In a meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jackson et al found that overall survival with sorafenib (Nexavar) in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma was significantly improved vs comparator treatments among patients who were both hepatitis B virus (HBV)-negative and hepatitis C...
In the phase III SWOG S0777 trial reported in The Lancet, Durie et al found that adding bortezomib (Velcade) to lenalidomide (Revlimid)/dexamethasone improved progression-free and overall survival in patients with newly diagnosed myeloma who were not planned for immediate autologous stem cell...
In an analysis in the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group (ACOSOG) Z1031 Trial/Alliance reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ellis et al found that switching to chemotherapy in patients with elevated Ki67 levels after 2 to 4 weeks of neoadjuvant aromatase inhibitor therapy resulted ...
In a National Cancer Database analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Seisen et al found that adjuvant chemotherapy after radical nephroureterectomy was associated with an overall survival benefit in patients with locally advanced or regional lymph node–positive upper tract...
In a prospective longitudinal study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Janelsins et al found that nearly half of women with breast cancer reported a clinically significant decline in cognitive function from before to after chemotherapy, compared with only 10% of age-matched noncancer...
As reported by Betty R. Ferrell, PhD, of the City of Hope Medical Center, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline update on the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care. This update of a 2012 ASCO provisional clinical...
In a Dutch trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rutten et al found that initial diagnostic laparoscopy can prevent futile primary cytoreductive surgery in patients with suspected advanced-stage ovarian cancer. Study Details In the trial, 201 women who were qualified for primary...
Findings from the National Institutes of Health Pediatric and Wildtype Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GISTs) Clinic, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Weldon et al, indicate that more extensive or serial resections are not associated with improvement in event-free survival in...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Temel et al found that early integration of palliative care resulted in better quality of life and reduced depression in patients with newly diagnosed incurable lung or noncolorectal gastrointestinal cancer. Outcomes differed by cancer type. ...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Pearlman et al found that 16% of patients with early-onset colorectal cancer had germline cancer susceptibility mutations, with a wide array of such mutations being identified. The study involved 450 patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer at age < 50...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Knight et al of the Children’s Oncology Group found that the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Ototoxicity (SIOP) scale may be more sensitive than other classification systems in detecting ototoxicity in children...
In a retrospective cohort–based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Scott et al found that individual patient genomic-adjusted radiation dose was associated with outcomes across different cancer types. Study Details In the study, gene-expression–based radiation-sensitivity index...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gray et al found that most people receiving cancer-related data through direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing tended not to change health or screening behaviors when an elevated risk was identified. The study involved baseline and...
In a European phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Azzouzi et al found that padeliporfin vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy was associated with a reduced rate of disease progression vs active surveillance in men with low-risk prostate cancer. Study Details In the open-label trial, ...
In a phase III METLung trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Spigel et al found that adding the MET inhibitor onartuzumab to erlotinib (Tarceva) was of no benefit in patients with MET-positive advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had progressed after platinum-based...
Maintenance olaparib (Lynparza) appeared to be associated with an overall survival benefit vs placebo in women with platinum-sensitive serous ovarian cancer and BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, according to an updated analysis of a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology by Jonathan A. Ledermann,...
In a study reported in Nature Genetics, Bishoy M. Faltas, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, and colleagues identified factors in the clonal evolution of chemotherapy-resistant urothelial carcinoma.1 As stated by the investigators: “Chemotherapy-resistant urothelial carcinoma has no uniformly curative...
In the phase III PALOMA-2 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Richard S. Finn, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues found that the addition of palbociclib (Ibrance) to letrozole significantly improved...
In a retrospective analysis of the phase III CLEOPATRA trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Luen et al found that higher baseline tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte levels were associated with improved overall survival among patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer receiving trastuzumab...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet, Balar et al found that first-line atezolizumab (Tecentriq) produced durable responses in cisplatin-ineligible patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. In the study, 119 patients from 47 sites in North America and Europe who were ...
In the phase III OAK trial reported in The Lancet by Rittmeyer et al, treatment with the anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody atezolizumab (Tecentriq) improved overall survival vs docetaxel in previously treated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results of the trial...
In a case report in The New England Journal of Medicine, Tran et al at the National Cancer Institute describe response to adoptive transfer of ex vivo expanded tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes containing T cells targeting personalized cancer neoepitopes in a patient with lung metastases from...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gary H. Lyman, MD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and colleagues, an ASCO clinical practice guideline update panel made no changes to the 2014 recommendations for sentinel lymph node biopsy in women with early-stage breast cancer. The...
Regorafenib (Stivarga) improved overall survival vs placebo in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who had experienced disease progression on sorafenib (Nexavar) treatment, according to the phase III RESORCE trial reported by Bruix et al in The Lancet. Study Details In this double-blind trial, ...
In an individual patient-data meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ribassin-Majed et al in the Meta-analysis of Chemotherapy in Nasopharyngeal Collaborative Group found that the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy to chemoradiotherapy was associated with the greatest overall...
