In an Italian study reported in Leukemia, Francesca Romana Mauro, MD, of the Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, Sapienza University, Rome, and colleagues found that only a small minority of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) developed an adequate immune response to...
Ruben A. Mesa, MD, of UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center, discusses new findings on momelotinib, a potent JAK1, JAK2, and ACVR1 inhibitor with clinical activity against hallmark features of myelofibrosis such as anemia and splenomegaly. Results showed that transfusion independence was associated...
In the Korean phase III PRODIGY trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yoon-Koo Kang, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of neoadjuvant docetaxel, oxaliplatin, and S-1 (DOS) to D2 gastrectomy followed by adjuvant S-1 was associated with improved progression-free survival in...
Most survivors of head and neck squamous cell cancers report that their sense of taste is dulled, changed, or lost during radiation treatment. In a study of taste and smell dysfunction in 40 cancer survivors, scientists found that the tips of these individuals' tongues were significantly less...
A study published by Strother et al in BJU International found that patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer can safely receive cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy, even when their tumors are blocking their kidneys. The findings suggest that patients with the most serious type of this...
A study by Lin et al comparing patients with colon cancer enrolled in the U.S. Military Health System, which provides universal health-care to its beneficiaries, with those in the general population has found that patients in the Military Health System had an 18% lower risk of death compared with...
In a Canadian/Australian phase II/III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Arjun Sahgal, MD, and colleagues found that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) produced a higher complete pain response rate vs conventional external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) in patients with painful spinal metastases. ...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Priority Review to therapies for multiple myeloma, cervical cancer, chemotherapy-induced neutropenia, and myelofibrosis. The FDA also granted a number of Breakthrough Therapy designations, including those for treatments in ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Paul G. Richardson, MD, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III TOURMALINE-MM1 trial showed no overall survival benefit with the addition of ixazomib to lenalidomide/dexamethasone (Rd) in relapsed or refractory multiple ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jeff M. Michalski, MBA, MD, and colleagues, the Children’s Oncology Group noninferiority phase III ACNS0331 trial has shown no decrease in event-free survival with reduced radiation boost volume in patients with newly diagnosed, average-risk...
In a prospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Frank et al found that monitoring of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) improved detection of early relapse after axicabtagene ciloleucel infusion in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma. Study Details A total of...
In a Chinese phase III study reported in The Lancet, Chen et al found that the use of adjuvant metronomic capecitabine improved failure-free survival vs observation after definitive chemoradiotherapy in patients with high-risk locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Study Details In the...
Priya Rastogi, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh, discusses results from the NRG Oncology/NSABP B-42 trial, which evaluated the utility of the 70-gene MammaPrint assay in predicting the benefit of extended letrozole therapy in patients who had completed 5 years of adjuvant endocrine therapy...
Adding the antibody-drug conjugate naratuximab emtansine to rituximab resulted in favorable overall survival and complete response rates for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), with a manageable safety profile. These findings from a phase II study were...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Eric Pujade-Lauraine, MD, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Ovarian 200 trial showed no significant improvement in progression-free or overall survival with avelumab alone or in combination with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) vs PLD alone in patients ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Chung-Han Lee, MD, and colleagues, findings in a cohort of the phase Ib/II Study 111/KEYNOTE-146 trial showed that the combination of lenvatinib and pembrolizumab produced high response rates among patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma...
A study published by Sharp et al in The Breast Journal suggests that some patients with breast cancer may be able to forgo certain testing procedures after neoadjuvant chemotherapy without increasing their risk of cancer recurrence. Prior studies on detecting whether breast cancer has spread to...
New research has uncovered substantial differences in the rates of childhood cancers when considering a single year of age rather than grouping several years together. The study, published by Marcotte et al in the journal Cancer, also found that minority children seem to have different risks than...
In a primary analysis of the phase III GLOW study, a once-daily, all-oral, fixed-duration dose of ibrutinib and venetoclax for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) resulted in superior progression-free survival than treatment with chlorambucil and obinutuzumab. Arnon...
As reported in The Lancet by Philippe Moreau, MD, and colleagues, the phase III IKEMA trial has shown that the addition of the anti-CD38 antibody isatuximab-irfc to carfilzomib and dexamethasone resulted in significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with relapsed or refractory...
In a Dutch phase III trial (ARTDECO) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hulshof et al found that increasing the dose of radiation therapy in a definitive chemoradiation regimen did not improve local progression-free survival in patients with inoperable, locally advanced esophageal...
In a prospective cross-sectional study reported in JCO Global Oncology, Gupta et al found that women with ovarian cancer in India had a high prevalence of pathogenic or likely pathogenic BRCA variants. As stated by the investigators: “There are deficient data on prevalence of germline mutations in...
Patients with early-stage breast cancer may be at low risk of dying of their disease, but they experience a high burden of physical and psychological symptoms long after their treatment has ended, according to data presented during the 2021 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting.1...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) has announced its inaugural National Black Family Cancer Awareness Week, which is taking place from June 17 through June 23, 2021. Throughout the week, the agency’s social media platforms will serve as the hub for...
In a retrospective cohort study reported by Win et al in The Lancet Oncology, researchers in the International Mismatch Repair Consortium found marked variation in the risk of colorectal cancer in families with Lynch syndrome carrying the same pathogenic variant in DNA mismatch repair genes. The...
In a large cohort study reported by Sharafeldin et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) found that COVID-19–positive vs –negative status was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality at 1 year among patients with...
Keith W. Pratz, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the outcomes of patients with acute myeloid leukemia who took part in the VIALE-A trial and were treated with venetoclax and azacitidine. The patients had achieved both composite complete remission and measurable residual disease of...
Zanubrutinib—a second-generation Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor—significantly improved response rates and delayed disease progression as compared to the standard of care, ibrutinib, in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma...
The association between the consumption of red and processed meats and the development of colorectal cancer, as well as pancreatic and prostate cancers, has been known since 2015, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified the consumption of red meat as probably...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Pollard et al, a subgroup of pediatric patients with KMT2A-rearranged acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in the phase III Children’s Oncology Group AAML0531 trial had improved outcomes with the addition of the CD33-targeting agent gemtuzumab ozogamicin...
A new ASCO guideline update recommends offering 1 year of adjuvant olaparib to patients with high-risk, early-stage, HER2-negative breast cancer and germline BRCA mutations after completion of (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy and local treatment, including radiation. The recommendations update the 2020...
From routine axillary lymph node dissection to sentinel lymph node surgery, the use of axillary surgery continues to evolve in breast cancer. Recently, surgical oncologists have begun to consider avoiding axillary surgery completely in patients with a low risk of node-positive disease as well as in ...
In the treatment of relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma, a comparison of data from the ZUMA-5 trial with those of the external control cohort of the SCHOLAR-5 trial showed substantial improvement in all clinical endpoints with axicabtagene ciloleucel. John G. Gribben, DSc, FRCP, FRCPath,...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tilki et al found that adjuvant radiotherapy was associated with reduced risk for all-cause mortality vs early salvage radiotherapy among men at high risk for disease recurrence following radical prostatectomy. As stated...
In a new study designed to provide a more comprehensive picture of how a diverse cohort of patients with gynecologic cancer are affected by financial distress, nearly half reported financial toxicity, which was associated with economic cost-coping strategies. These findings were reported by Esselen ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Ingrid A. Mayer, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ECOG-ACRIN EA1131 trial investigated the use of adjuvant platinum vs capecitabine in patients with basal subtype triple-negative breast cancer and residual...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Justin F. Gainor, MD, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase I/II ARROW trial has shown that the oral RET inhibitor pralsetinib produced high response rates in previously treated and treatment-naive patients with advanced RET fusion–positive non–small ...
Cryoablation is emerging as a new alternative to surgical excision for smaller early-stage, low-risk breast cancers in appropriately selected patient populations, according to data presented during the 2021 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting.1 Early 3-year results of the multicenter ...
The invited discussant of EMPOWER-Cervical 1 was Mansoor Raza Mirza, MD, Chief Oncologist at Copenhagen University Hospital and Chairman of the European Network of Gynaecological Oncology Trials group (ENGOT). Dr. Mirza called the findings “amazing” and predicted they will “usher in a new era” in...
The PD-L1 inhibitor cemiplimab-rwlc has become the first immunotherapy to yield a statistically significant and clinically meaningful survival benefit in recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer progressing after first-line platinum-containing chemotherapy. Patients were enrolled irrespective of...
In the phase II ATEMPT trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that adjuvant trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) resulted in “excellent” invasive disease–free survival but did not reduce clinically relevant toxicity compared with...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Karyn A. Goodman, MD, and colleagues, mature results of the phase II CALGB 80803/Alliance trial indicated that treatment guided by early positron-emission tomography (PET) assessment of response to induction neoadjuvant chemotherapy improved...
The combination of ibrutinib and venetoclax was found to provide lasting disease remission in patients with newly diagnosed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Findings from a single-institution phase II study were published by Nitin Jain, MD, and colleagues in JAMA Oncology and provide the longest ...
In an analysis from the phase III IMbrave150 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Peter R. Galle, MD, and colleagues found that patients receiving atezolizumab plus bevacizumab had better patient-reported outcomes vs those receiving sorafenib for advanced unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular ...
In an analysis from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) and the Dutch Hodgkin Late Effects and LATER cohorts reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Moskowitz et al developed a model for predicting the risk of breast cancer among childhood cancer survivors treated with chest...
In an analysis from the global eNRGy1 registry for NRG1 fusion–positive lung cancers reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Alexander Drilon, MD, and colleagues found greater than expected heterogeneity in characteristics of disease. Additionally, patients had poor responses to cytotoxic,...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Ranganathan et al quantified the enormous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on delivery of cancer services in India. Study Details The study involved data from 41 cancer centers across the nation. The delivery of oncology services between March 1 and May...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Matthew J. Matasar, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III CHRONOS-3 trial has shown that the addition of the pan-class I PI3K inhibitor copanlisib to rituximab significantly improved progression-free survival vs rituximab ...
In order to understand and eliminate disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes among transgender people, clinicians and researchers must have data. However, these data are very difficult to obtain because gender identity data are not routinely collected in oncology practice health records. A new ...
As reported in The Lancet by Paul Baas, MD, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, and colleagues, a prespecified interim analysis in the phase III CheckMate 743 trial has shown improved overall survival with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs platinum-based chemotherapy in unresectable...