Some patients who died within 1 month of being newly diagnosed with metastatic cancer in the United States received ineffective surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and hormonal therapy, according to a new study published by Sineshaw et al in JNCI Cancer Spectrum. The study authors said the...
In a study reported in JAMA Surgery, Dimitrakopoulos et al found two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in noncoding, functional regions of genes that regulate cancer progression. They were associated with survival after resection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The study involved...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Tolaney et al, 7-year follow-up of the phase II Adjuvant Paclitaxel and Trastuzumab trial showed that adjuvant paclitaxel and trastuzumab were associated with “excellent” outcomes in women with small, node-negative HER2-positive breast...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kurian et al found that approximately one-quarter of women with breast cancer and one-third of those with ovarian cancer underwent cancer genetic testing, and that 8% to 15% of those tested had actionable pathogenic variants. Study Details...
In a single-center phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tchekmedyian et al found that the multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor lenvatinib was active in progressive recurrent or metastatic adenoid cystic carcinoma. Study Details In the study, 32 evaluable patients at...
A new study has found that rising rates of liver cancer deaths in the United States have largely been confined to individuals who have received less education—especially among men. Published by Ma et al in Cancer, the findings emphasize the need for enhanced efforts to address the growing...
Recent research suggests that remotely delivering rehabilitation services to patients with advanced cancer may improve their physical function, pain, and quality of life, while allowing them to spend less time in hospitals and nursing homes. These findings were published by Cheville et al in JAMA...
In a study reported in JAMA Network Open, Warren et al quantified incremental costs of first-line cancer treatment failure attributable to continued smoking in patients with cancer. Study Details The study involved development of a model to identify attributable incremental costs of subsequent...
The newest study of America’s radiation oncologist workforce finds that gender and racial gaps have narrowed slightly, although persistent and growing geographic disparities point to a need for more equity in access to radiation therapy care. The survey found that fewer radiation oncologists...
The latest edition of the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) review on recent cancer prevention and early detection efforts has found that although many strategies have been proven to reduce cancer risk, their application has been suboptimal in the United States, especially in socioeconomically...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Lee et al found that an aerobic and resistance exercise intervention reduced Framingham Risk Scores (FRS) for cardiovascular disease among overweight or obese women with early-stage breast cancer. In the single-center trial, 100 women with stage I to III...
In the phase I/II NRG Oncology/RTOG 0813 study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bezjak et al found that five-fraction stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) was associated with relatively low rates of serious treatment-related toxicity and good outcomes in patients with centrally...
In the phase II QUADRA trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Moore et al found that the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor niraparib was active in fourth- or later-line treatment of ovarian cancer, particularly in patients with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD)-positive,...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to erdafitinib (Balversa) for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma with susceptible FGFR3 or FGFR2 genetic alterations that has progressed during or following platinum-containing...
A newly published Mayo Clinic study has found that a presurgery treatment plan for patients with borderline/locally advanced pancreatic cancer undergoing total neoadjuvant therapy may improve outcomes. The findings were published by Truty et al in Annals of Surgery. The study followed 194...
In the Chinese phase III ESO-Shanghai 1 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chen et al found that paclitaxel plus fluorouracil did not significantly prolong overall survival vs standard cisplatin plus fluorouracil in definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy (dCRT) for locally...
In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bayman et al found that prophylactic radiotherapy to the chest wall after diagnostic or therapeutic procedures did not reduce the risk of chest wall metastases in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. In the open-label,...
In a study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Chua et al found that opioid-related hospitalizations among American patients with cancer are rare, increasing at a very low rate, and consist mostly of hospitalization for nonheroin opioid poisoning. The study analyzed trends and risk...
Yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, ASCO announced a new task force aimed at reducing disparities and improving outcomes for patients and survivors of cancer who live in rural communities. The new Rural Cancer Care Task Force will identify opportunities to close the care gap and ...
Maintenance immunotherapy did not improve survival in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC), according to late-breaking results from the CheckMate 451 study presented today by Owonikoko et al at the European Lung Cancer Congress 2019 (Abstract LBA1_PR). Around 60% to 70% of...
Two studies reported at the European Lung Cancer Congress (ELCC) 2019 provided new insights on the efficacy and safety of immunotherapy in elderly patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although around half of all people newly diagnosed with NSCLC are elderly (Pallis ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Singer et al found that a quality improvement initiative was successful in increasing a radiation oncology department’s efforts in encouraging patients with cancer to cease tobacco use prior to radiation therapy. As noted by the...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kim and colleagues found that higher levels of stromal tumor–infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) were associated with better outcomes in patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy or trastuzumab plus chemotherapy for early-stage...
In the phase III PHOENIX trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Younes et al found that the addition of ibrutinib to R-CHOP (rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) did not improve outcomes in patients with untreated non–germinal center B-cell...
ASCO recently announced that it is seeking applications for research grants for projects that use data from CancerLinQ Discovery®—an offering of ASCO’s CancerLinQ® initiative—as a source. CancerLinQ Discovery provides curated sets of deidentified data from patients with cancer to academic...