In a phase I study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Rudin et al found that rovalpituzumab tesirine, a first-in-class antibody-drug conjugate directed against delta-like protein 3 (DLL3), produced responses in patients with recurrent small cell lung cancer (SCLC). DLL3 is a target identified in...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Saro H. Armenian, DO, MPH, of City of Hope, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on prevention and monitoring of cardiac dysfunction in survivors of adult cancers. Recommendations were developed by an expert panel using a ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Hellman et al, the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) showed promising activity as first-line treatment in patients in the non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cohort of the phase I CheckMate 012 study. Study Details In the...
In the phase III AURA3 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicineby Mok et al, osimertinib (Tagrisso) significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) vs platinum/pemetrexed (Alimta) among patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) T790M–positive non–small...
In part 1 of the phase II ARIEL2 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Swisher et al found that the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib was associated with prolonged progression-free survival among patients with relapsed platinum-sensitive high-grade ovarian carcinoma who had...
In the international phase III FALCON trial reported in The Lancet, Robertson et al found that progression-free survival was improved with intramuscular fulvestrant (Faslodex) vs oral anastrozole in endocrine therapy–naive women with hormone receptor–positive locally advanced or...
Matthew P. Goetz, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, reviews progress made during the past year on treatment of advanced disease.
William Sellers, MD, a widely respected cancer researcher with extensive experience in cancer genomics and therapeutic discovery, is returning to the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Harvard Medical School (HMS) as a...
The antioxidant sodium thiosulfate provided protection against cisplatin-related hearing loss in children with cancer, according to a phase III trial reported by Freyer et al in The Lancet Oncology. The open-label trial included 104 assessable patients (aged 1 to 18 years) from 38 Children’s ...
The Kidney Cancer Association has supported 12 kidney cancer research projects through the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Young Investigator Award (YIA) program over the past decade. Early seed funding from the Kidney Cancer Association is advancing research, improving the lives of ...
In an article in The Lancet Oncology, Y. Tony Yang, ScD, of George Mason University, Charles L. Bennett, MD, PhD, MPP, of the University of South Carolina and colleagues from the United States, Europe, and Japan examined clinical, policy, safety, and regulatory considerations for generic oncology...
On November 21, 2016, daratumumab (Darzalex) was approved for use in combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone or with bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior therapy.1,2 The drug was initially ...
In a phase III intergroup trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Brigitta G. Baumert, MD, of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), Brussels, and colleagues found no progression-free survival difference between temozolomide chemotherapy and radiotherapy alone in...
On November 10, 2016, nivolumab (Opdivo) was approved for treatment of recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with disease progression on or after platinum-based therapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on the finding of an overall survival advantage...
In an analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fischer et al found that men with clinical stage I seminoma who relapsed after adjuvant carboplatin could be successfully re-treated with cisplatin-based chemotherapy. Study Details The analysis included data from 185 patients who...
Use of the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor perindopril or the beta-blocker bisoprolol did not reduce the risk of trastuzumab (Herceptin)-related cardiac remodeling in women with HER2-positive early breast cancer, according to a Canadian trial reported by Pituskin et al in the Journal of...
In part 1 of a phase III equivalence trial reported in JAMA, Rugo et al found that treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin) or a proposed trastuzumab biosimilar in combination with a taxane produced similar overall response rates in patients with previously untreated metastatic HER2-positive breast...
A combination of two targeted agents has demonstrated safety as well as encouraging signs of effectiveness in a phase I clinical trial in patients with relapsed or hard-to-treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Davids et al reported the findings at the 58th American ...
In the UK phase III ERCC1 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lee et al found that presence of the excision repair cross complementing group 1 (ERCC1) biomarker did not predict better outcome with nonplatinum therapy in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Study...
As reported by Erik P. Sulman, MD, PhD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has endorsed the 2016 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) evidence-based guideline on radiation therapy for glioblastoma. The endorsement was based on review of ...
In a UK population–based study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Khosrow-Khavar et al found no significant association between the use of androgen-deprivation therapy and the risk for dementia in patients with prostate cancer. The study involved a cohort of 30,903 men with newly...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ferrarotto et al found that the presence of activating NOTCH1 mutations defined a subgroup of patients with adenoid cystic carcinomas with an aggressive phenotype. Frequency of Mutations The study included genotyping of 102 adenoid cystic...
In an analysis of outcomes in the North Central Cancer Treatment Group/Alliance N9831 trial reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Perez et al found that patients with tumors scored as HER2-enriched or luminal subtype derived a recurrence-free survival benefit from the addition...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chow et al found that hematopoietic cell transplantation survivors had higher rates of morbidity and mortality compared with a matched population of patients with cancer not undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation. The study involved...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Roberts et al found a high frequency of Philadelphia chromosome (Ph)–like acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in adults with B-cell ALL and poorer outcome with conventional therapy in these patients. Frequency of Disease The frequency...