In a retrospective analysis reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Durani et al found that use of surveillance imaging in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) decreased following publication of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Choosing Wisely recommendations to limit such imaging ...
“Triple-negative breast cancer has multiple different subtypes, and there are targeted therapies that can be used based on the biomarkers that we identify for each patient,” Kari B. Wisinski, MD, noted in a review of recently approved and emerging therapies at the 2020 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer...
In the preceding two issues of The ASCO Post, we explored the overall history of geriatric oncology from 1980 to 2020. In this concluding part of the series, we focus on the invaluable contributions made by oncology nurses to the field. Over the past several decades, geriatric oncology has...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Takashi Kojima, MD, of the National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Japan, and colleagues, the phase III KEYNOTE-181 trial has shown that second-line pembrolizumab improved overall survival vs the investigator choice of chemotherapy in...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by Alexander Drilon, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues and by Lori J. Wirth, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues, the phase I/II LIBRETTO-001 trial has shown marked activity of the RET kinase ...
Chile has a population of approximately 19 million living predominantly in urban areas (87.7%), with a population density of 66 inhabitants per square mile.1 For the year 2020, approximately 12% of its population was older than 65 years.1 Socioeconomic Trends and Cancer The country has experienced ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Thomas Powles, MD, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Bladder 100 trial found that maintenance treatment with avelumab plus best supportive care significantly improved overall survival...
Yet another blow has been dealt for the alkylating agent trabectedin in advanced ovarian cancer. The international phase III INOVATYON study found no improvement in overall or progression-free survival for trabectedin plus pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PEG-LD) vs carboplatin/PEG-LD in patients...
As the number of older patients with cancer continues to rise, interventions that reduce the high rates of symptoms, toxicity, and distress in this population are urgently needed. Research presented during the 2020 ASCO Quality Care Symposium has added to the growing body of evidence supporting...
In a phase II Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC) study (TBCRC 048; Olaparib Expanded) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nadine M. Tung, MD, and colleagues found that olaparib produced high response rates in patients with metastatic breast cancer and germline PALB2...
In an article published in The Lancet Oncology, Redman et al described the conduct of and findings from the Lung Cancer Master Protocol (Lung-MAP; SWOG S1400), a completed biomarker-driven master protocol designed to address the need for improved therapies for previously treated patients with...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, and colleagues, extended follow-up of the phase III KEYNOTE-426 trial shows continued progression-free and overall survival superiority with pembrolizumab/axitinib vs sunitinib in the first-line treatment of advanced renal cell...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Palmieri et al found that the Ferrara criteria for determining fitness for intensive chemotherapy—a set of consensus criteria proposed by a panel of experts from the Italian Society of Hematology, Italian Society of...
Two different phase III studies found that combining an anti–PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor (pembrolizumab in KEYNOTE-361) with platinum-based chemotherapy or with another checkpoint inhibitor (the anti–CTLA-4 antibody tremelimumab in DANUBE) failed to significantly improve overall or...
In the phase II OMNIVORE study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rana R. McKay, MD, and colleagues did not find evidence supporting a strategy of discontinuing nivolumab monotherapy in responders and adding ipilimumab in nivolumab nonresponders among patients with metastatic renal cell...
In a single-center phase I dose-escalation and basket dose-expansion study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Guo et al identified the phase II dose and schedule for the oral RAF/MEK inhibitor CH5126766 in patients with RAS/RAF-mutant cancers. The agent also showed antitumor activity across various...
In a first-in-human phase I trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Salamero et al identified toxicities and activity associated with iadademstat, an oral first-in-class lysine-specific histone demethylase 1A (LSD1) inhibitor, in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid...
The innovaTV 204 trial’s invited discussant, Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, Head of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, was encouraged by the study’s findings. “Of note, the response rate was 24%, the time to response was short, and the median duration of...
The treatment of recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer has not changed much in recent years, but according to preliminary trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020, checkpoint inhibitors and antibody-drug conjugates may become new options. In the...
A nonsurgical treatment option for rectal cancer that preserves quality of life may be safe for selected patients, according to a new study comparing it with standard surgical treatment. These findings were published by Beard et al in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons and were...
In the phase II portion of the phase II/III MDS3001 study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, David P. Steensma, MD, and colleagues found that imetelstat—a first-in-class competitive inhibitor of telomerase enzymatic activity—markedly reduced the need for red blood cell transfusion in...
As reported in JAMA Oncology, Dess et al have developed a novel clinical prognostic stage group system for nonmetastatic prostate cancer that “meets criteria set forth by the American Joint Committee on Cancer [AJCC] Precision Medicine Core committee… [and outperforms] the existing [AJCC] system...
Researchers have found that a class of commonly used heart drugs may also improve patients’ responses to PD-L1 inhibitors, according to preliminary findings presented by Strauss et al at the 32th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics (Abstract 7). Angiotensin...
Bladder preservation with trimodality therapy may be a safe and effective alternative to cystectomy for selected patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, according to results from a phase II trial presented by Coen et al at the virtual 2020 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO)...
In an Italian phase II trial (GIMEMA LAL2116) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Foà et al found that first-line induction and consolidation treatment with dasatinib plus blinatumomab produced a high rate of molecular response in adults with Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute...