OVER THE PAST several months, the ASCO in Action Podcast has secured exclusive interviews with high-ranking officials to discuss health policy issues affecting the United States. In March, the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Acting...
RELIEVING PAIN is an important part of cancer care, and each patient experiences pain differently. Give your patients the information and tools they need to understand and manage their pain. ASCO Answers offers two helpful products on managing cancer-related pain: a one-page fact sheet or an...
As oncology professionals’ schedules become more demanding, mobile technology is often used to efficiently work on the go. Continued education can be conveniently incorporated into clinicians’ routines with apps such as ASCO eLearning’s newly rebranded Self-Evaluation App, formerly the ASCO MOC...
Carson Leslie was a kind, popular, lively teen who loved sports and spending time with his family and friends. He was a devoted student at The Covenant School of Dallas, where he was quarterback on the school’s football team, and he was an active member of Grace Bible Church. He shared a special...
BREAST CANCER SCREENING is no longer “just mammography” but involves a growing list of ever more sophisticated techniques that are improving detection, according to Elizabeth Morris, MD, Professor of Radiology, the Larry Norton Chair, and Chief of the Breast Imaging Service at Memorial Sloan...
Biologic age—a DNA-based estimate of a person’s age—may be associated with the development of breast cancer, according a report published by Jacob K. Kresovich, PhD, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and colleagues in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.1...
In 1996, an excruciating sore throat sent me first to my primary care physician and then to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, after a suspicious mass was found on the right side of my throat. A biopsy determined that the tumor was squamous cell neck cancer, and additional tests of my neck,...
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...
The early debate over the social and ethical implications of gene therapy led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee in 1974. However, the risks of human gene therapies were largely unknown until 1999, when a patient died of a massive immune...
As the opioid epidemic continues to sweep the United States, providers across Nebraska are facing the challenge of determining the appropriateness of pain treatment options that both meet the needs of the patients and fall within nationally published guidelines. A recent report published by the...
THE EMERGENCE of anticancer agents that block immune checkpoints has transformed the field of oncology, leading to durable responses and improvements in overall survival in melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, head/neck squamous cell carcinoma, urothelial bladder cancer, and non–small cell lung cancer....
INITIAL DATA from the ongoing, multicenter, first-in-human, phase Ia/Ib dose-escalation and -expansion study suggest that an anti–T-cell immunoglobulin domain and mucin domain–containing molecule 3 (anti–TIM-3) antibody alone or in combination with immune checkpoint blockade could counter intrinsic ...
NEW AGENTS for the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer should be coming soon to your clinic, according to Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of...
Informed consent is an important part of delivering quality cancer care. Traditional ethical and legal rules require clinicians to disclose three types of information: (1) the patient’s diagnosis; (2) the nature of the proposed intervention and its intended benefits, risks, and adverse effects;...
Researchers have identified a new potential immunotherapy target in pancreatic cancer, which so far has been notoriously resistant to treatment with immune checkpoint blockade drugs effective against a variety of other cancers. A research team from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center...
As part of The ASCO Post’s continued coverage of the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here is an update on several studies of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) and cellular therapy, as used in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute...
THE FORMAL DISCUSSANT of the KEYNOTE-427 trial, Tracy Rose, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told listeners: “I think pembrolizumab should now be considered an option for non–clear cell kidney cancer. Response rates, however, remain inferior to those seen in clear cell...
In patients with locally advanced rectal cancer, the delivery of all radiotherapy and chemotherapy neoadjuvantly—with a shorter course of radiation—may improve the chance of complete response and downstaging over conventional treatment, according to investigators from Washington University, St....
Although ARCHES was a positive trial, the results may not signal a practice change at this time, according to formal discussant Ian Davis, MBBS, PhD, FRACP, FAChPM, of Monash University Eastern Health Clinical School, Melbourne. “We should probably not change practice yet on the basis of these...
Increasing evidence is emerging about the effectiveness of electrochemotherapy in the treatment of basal cell carcinomas in the head and neck region. A study presented by Kis et al at the World Congress on Advanced Treatments and Technologies in Skin Cancer (Skin Cancer 2019) (Poster Board 6) aimed ...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Mor et al found that veterans with advanced lung cancer treated in Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers with high hospice use were more likely to receive concurrent cancer care but less likely to receive aggressive care. Moreover, veterans treated at...
Watch John Marshall, MD, and BILCAP first author John Neil Primrose, PhD, MBBS, discuss the trial at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting. In the phase III BILCAP trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Primrose and colleagues found evidence that adjuvant capecitabine may improve overall...
SEVERAL STUDIES at the 2019 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium evaluated the benefits of neoadjuvant treatment in patients with pancreatic cancer—and in patients deemed fully resectable, not just “borderline” resectable.1-3 Although the standard of care for resectable pancreatic ductal...
SOME PATIENTS with metastatic prostate cancer may respond to a combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors after treatment with hormonal therapy and chemotherapy is not successful, according to early results from the phase II CheckMate 650 trial. Principal Investigator Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD,...
TREATMENT WITH stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) results in a similar safety profile to conventionally fractionated, or moderately hypofractionated external-beam radiotherapy, in men with low- or intermediate- risk prostate cancer, according to preliminary results of the Prostate Advances ...