A study by Xu et al in Clinical Cancer Research evaluating deep-learning networks that analyze time-series computed tomography (CT) images of patients with locally advanced NSCLC has found these networks can integrate imaging scans at multiple time points to improve clinical outcome...
Over the past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted several Fast Track and Orphan Drug designations to treatments for myelodysplastic syndromes, triple-negative breast cancer, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated cancers. Fast Track Designation...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Chung et al, the phase II KEYNOTE-158 trial showed activity of pembrolizumab in previously treated programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)-positive advanced cervical cancer. The study supported the 2018 accelerated approval of pembrolizumab in this...
A study by Bauman et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that patients who kept ice chips in their mouths—what the study authors called “oral cryotherapy”—during oxaliplatin infusions reported less trouble with eating and...
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...
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 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 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...
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 ...
Two nonprofit organizations serving the lung cancer community—the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) and Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA)—have announced they are joining forces as the GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer. With more than 3 decades of combined expertise, a...
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...
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...
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION for Cancer Research (AACR) recently honored Charles L. Sawyers, MD, FAACR, with the AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship at the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting in Atlanta. The AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship, now in its 13th year, is awarded to a scientist...
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...
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...
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...
HIS HEAD WAS DIFFERENT from those of the other people in line. He bore a matrix of white rows of circular patches on his shaved scalp like a wig. The patches were electrodes, connected by cords to a power supply in a satchel around his shoulder. I was able to make an instant and unfortunate...
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;...
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...
Christopher L. Hallemeier, MD, Associate Professor in Radiation Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, and Andrew S. Kennedy, MD, Physician in Chief of Radiation Oncology at Sarah Cannon, Nashville, and Director of Radiation Oncology Research, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, commented on the...
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....
IMMUNOTHERAPY WITH the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab may prove to be an effective option for patients with advanced non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma, according to results in cohort B of the KEYNOTE-427 trial, presented at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.1 Response rates were...
In contrast with melanoma, lung cancer, and kidney cancer, immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy has been disappointing in prostate cancer thus far. Because of success in treating other tumor types, interest remains high in exploring the effect of immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibition in prostate...
Adding enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to the results of the ...
IN THE GLOBAL phase III KEYNOTE-181 trial, pembrolizumab as second-line therapy for advanced esophageal cancer did not improve overall survival in the whole population, vs chemotherapy, but did improve survival for patients with strong expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1),...
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...
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan is active in patients previously treated with chemotherapy or checkpoint inhibitor therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer. These results from a phase I/II basket study of this agent were presented at the 2019...
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,...
ADDING ENZALUTAMIDE to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to results of the phase III...
THE INVESTIGATIONAL androgen receptor inhibitor darolutamide significantly improved metastasis-free survival in men with high-risk nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer vs placebo in the large phase III ARAMIS trial.1 Men treated with darolutamide had a median metastasis-free survival...
THE COMBINATION of pembrolizumab and cabozantinib demonstrated antitumor activity in patients with previously treated metastatic renal cell carcinoma and both drugs were tolerable at their approved doses, according to data from a dose-escalation cohort of a phase I study.1 Among eight patients with ...
THE PROGRAMMED cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor, avelumab, was combined with the multitargeted vascular growth endothelial factor (VEGF) agent, axitinib, and compared to monotherapy with sunitinib in the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Toni K. Choueiri,...
THIS YEAR saw a huge turnout and a large number of scientific abstracts presented at both the 2019 Gastrointestinal (GI) Cancers Symposium, held on January 17–19, and the 2019 Genitourinary (GU) Cancers Symposium, held on February 14–16, both in San Francisco. The GU Cancers Symposium attracted...
In a study focused on the phase III COMBI-AD trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Schadendorf et al found no difference in patient-reported outcomes with adjuvant dabrafenib plus trametinib vs placebo in patients with resected BRAF V600E– or BRAF V600K–mutant stage III melanoma. The...
The experimental oncolytic adenovirus telomelysin in combination with radiotherapy was safe and showed early clinical efficacy in vulnerable patients with esophageal cancer, according to results from a phase I clinical trial presented by Fujiwara et al at the American Association for ...
In an interim analysis of a phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Makker et al found that lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab was active in advanced endometrial cancer. Study Details In the study, 54 patients from 11 sites with metastatic endometrial cancer unselected for microsatellite...
People with and without cancer are more likely, over time, to use a more potent form of medical marijuana with increasingly higher amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a new study published by Kim et al in the Journal of Palliative Medicine has shown. “Although there is growing...
Maintenance treatment with the PARP inhibitor rucaparib was well tolerated and showed activity among patients with advanced BRCA- or PALB2-mutated pancreatic cancer sensitive to platinum-based chemotherapy, according to results from an interim analysis of an ongoing phase II clinical...
A combination of the experimental histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor entinostat with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor pembrolizumab showed clinical responses in patients with melanoma that had progressed on prior anti–PD-1 treatment, according to results from the phase...
An interim analysis of a small phase Ib study by O’Hara et al evaluating the CD40 agonistic monoclonal antibody APX005M in combination with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel with or without the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor nivolumab in untreated patients with metastatic...
The results of an analysis of pooled data from the phase Ib KEYNOTE-028 trial and the phase II KEYNOTE-158 study of the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 monoclonal antibody pembrolizumab in the treatment of advanced small cell lung cancer has found that the therapy provided antitumor...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) has issued its 2018 Annual Report, including updates on regulatory reviews and initiatives, OCE programs, guidances, and more. Regulatory Reviews The OCE is tasked with clinical medical oncology reviews, irrespective...
The National Center of Oncology (NCO) in Azerbaijan partnered with ASCO, the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), and the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) to conduct a highly successful Multidisciplinary Cancer Management Course (MCMC) in September 2018 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The conference...
ASCO ENDORSES and reinforces the evidence-based American Urological Association (AUA), American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), and the Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO) Guideline published in 2018 in the Journal of Urology. ASCO’s endorsement of a guideline on clinically localized...
THE MANAGEMENT of localized prostate cancer remains controversial. Although the widespread use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing has resulted in a dramatic increase in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, many men do not benefit from intervention because the disease is either...
NYU LANGONE Health’s Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center has been designated a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Perlmutter Cancer Center is now among 50 cancer centers across the country to earn this distinction. Perlmutter Cancer Center received an overall...
DARATUMUMAB APPEARS to be the “gift that keeps on giving” to the myeloma community. “It seems we can add daratumumab to almost anything and make the regimen better. It’s got good activity and a good safety profile,” said Kenneth Shain, MD, PhD, Director of the Myeloma Working Group at Moffitt...
MULTIPLE POLY (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors are under study in metastatic prostate cancer and no clear winner has emerged yet. Some studies suggest that the best use of PARP inhibitors may be in patients whose cancers harbor DNA-repair defects and BRCA1/2 mutations, but other data...
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan is active in patients previously treated with chemotherapy or checkpoint inhibitor therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer. These results from a phase I/II basket study of this agent were presented at the 2019...
THE ANNUAL GASTROINTESTINAL CANCERS SYMPOSIUM took place earlier this year in San Francisco. In addition to important studies captured in our past few issues, The ASCO Post here briefly summarizes additional interesting studies. Adjuvant Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy in Colon Cancer...