In a Canadian population-based cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, Chesney et al found that older patients undergoing surgery for cancer were likely to spend a high number of days at home vs in health-care institutions in the years following surgery for cancer, suggesting favorable functional...
The advent of effective combination chemotherapies has changed the treatment landscape for metastatic pancreatic cancer, extending median survival and leading to durable responses in a subset of patients. However, perpetual chemotherapy is cumulatively toxic, leading to progressive bone marrow...
The long-term results of the pivotal SOLO-1 trial have shown that maintenance olaparib more than doubles the 5-year disease-free survival time for patients who have newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer with BRCA mutations, according to an update presented at the European Society for Medical...
A new study finds that the racial composition of clinical trials involving radiation therapy does not match that of the U.S. population. Examining trials from the past 23 years, researchers found that roughly 12% of trial participants were Black, which is less than the 13% population composition of ...
Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) was superior to conventional radiation therapy in reducing pain from spinal metastases in a phase II/III study reported by Arjun Sahgal, MD, and colleagues at the 2020 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting (Abstract LBA 2). More...
Delivering stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT, also called stereotactic ablative radiotherapy) in either one or four treatment sessions led to similar outcomes in patients with up to three lung metastases in the randomized SAFRON II trial. The study, reported by Shankar Siva, PhD, and...
In the Swedish ARTSCAN III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gebre-Medhin et al found that radiotherapy with concomitant cetuximab did not improve outcomes vs radiotherapy with cisplatin in patients with previously untreated, locoregionally advanced head and neck squamous cell...
Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) may represent a new standard of care for patients with four or more brain metastases, replacing whole-brain radiation therapy (WBRT) in this setting, according to a phase III study presented at the virtual 2020 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual...
The addition of the radiotracer fluciclovine to positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging for treatment planning led to superior failure-free survival compared with conventional imaging in men with prostate cancer who had undergone radical prostatectomy and were experiencing biologic recurrence of ...
Adagrasib (MRTX849), a novel agent that targets a mutated form of the KRAS gene—the most commonly altered oncogene in human cancers, and one long considered “undruggable”—caused tumor shrinkage in most patients in a clinical trial, with manageable side effects, researchers reported at the 32nd...
Patient Power, a patient-driven cancer news organization, reported that a majority of patients with cancer still want to participate in clinical trials despite the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent survey of 1,485 patients. The Patient Power COVID-19 Cancer Trial Survey, the second Patient...
Editor’s Note: The ASCO Post learned of the death of Patrick Beauregard due to colorectal cancer on September 6, 2020. 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...
The editors of The ASCO Post are sad to report the death of Patrick H. Beauregard on September 6, 2020. The cause was colorectal cancer. Diagnosed with stage IV disease in 2017 at the age of 29, Mr. Beauregard dedicated the last 3 years of his life to raising awareness of colorectal cancer in...
Joan H. (Rosen) Marks, a pioneer in genetic counseling, died on September 14, 2020. She was 91. Ms. Marks received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, in 2019, in recognition of her contributions and leadership to the College and to society, the ...
The 5-year outcomes of the CheckMate 066 trial, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France,and colleagues, show continued benefit of first-line nivolumab vs dacarbazine in advanced BRAF wild-type melanoma and support evidence that ...
A large cohort study1 finding that the risk of dying of breast cancer was increased threefold after a DCIS diagnosis may cause patients diagnosed with DCIS to ask what they can do to reduce that risk. Currently, there is little that most patients can do. “The lifetime risk of death following DCIS...
A study published recently by Giannakeas et al looked at the risk of death from breast cancer for women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS).1 The investigators anticipated that treatment would eliminate the risk of invasive ipsilateral recurrence and prevent subsequent mortality from...
The Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) held its first-ever virtual Advocacy Summit and online Week of Action September 9–18, 2020. The largest Advocacy Summit to date, 170 ASCO volunteer leaders and oncology care providers participated in 200 virtual meetings with members of Congress and...
Twelve adults with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) have been treated with CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia by Carl June, MD, Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, and colleagues. These were all end-stage...
The text and photograph here are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, The Anesthesia Era 1845–1875 by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. Photograph courtesy of Stanley B. Burns, MD, and The Burns Archive. For ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, of the Istituto Nazionale Tumori IRCCS Fondazione Pascale, Naples, and colleagues, 4-year results of the CheckMate 238 trial show continued benefit of adjuvant nivolumab vs ipilimumab in recurrence-free survival and metastasis-free...
Disturbance of the gut microbial metabolism is thought to be the root cause of human diseases. Bacteria, viruses, and fungi affect their human hosts in numerous ways. There is evidence to support the theory that microbes, through their genetic makeup, gene products, and metabolites, play a role in...
Checkpoint inhibitors can be lifesaving for many patients with advanced melanoma, but those who experience disease progression currently have few treatment options. The combination of a tyrosine kinase inhibitor and an anti–PD-1 agent may offer some hope in this setting, according to a study of...
As first-line therapy for advanced esophageal cancer, pembrolizumab added to chemotherapy improved overall survival in the KEYNOTE-590 population. Not only did patients with high PD-L1 expression benefit, the value of checkpoint inhibition was observed for the whole population, the trial’s...
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has launched the Center for Salivary and Rare Head and Neck Cancers to treat patients with rare and occasionally aggressive cancers arising from the head and neck. The Center is among the first in the country specifically dedicated to the care and therapeutic research...