On August 2, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval to pexidartinib (Turalio) capsules for the treatment of adult patients with symptomatic tenosynovial giant cell tumor (TGCT) associated with severe morbidity or functional limitations and not responsive to improvement with...
Immunotherapy as a treatment for advanced solid cancers has rapidly evolved over the past decade—often yielding remarkable results. However, its use has also given way to new adverse effects, including drug-induced gastrointestinal and liver toxicities. “Checkpoint inhibitors are a game changer...
Many patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma contract Staphylococcus aureus infections in the skin. In a new study, researchers have shown that aggressive treatment with antibiotics for patients with these infections not only inhibits the staphylococcal bacteria—but also the cancer...
A recent analysis looked at the global burden of pediatric cancer through the lens of years of affected and lost life. This work shows a much greater burden of childhood cancer, placed largely in low- and middle-income countries, than previous estimates. The findings were published in The Lancet...
Nearly-three quarters of Americans are not familiar with cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common type of cancer in the United States, according to a new survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of The Skin Cancer Foundation. Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma is more common...
Many governments are making progress in the fight against tobacco, with 5 billion people today living in countries that have introduced smoking bans, warnings on packaging, and other effective tobacco control measures—four times more people than a decade ago. However, a new World Health...
A new laboratory test developed to identify chemical changes to a group of cancer-related genes may be able to accurately detect which breast tumors are cancerous or benign. Such a test could result in a more timely diagnosis of breast cancer for women in developing countries with less access to...
A research letter published by Wang et al in JAMA Oncology has found that inherited mutations in the BRCA2 gene are linked to an increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in children and adolescents. “The BRCA family of genes are known to be linked to risk for breast and...
A research team led by investigators from Georgetown University Medical Center and Fudan University in China has devised a noninvasive and individualized technique for detecting and treating bladder cancer. Their findings were published by Jiang et al in Protein & Cell. The method uses a...
Scientists have demonstrated that an artificial intelligence (AI) tool can perform as well as human reviewers—and much more rapidly—in extracting clinical information regarding changes in tumors from unstructured radiology reports for patients with lung cancer. These findings were...
In a Dutch phase II study reported in JAMA Oncology, Theelen et al found that although use of stereotactic body radiotherapy prior to pembrolizumab increased the objective response rate vs pembrolizumab alone in metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the difference did not meet study...
ASCO’S CENTER FOR Research and Analytics (CENTRA) is now accepting research applications from ASCO members who wish to conduct surveys of the Society’s membership for research purposes. The Research Survey Pool (RSP) is a service made available to ASCO members who engage in survey research. It...
FINDING TRUSTED resources to support some conversations with your patients can be challenging—ASCO is here to help. Use the ASCO Answers booklet bundle to guide discussions with patients and caregivers and provide them with the ideal take-home resource. This topic-specific booklet bundle includes...
CANCERCARE® has announced the publication of a patient manifesto that emphasizes the importance of including patients’ values and priorities in cancer treatment planning. This manifesto can be used to inform and advocate with policymakers, insurers, health-care administrators, electronic medical...
In April 2019, a 3-year-old boy, Noah McAdams, missed the third round of chemotherapy for his acute lymphoblastic leukemia. His parents wanted instead to focus on alternative remedies of cannabidiol oil, alkaline water, mushroom tea, and herbal extracts. The sheriff was summoned; Noah’s parents...
Developed in 1925 by British statistician Sir Ronald Fisher, the P value is a measure that is ever-present in abstracts and studies, a small statistical tool that has enormous power to aid research being published in the literature or support drug approval. Over the past several years, however, a...
THE INVITED discussants of the presentations on repotrectinib and AMG 510 were enthusiastic about these agents. Sarina Anne Piha-Paul, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discussed AMG 510, and Benjamin Besse, MD, PhD, Head of the Cancer Medicine Department at the Institut...
Jason S. Lewis, PhD, has been named the 2019 recipient of the Paul C. Aebersold Award. Dr. Lewis is the Emily Tow Jackson Chair in Oncology and Vice Chair for Research and Chief Attending, Radiochemistry and Imaging Sciences Service, Department of Radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer...
ON JUNE 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to the anti– programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) therapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as monotherapy for patients with metastatic small cell lung cancer (SCLC) with disease progression on or after platinum-based...
On July 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to selinexor (Xpovio) in combination with dexamethasone for adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four prior therapies and whose disease is refractory to at least two ...
In addition to our regular coverage of major news stories from the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, here is an additional roundup of important studies related to prostate cancer. ARAMIS: Darolutamide and Quality of Life Darolutamide, a next-generation androgen receptor antagonist, significantly prolonged...
Breast cancers that display heterogeneity of HER2 expression may represent a distinct subset of HER2-positive breast cancer that is associated with lower rates of pathologic complete response, according to a phase II study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This trial evaluated HER2 heterogeneity...
Earlier this year, ASCO announced plans for its first-ever international meeting, ASCO Breakthrough: A Global Summit for Oncology Innovators, which will be held October 11–13, 2019, in Bangkok, Thailand. The meeting is a joint effort by ASCO and the Thai Society of Clinical Oncology to bring...
