Endocrine therapy is the foundation of first-line therapy in most patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. Many of these patients respond to endocrine therapy but eventually become resistant to it through both intrinsic and acquired resistance mechanisms....
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by François-Clément Bidard, MD, PhD, of the Institut Curie, Paris and Saint Cloud, and colleagues, the phase III EMERALD trial has shown prolonged progression-free survival with the oral selective estrogen receptor degrader elacestrant vs standard...
“Hats off to the investigators for the first comparison of triplet to doublet in advanced renal cell carcinoma. This is also the first results using a contemporary control group. The study met its primary endpoint,” said Sumanta K. Pal, MD, FASCO, Co-Director of the Kidney Cancer Program, City of...
September 12, 2022 “President John F. Kennedy’s historic speech that inspired our nation and an entire generation of Americans to achieve manned space exploration underscored the courage and commitment it would take to accomplish this then-audacious goal: ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade ...
The first 10 participants in the new Leadership Programme for Women in Oncology have been announced. The program, a joint endeavour from ASCO and City Cancer Challenge Foundation (C/Can), seeks to address the specific challenges and barriers faced by women leaders in oncology and strengthen the...
The Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) and ASCO have released a guideline that appraises the evidence to support incorporating integrative medicine approaches into managing pain in adults with cancer.1 The guideline builds upon existing ASCO guidelines on pain management, the growing body of...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with William L. Dahut, MD, who is currently serving as Chief Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS). In this role, Dr. Dahut manages all pieces of the organization’s discovery work,...
Richter transformation, usually a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma developing in a person with CLL, remains a challenging entity, but novel regimens look promising, as described at the 2022 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference by Matthew S. Davids, MD, MMSc, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard...
New research from Yale Cancer Center reveals a higher risk of cancer mortality in incarcerated adults, as well as among those diagnosed with cancer in the first year after release from prison. The findings were published in the journal PLoS One.1 “Cancer is the leading cause of death among people...
To put the CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER trials into context, The ASCO Post spoke with Bernard Escudier, MD, former Chair of the Genitourinary Group of the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France. In general, Dr. Escudier believes that studies to date are not robust enough to justify...
Three negative phase III trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 may dampen enthusiasm for immunotherapy as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). None of the three trials—CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER—met its primary endpoint.1-3 The...
I continue to be struck by the creativity of medical oncologists. The reimagining of dosing, duration, or regimen composition to respond to patient symptoms or preferences is like a master chef in the kitchen. Although standardization has, with good reason, become the paragon, delivering...
It has been well documented that breast cancer is the most common malignancy in adolescent and young adult (AYA) women aged 15 to 39 years, accounting for 30% of cancers among this population.1 In addition, 5.6% of all invasive breast cancers occur in AYA women.1 A presentation by Rebecca H....
“Platinum-ineligible patients are typically excluded from clinical trials, yet they represent the majority of patients that we diagnose and treat—patients with poor performance status and comorbidities,” said invited discussant Natasha Leighl, MD, of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto....
In platinum-ineligible patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), first-line treatment with the PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab improved overall survival by an absolute value of about 1 month but almost doubled the rate of 2-year overall survival compared with chemotherapy...
On October 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved tremelimumab (Imjudo) in combination with durvalumab (Imfinzi) for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer. The novel dose and schedule of the...
Treating high-risk, asymptomatic bone metastases with radiation may reduce painful complications and hospitalizations and possibly extend overall survival in people whose cancer has spread to multiple sites, a phase II clinical trial suggests. Results of the multicenter, randomized trial were...
A randomized study has confirmed that patients with high-risk prostate cancer can be treated with 5 vs 8 weeks of radiation therapy. The phase III clinical trial is the first to confirm the safety and efficacy of a moderately shortened course of radiation exclusively for patients with high-risk...
FLASH radiation treatment—which delivers therapeutic doses of radiation in a fraction of a second—may be a potential treatment for tough-to-kill tumors, a first-in-human study in a small number of people with bone cancer suggests. The technology, previously tested in animals, was shown to be as...
Adding stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to systemic therapy with sorafenib for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) may extend overall survival and delay tumor progression without compromising patients’ quality of life, findings from the randomized phase III NRG...
An artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by researchers may assist in predicting the likelihood that a patient may have an unplanned hospitalization during radiation treatments for cancer. The machine-learning model uses daily step counts as a proxy to monitor patients’ health as they go...
Xuesong Han, PhD, of the American Cancer Society, discusses findings showing that among newly diagnosed patients with stage IV cancers, Medicaid expansion was associated with increases in receipt of palliative care, although overall usage was low. The increase varied by cancer type. Improving...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) chose Augusto Ochoa, MD, of Louisiana State University (LSU) Health, as the 2022 recipient of the Harry Hynes Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Trials and Community Research. The award was presented during the NCI Community Oncology Research Program ...
New research confirmed the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in individuals with cancer who are undergoing immunotherapy, according to a novel study published by Widman et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The researchers analyzed the frequency of immune-related...
A multicenter analysis of patients with invasive lobular carcinoma—the second most common histologic subtype of invasive breast cancer in the United States—showed that, despite its prevalence, invasive lobular carcinoma was detected later with worse outcomes vs invasive ductal carcinoma and had...
