Invited discussant Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Milan, Italy, and Head of the Division of Early Drug Development at the European Institute of Oncology, said the “clear” findings of KEYNOTE-5221 are “practice-changing.” However, the...
The latest analysis of the pivotal phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial demonstrated significant improvements in clinical outcomes with pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy vs chemotherapy alone as a neoadjuvant/adjuvant treatment of triple-negative breast cancer.1 This is the first large, randomized, phase III...
The session’s invited discussant Surbhi Sidana, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University, said CAR T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies targeting myeloma are emerging as potentially effective options for patients with highly refractory disease. For this population of triple...
For the challenging population of patients with multiple myeloma who have become refractory to essentially all current treatments, new approaches are much needed. Early clinical trials data suggest bispecific antibodies may help meet this need, as suggested by studies presented at the 2021 ASCO...
A meta-analysis of nearly 200,000 men revealed 22 new genetic locations that could be susceptible to inherited testicular germ cell tumors—a 40% increase in the number of regions known to be associated with the cancer. The new findings, published by Pluta et al in Nature Communications, could help...
In a single-center retrospective study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Robinson et al found a vaccine-related axillary adenopathy incidence rate of 3% among women undergoing screening or diagnostic mammography within 90 days of receipt of at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine....
In a prospective study from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Williams et al found that prefrailty and frailty among young adult childhood cancer survivors were associated with neurocognitive decline vs nonfrail counterparts, mirroring the association...
In the Chinese phase III RESOLVE trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Zhang et al found that perioperative S-1/oxaliplatin was superior to—and adjuvant S-1/oxaliplatin was noninferior to—adjuvant capecitabine/oxaliplatin in terms of disease-free survival in patients undergoing D2 gastrectomy for...
Research shows that the majority of Americans—81%—are health-care information seekers, and that more than three-quarters of Americans get that information online. Unfortunately, much of that online information is inaccurate and could cause harm, according to a review of the most popular articles on ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Boddicker et al found that women older than age 65 in the general population who carry germline pathogenic variants in established high-risk breast cancer predisposition genes remain at significant risk of late-onset breast cancer and should...
NEOTALA’s invited discussant, Lisa Carey, MD, the Richardson and Marilyn Jacobs Preyer Distinguished Professor in Breast Cancer Research and Deputy Director of Clinical Sciences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, saw the findings as part of a bigger trend toward reducing the use of...
For the neoadjuvant treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, the oral poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor talazoparib yielded promising pathologic complete response rates in the phase II single-arm NEOTALA trial presented at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Preoperative chemotherapy is...
A new clinical guideline from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) published by Kilian E. Salerno, MD, and colleagues in Practical Radiation Oncology provides guidance on the use of radiation therapy to treat adult patients with soft-tissue sarcomas. Recommendations outline optimal...
The percentage of patients with inflammatory breast cancer who select reconstructive surgery after mastectomy—whether immediate or delayed—remains low in spite of improvements in treatment and long-term survival, but the numbers are increasing, according to recent research published by Karadsheh et ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting patients and health-care professionals that a clinical trial (OCEAN, Study OP-103; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03151811) evaluating melphalan flufenamide with dexamethasone to treat patients with multiple myeloma showed an increased risk ...
Worldwide, the global average surface temperature has risen at a similar rate of 0.17°F per decade since 1901, with the warmest year on record occurring in 2016 and the second warmest occurring in 2020. However, according to NOAA, since the late 1970s, the United States has warmed faster than the...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Enzinger et al found that the prescription of opioids for cancer pain dropped markedly in the recent past among patients with poor-prognosis disease near the end of life, with the frequency of pain-related emergency department visits...
Chemotherapy has helped make acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) one of the most survivable childhood cancers. Now, a research team has shown how thiopurines may lead to mutations that set patients up for disease relapse. These findings were published by Yang et al in Nature Cancer. The research...
“KAITLIN didnot meet its primary endpoint, either in the intent-to-treat or node-positive population,1 but in context with the APHINITY trial [1 year of adjuvant pertuzumab/trastuzumab plus chemotherapy],2 whose outcomes were similar at 3 years, you can appreciate that both arms did extremely...
The results of the second interim analysis of the KEYNOTE-629 study of pembrolizumab in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma confirmed durable antitumor activity in both the locally advanced and the recurrent/metastatic settings. Adverse events with pembrolizumab were generally consistent with its...
In a Canadian population-based cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, Chesney et al found that the 5-year rate of cancer-related deaths exceeded that of non–cancer-related deaths among patients aged 70 or older undergoing surgery for cancer. Study Details The study used data from ICES (formerly...
On July 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for high-risk, early-stage triple-negative breast cancer in combination with chemotherapy as a neoadjuvant treatment, and then continued as a single agent as adjuvant treatment after surgery. The FDA also...
In this video, Drs. Sara A. Hurvitz, William J. Gradishar, and Sara M. Tolaney discuss the management of hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer. The faculty present the case of a 54-year-old perimenopausal Black woman who has been diagnosed with high-grade T3N1 left...
ASCO will recognize John V. Cox, DO, MBA, FACP, FASCO, a medical oncologist and professor at the University of Texas Southwestern, with the Joseph V. Simone Award and Lecture for Excellence in Quality and Safety in the Care of Patients With Cancer. Dr. Cox will be presented with the award at the...