IT WAS a chilly Chicago morning, and I was sitting at the lobby of my hotel when I saw a smiling gentleman cheerfully waving at me from his car. It was Lawrence H. Einhorn, MD, picking me up for our drive to Indiana. I was one of the recipients of the ASCO International Development and Education...
Just weeks after my wedding in late summer of 2017, I had a sudden bout of abdominal pain so severe that it sent me to the emergency room. I was just 29 years old and in great physical shape. In the emergency room, a physician examined me and was about to release me with a prescription for a...
Commenting for The ASCO Post, melanoma expert Vernon K. Sondak, MD, Chair of the Department of Cutaneous Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, maintained that the association between immunotherapy-related toxicity and better outcomes is not yet clear. He first noted the impact of novel...
Active surveillance of patients with early-stage prostate cancer “is tackling the problem of overtreatment” and, with rigorous monitoring, “is safe and allows us to treat only patients who need treatment when their cancer progresses,” Ronald C. Chen, MD, MPH, affirmed in an interview with The ASCO...
The Hippocratic Oath calls on physicians to “use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment,” but not all versions of the oath call on us to prevent disease. Here we urge our colleagues to acknowledge that additional mandate and renew their commitment to preventing what could ...
BOOKMARK Title: An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It BackAuthor: Elisabeth Rosenthal, MDPublisher: Penguin PressPublication Date: April 2017Price: $27.95, hardcover; 416 pages The United States spends considerably more on health care than all other...
GUEST EDITOR Jame Abraham, MD, FACP Dr. Abraham is the Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Taussig Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. For this installment of the Living a Full Life series of articles, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD,...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the...
Although genetic aberrations are considered a major reason for cancer development, the importance of metabolic alterations in cancer development has emerged as a crucial aspect of contemporary cancer research. Better understanding of the metabolic traits in cancer cells could aid researchers in...
Over the past several decades, the field of psychosocial oncology has matured into an invaluable subspecialty that helps patients with cancer and their caregivers deal with the existential issues that arise in cancer, especially in the advanced-disease setting. In an effort to add to this...
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,...
The Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University has been awarded a 5-year, $9.7 million Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to study new approaches for lung cancer treatment. It is reportedly the only grant of its kind to be awarded in...
In a retrospective analysis reported in JAMA Surgery, Ogura et al found that persistently enlarged nodes in the internal iliac compartment on restaging magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after neoadjuvant chemoradiation or radiation therapy for low rectal cancer were associated with high risk of...
When chemotherapy is recommended as part of a treatment plan, women with breast cancer should start postoperative treatment ideally within 4 months of their cancer diagnosis. New study findings published by Kupstas et al in the Annals of Surgical Oncology show delaying chemotherapy further is...
A new study published by Virostko et al in Cancer found that the proportion of adults diagnosed with colorectal cancer under age 50 in the United States has continued to increase over the past decade, and younger adults are diagnosed with more advanced disease. To determine recent trends in...
To learn more about the processes that lead to chemotherapy-associated cardiotoxicity, a team of researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) conducted a study to investigate whether early changes in energy-related metabolites in the blood—measured shortly after...
In a proof-of-concept study, an international scientific team has shown that a laboratory test using artificial intelligence tools has the potential to more accurately sort out which people with pancreatic cysts will eventually develop pancreatic cancers. Their findings were published by Springer...
New research published by Li et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network has identified a way to help clinicians caring for patients with multiple myeloma to predict blood clots in order to take preventive action. The researchers established a set of risk factors to...
Patients who experienced a disaster-level hurricance during radiotherapy for lung cancer had worse overall survival than those who completed treatment in normal circumstances, with longer disaster declarations associated with increasingly worse survival. These findings come from a...
A report published by Liu et al in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found an association between diet quality and microbiome composition in human colonic mucosa. The researchers found that a high-quality diet is linked to more potentially beneficial bacteria, whereas a...
A recent study published by Chan et al in the Journal of Clinical Investigation found a cellular pathway associated with cancer may be beneficial in reducing side effects and extending duration of immunotherapy in some patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. IL-6/JAK1 Pathway Researchers...
The biliary microbiome was altered in patients who received neoadjuvant therapy prior to undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer, according to a study published by Goel et al in HPB. Additionally, more bacteria in patients who underwent surgery after neoadjuvant therapy were resistant to...
There were more than 8.7 million person-years of life lost and $94.4 billion in earnings lost due to cancer among people aged 16 to 84 in the United States in 2015. The calculation comes from a new report published by Islami et al in JAMA Oncology. Cancer is the second-leading cause of death...
Researchers have discovered two distinct subtypes of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) associated with different risks of recurrence following surgical treatment. The finding could yield predictive tests while focusing vigilant follow-up monitoring on patients with pNETs that have a higher...
The results of an economic modeling study to estimate the cost-effectiveness of multigene panel sequencing as compared to standard-of-care single-gene tests for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) showed that multigene panel sequencing tests are moderately...
Despite an avalanche of novel therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the past decade in the treatment of multiple myeloma, including proteasome inhibitors and immunomodulatory drugs, this blood cancer remains largely incurable, and nearly 13,000 people are expected...
On June 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved trastuzumab-anns (Kanjinti) for all approved indications of the reference product trastuzumab (Herceptin): for the treatment of HER2-overexpressing breast cancer and HER2-overexpressing metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction...