In a single-center phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Andrea Cercek, MD, and colleagues found that hepatic arterial infusion of floxuridine in combination with systemic gemcitabine/oxaliplatin produced high response and disease control rates and was associated with promising overall survival ...
In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sagar Lonial, MD, and colleagues found that lenalidomide significantly improved progression-free survival vs observation in patients with intermediate- or high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma. As noted by the investigators,...
The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab improved overall survival compared with chemotherapy as first-line therapy for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression of at least 1%, according to the results of CheckMate 227....
The third-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor osimertinib extended overall survival compared with the older tyrosine kinase inhibitors gefitinib and erlotinib in patients with EGFR-mutated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to late-breaking final overall survival results of the ...
The invited discussant of the two trials in cervical and endometrial cancers presented at the ESMO Congress 2019 was Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy, who commented on what she called “exciting results in cancers with unmet needs.” Dr. Colombo noted: “The studies...
Immunotherapy studies reported at the ESMO Congress 2019 yielded encouraging outcomes in patients with advanced cervical cancer that is microsatellite-stable and patients previously treated for advanced endometrial cancer. The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab, with two different dosing...
At the ESMO Congress 2019, ovarian cancer was a topic of heightened interest, particularly due to findings reported in several important phase III studies of PARP inhibitors in front-line maintenance therapy for patients with newly diagnosed advanced disease—and not just those with BRCA mutations....
Immunotherapy has changed the treatment paradigms for melanoma, lung cancer, bladder cancer, and renal cancer. Now, checkpoint inhibitor therapy is making inroads in triple-negative breast cancer—one of the most difficult-to-treat aggressive types of breast cancer. Late-breaking results of the...
CDK4/6 inhibitors improve overall survival in advanced breast cancer, according to results of two important phase III trials reported at the ESMO Congress 2019. Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles Women’s Cancer Research Program, presented the findings from the...
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019, held September 27 to October 1 in Barcelona, welcomed clinicians, researchers, journalists, and exhibitors from around the world to hear advances across the oncology spectrum, in both clinical medicine and basic research. For this...
Results from a preliminary research study showed the majority of patients aged 85 years and older were still alive in the short-term after undergoing segmental colectomy for stage II and III colon cancer. Kaur et al presented these findings at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Priyanka Sharma, MD, and colleagues, biomarker analysis among women with triple-negative breast cancer treated with adjuvant doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide in the SWOG 9313c trial has confirmed a 44-gene DNA damage immune response signature and...
A new JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics (JCO CCI) article highlights the challenges in—and need for—obtaining real-world evidence for assessing the effectiveness of precision medicine on areas such as survival, quality of life, cost, and health disparities. The paper, titled “Clinical Molecular...
In women with advanced ovarian cancer responding to first-line chemotherapy, maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor niraparib significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 38% overall and by 60% in women with BRCA mutations. Even patients without a homologous recombination...
In September 2019, Dr. Claire Harrison and colleagues, myself among them, presented two new analyses regarding the use of the JAK2 and FLT3 inhibitor fedratinib in myelofibrosis at the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) Annual Meeting, with resulting publication in Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma...
On May 15, 2019, venetoclax was approved for the treatment of adult patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings from the open-label phase III CLL14 trial (ClinicalTrials.gov...
Advances in systemic therapy and supportive care, as well as ongoing improvements in surgical techniques, have led to improved survival for many patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. We have observed increased survival with FOLFIRINOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil, irinotecan,...
The Oncology Care Model was instituted in 2016 by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation as a move away from the fee-for-service payment model and toward value-based care. It has sparked discussion ever since. How should quality be defined? Whose and what values should it reflect? How...
Third-line treatment with cabazitaxel extended progression-free survival and overall survival in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the CARD trial. These results provide the first evidence from a randomized phase III trial for a survival benefit with third-line therapy, and ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Ken Kato, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ATTRACTION-3 trial conducted in predominantly Asian patients has shown a survival benefit with nivolumab vs paclitaxel or docetaxel in patients with advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who were refractory to...
It is with great sadness that we report Craig Alguire, MD, 42, died on October 11, 2019, at his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Diagnosed with grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme in 2015, Dr. Alguire chronicled the effects the cancer was having on his life in his Patient’s Corner column, published in...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently awarded 12 new clinical trial research grants totaling more than $15 million over the next 4 years, many of them focusing on cancer. Also, the FDA awarded two new research grants for natural history studies in rare diseases, totaling more than...
On November 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved luspatercept-aamt (Reblozyl) for the treatment of anemia in adult patients with beta thalassemia who require regular red blood cell transfusions. Beta thalassemia is a blood disorder that reduces the production of hemoglobin. In...
The time has come to offer all patients a PARP [poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase] inhibitor,” said Mansoor R. Mirza, MD, Chief Oncologist at Copenhagen University Hospital and the invited discussant of the VELIA trial at the ESMO Presidential Symposium. He noted, however, that he wasn’t sure veliparib...
As first-line treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer, the addition of veliparib during induction followed by veliparib maintenance therapy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death in the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial reported at the European Society for Medical...
Men with higher levels of free (biologically active) testosterone and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in their blood are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to research presented by Travis et al at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference....
This week, we’ll review an interim analysis of the CASPIAN trial, which evaluated the addition of durvalumab to etoposide plus platinum chemotherapy for extensive-stage small cell lung cancer. Then, we’ll talk about two recently issued guidelines on screening for colorectal cancer. Lastly, we’ll...
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,...
A computer-aided diagnosis system using deep-learning analysis to detect lung lesion locations and quantitatively characterize the lesions on computed tomography (CT) images offered a fast and convenient approach for assisting radiologists in the diagnosis of lung nodule pathologies. These findings ...
The treatment landscape for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma has changed drastically over the past several years with the introduction of many new therapeutic options for patients. The revolution began with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of nivolumab and ipilimumab...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues, extended follow-up of the phase III CheckMate 214 trial has shown maintained survival benefit of first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs sunitinib among patients with...
Claire Verschraegen, MD, was named the 2019 Woman Oncologist of the Year, and Shikha Jain, MD, FACP, received the 2019 Rising Star award at the first-ever Leadership Empowerment and Development: Enriching Experiences for Women in Hematology and Oncology (LEAD) Conference, hosted by Bio Ascend. An ...
Unplanned hospitalizations may be common among patients with cancer, but they diminish quality of care while racking up high costs for patients and the health-care system alike. According to data presented at the 2019 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, however, a new predictive model may help providers...
Despite the spate of recent drug approvals in blood cancer, it’s been more than 13 years since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a treatment for myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), a bone marrow disorder characterized by ineffective hematopoiesis. Nevertheless, data from a...
Inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are associated with a robust benefit in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, but now the monarcHER trial has confirmed their benefit in the HER2-positive population. The new findings were reported at the...
Two new studies published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics focused on the use of proton radiation therapy to treat patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. The first study, by Sanford et al, found that proton radiation may extend overall survival compared to...
Ravi Thadhani, MD, MPH, was named Chief Academic Officer at Partners HealthCare, starting November 11, 2019. Dr. Thadhani most recently served as Vice Dean of Research and Graduate Research Education at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Prior to that, he served as Associate Director of...
As reported by Alice T. Shaw, MD, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, a phase I/II trial has shown overall and intracranial activity of the third-generation ALK and ROS1 tyrosine kinase inhibitor lorlatinib in patients with advanced ROS1-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Lorlatinib...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Plotkin et al found that high-dose bevacizumab induction therapy did not appear to produce better outcomes compared with lower-dose treatment in patients with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) and progressive vestibular schwannomas. As...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Perl et al, the phase III ADMIRAL trial showed improved overall survival with the oral FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) inhibitor gilteritinib vs salvage chemotherapy in patients with relapsed or refractory FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukemia...
In women with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer, front-line maintenance therapy with olaparib plus bevacizumab reduced the risk of disease progression by 41% overall and by 69% in the subset of patients with BRCA-mutated disease, vs bevacizumab and placebo, in the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial...
In a trial reported in The Lancet, Sessler et al found no difference in breast cancer recurrence after surgery with regional anesthesia-analgesia using paravertebral block and propofol vs general anesthesia with the volatile anesthetic sevoflurane and opioid analgesia. They also found no difference ...
Treatment with atezolizumab plus chemotherapy extended progression-free survival by 1.9 months vs chemotherapy alone in patients with metastatic urothelial cancer, according to the early results of the IMvigor130 trial, which were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)...
In a phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, McNeel et al found that a DNA vaccine (pTVG-HP) encoding prostatic acid phosphatase did not improve 2-year metastasis-free survival vs control treatment in patients with progressive, nonmetastatic, castration-sensitive prostate...
As part of modernization plans approved in September 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) office responsible for reviewing applications for new and existing cancer therapies has reorganized and been renamed. The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Office of Hematology and...
The number of approved agents in multiple myeloma has skyrocketed in recent years, leading to significant improvements in survival, but questions remain regarding the optimal duration of treatment. Although traditionally limited to a fixed number of cycles due to accumulating toxicity, novel agents ...
In the phase III TEAMM trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Drayson et al found that prophylactic treatment with levofloxacin during the first 12 weeks of multiple myeloma treatment in newly diagnosed patients was associated with a significant reduction in first febrile episodes or death from any ...
Treatment with olaparib delayed disease progression, and early survival data suggest a positive trend in favor of olaparib compared with newer hormonal agents in men with pretreated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and homologous recombinant repair genetic alterations—specifically...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Hui et al, no clinically important differences in patient-reported outcomes were observed among patients receiving durvalumab vs placebo after chemoradiation for stage III unresectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the phase III PACIFIC trial. The...
Two presentations at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting offered more evidence that omitting radiation therapy leads to higher rates of recurrence for patients with early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma.1,2 Both studies involve work by the German Hodgkin Study Group among...