in increased unplanned hospital readmissions vs in-person postoperative visits among patients undergoing elective...
In a Korean study reported in JAMA Surgery, Lim et al found that hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) with cytoreductive surgery did not improve progression-free survival vs no HIPEC in women with newly diagnosed stage III or IV epithelial ovarian cancer. A benefit of HIPEC was...
On April 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) for adult patients with large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) who are refractory to first-line chemoimmunotherapy or who experienced relapse within 12 months of first-line chemoimmunotherapy. It is not...
The combination of nivolumab plus cabozantinib achieved a continued survival benefit compared with sunitinib in patients with untreated clear cell metastatic or advanced renal cell carcinoma, according to a final overall survival analysis of the phase III CheckMate 9ER trial.1 Additionally,...
In a single-center study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Riner et al found that traditional eligibility criteria for clinical trials in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma excluded a higher proportion of Black vs White patients and identified factors that commonly led to exclusion. As...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Javier Cortés, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III DESTINY-Breast03 trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) vs ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) in patients with...