Individuals with cancer or a history of cancer should be eligible for clinical trials—including COVID-19 vaccine trials—unless there is safety justification for exclusion, ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) asserted in a recently released joint position statement. To date, clinical...
Ovarian cancer carries a heavy morbidity and mortality burden, particularly in settings and regions of the globe that feature significant limitations in health-care resources. Given that ovarian cancer is more lethal than breast cancer, clinicians in resource-limited areas require guidance on the...
Adjuvant anti–PD-1 antibody therapy is widely used for stage III melanoma, given the approvals of pembrolizumab and nivolumab. These approvals were based on significantly improved relapse-free survival in the CheckMate 238 trial of nivolumab compared with ipilimumab and the EORTC 1325/KEYNOTE-054...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Alexander M.M. Eggermont, MD, of Princess Máxima Center, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and colleagues, the pivotal phase III EORTC 1325/KEYNOTE-054 trial has shown significant improvement in the secondary endpoint of distant metastasis–free survival, as well as...
On March 3, 2021, lorlatinib was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ALK-positive tumors as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test.1,2 The FDA simultaneously approved the Ventana ALK (D5F3) CDx Assay ...
On March 22, 2021, pembrolizumab was approved for use in combination with platinum- and fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy for patients with metastatic or locally advanced esophageal or gastroesophageal junction (tumors with epicenter 1 to 5 cm above the gastroesophageal junction) carcinoma who...
Created more than a decade ago, the Office of Minority Health (OMH) and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities have a mission to advance the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through policies, programs, and partnerships at the Centers for Medicare and...
The COVID-19 pandemic may have put the world on pause, but it also showed the medical community that rapid progress is possible with focus and collaboration. During the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Virtual Oncology Policy Summit, “Defining the ‘New Normal’ 2021 and the State of...
According to George W. Sledge, Jr, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Oncology at Stanford University Medical Center, by the beginning of the next decade, clinicians will be aided by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in many facets of care and by the approval of a wave of new ...
The Division of Oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has appointed Sarah Tasian, MD, as Chief of the Section of Hematologic Malignancies. Dr. Tasian succeeds Richard Aplenc, MD, PhD, MSCE, who served in this role for 13 years. Dr. Tasian will oversee a group of faculty,...
Fabrice André, MD, PhD, Director of Research and Professor of Medical Oncology at Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, commented on the two studies that used the MammaPrint 70-gene signature to identify patients for de-escalation or escalation of endocrine therapy.1,2 The push to...
Patients with ultra-low–risk breast cancer, as classified by the MammaPrint 70-gene assay, had “excellent” long-term outcomes regardless of clinical risk or receipt of adjuvant therapy, a new analysis of the MINDACT trial has shown.1 In a separate study, a retrospective analysis of the National...
The following letter is adapted from comments made to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) by the American College of Radiology, the GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. “The American College of Radiology, the GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer, and the...
Woe to the child who tastes salty from a kiss on the brow” was a forbidding prophecy from Medieval Europe, presaging unknown disease. Today, we know that salty skin is a telltale sign of cystic fibrosis in children, a disease that eluded medical identification until 1938, when an American...
Prostate cancer experts have often stated it is important to add a bone-protecting agent for patients on treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Recent evidence in support of this recommendation comes from a study presented during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, confirming a...
On March 10, 2021, the VEGF tyrosine kinase inhibitor tivozanib was approved for treatment of adults with relapsed or refractory advanced renal cell carcinoma following at least two prior systemic therapies.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the open-label, phase III...
Invited study discussant Jaishri O. Blakeley, MD, Director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Neurofibromatosis Center, Baltimore, changed the title of her talk to “Finding Needles in Haystacks,” “because this is what we do with CNS [central nervous system] tumors,” she told listeners. “ALK...
Targeting mutations appears to be bearing fruit in the treatment of some difficult-to-treat tumors. For instance, in one study of adult-onset neuroblastoma, targeting ALK mutations in ALK-positive tumors demonstrated activity, even in patients who had not responded to their first ALK inhibitor. Of...
On April 22, 2021, the PD-1 inhibitor dostarlimab-gxly was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adults with mismatch repair–deficient recurrent or advanced endometrial cancer, as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test, that has progressed on or following a...
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, Eugenie Spiguel, MSN, ANP-BC, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on American...
Canada’s publicly funded health-care system has a complex drug approval and funding process. Due to multiple assessment steps and bureaucratic processes, newly developed cancer drugs can often experience long delays before oncologists may use them to treat their patients with cancer. Several...
Invited discussant of the FORWARD II trial,1Amit M. Oza, MD, MBBS, concluded that bevacizumab and mirvetuximab soravtansine was a “very well tolerated and effective” combination with “encouraging activity,” even in patients previously treated with bevacizumab and weekly paclitaxel. Dr. Oza is Head ...
On March 5, 2021, the CD19-directed genetically modified autologous T-cell immunotherapy axicabtagene ciloleucel was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adults with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy.1,2 Axicabtagene ciloleucel is...
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” —Leonardo da Vinci To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on treatments under study ...
In patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, the antibody-drug conjugate mirvetuximab soravtansine, given with bevacizumab, showed antitumor activity leading to durable responses in platinum-agnostic patients with strong expression of folate receptor alpha (FRα), researchers reported at the 2021 ASCO ...
Fixed-duration ibrutinib and venetoclax as a first-line treatment yielded superior outcomes compared with chlorambucil plus obinutuzumab in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), based on the primary analysis of the phase III GLOW trial presented during the European Hematology...