During chemotherapy, physical exercise intervention may be safe, improve long-term cardiorespiratory fitness, and alleviate some of the adverse effects of cancer treatment, according to a novel study published by van der Schoot et al in JACC: CardioOncology. The findings suggested that if exercise...
Patients with B-cell malignancies who had hypophosphatemia experienced a higher incidence and severity of neurologic side effects from chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, according to a study by Nowicki et al published in Cancer Immunology Research. The study results imply that...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Jfri et al identified risk for cutaneous adverse events among patients with cancer receiving adjuvant phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor therapy. Study Details The analysis included 15 phase II or III randomized controlled...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by David Hui, MD, MSc, and colleagues, an interdisciplinary goals-of-care program instituted at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in response to anticipated COVID-19–related increases in need for intensive care unit (ICU) use resulted ...
Individuals who reported using chemical hair-straightening products may be at greater risk for uterine cancer compared to those who did not report using these products, according to a new study published by Chang et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI). The researchers found no ...
Female patients with cancer were less satisfied with the quality of their cancer care than male patients with cancer, according to the results of a survey conducted by the Survivor Views program of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). In addition, female patients were more...
Studies show that rural populations experience greater cancer disparities across the cancer control continuum—from prevention and incidence to survivorship and mortality—compared with their urban counterparts. Those living in rural parts of the United States also tend to have lower cancer screening ...
Samyukta Mullangi, MD, MBA, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses her findings showing that physicians’ prescribing behavior may be influenced by payer-led pathways. Pathway compliance was associated with higher medical costs during a 6-month baseline period but lower health-care...
Regina Barragán-Carrillo, MD, of Mexico’s National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán, discusses her findings showing that currently, physicians have limited knowledge about breast cancer screening in transgender patients. Were this topic addressed with widespread...
In 2020, 4.4 million women died from cancer worldwide, leaving behind an estimated 1.04 million maternal orphans (defined as children aged 18 years and younger who have lost their mother), according to the results from a study by Guida et al presented during a press conference at the Union for...
In a Danish study (DaBlaCa-13) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lindgren et al found that short-term intensive chemoresection with mitomycin reduced the need for surgical procedures in patients with recurrent non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Study Details The trial was conducted at...
In a U.S. retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lerman et al found that half of patients with relapsed high-risk neuroblastoma had an objective response to a regimen comprising irinotecan, temozolomide, dinutuximab, and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor...
Mepitel Film—a silicone-based polyurethane film dressing—may be beneficial in reducing skin toxicities caused by radiation treatment, according to data presented during the October 2022 session of the ASCO Plenary Series by Chow et al (Abstract 390226). Results of the phase III trial showed the...
In a preplanned analysis of the PALLAS trial, the addition of adjuvant palbociclib to standard endocrine therapy did not improve outcomes over endocrine therapy alone in patients with stage IIA breast cancer. Palbociclib offered no additional benefit in terms of invasive disease–free survival (the...
Commercially available noninvasive screening tests for colorectal cancer—the fecal immunochemical test (FIT) and the Cologuard multitarget stool DNA test—are equally effective for screening patients with early-stage colorectal cancer. However, FIT costs about one-fifth of the multitarget stool DNA...
Patients with colorectal cancer who have certain clinical characteristics may benefit from more frequent chest imaging to help identify and target cancer that has metastasized to the lungs, according to a new study presented at the 2022 Scientific Forum of the American College of Surgeons Clinical...
In a Swiss/German phase II trial (SAKK 01/10) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Papachristofilou et al found that a single dose of carboplatin followed by involved-node radiotherapy narrowly missed the target 3-year progression-free survival rate in patients with stage IIA or IIB seminoma. As...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Kevin Harrington, MD, PhD, and colleagues, updated results of the phase III KEYNOTE-048 trial showed enduring survival benefits with first-line pembrolizumab alone and pembrolizumab/chemotherapy vs cetuximab/chemotherapy in patients with recurrent...
Jensa C. Morris, MD, of the Yale School of Medicine, Smilow Hospitalist Service, discusses her findings on the benefits of hospitalist co-management of patients with cancer: It reduced the length of hospital stay by 1 day, increased early discharge (before 11:00 AM) by threefold; raised the...
Researchers at the Barts Cancer Institute at the Queen Mary University of London, the Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine, and the University of Milan may have identified a novel role for a cancer-causing gene in controlling an important genetic process that underpins genetic variation in...
Researchers have discovered that the organization of different types of immune cells within pancreatic tumors may be associated with how well patients with pancreatic cancer respond to treatment, as well as how long they survive. This information could eventually lead to new ways of treating...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Julie R. Brahmer, MD, MSc, FASCO, and colleagues, a 5-year analysis of the phase III CheckMate 227 trial showed improvement in overall survival with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs platinum-doublet chemotherapy, at ≥ 3 years after cessation of...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Veiga et al found that receipt of radiotherapy was the strongest risk factor for development of thoracic soft-tissue sarcomas in U.S. breast cancer survivors; both hypertension and diabetes were significant risk factors for...
In an analysis from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nathan et al found that adult survivors of childhood cancer were more likely to report financial hardship than siblings without cancer in the era following implementation of the Affordable Care...
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and World Hospice & Palliative Care Day, ASCO and its partners—the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care; Tómatelo a Pecho, A.C.; the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Institute for Advanced Study of the ...