In the Canadian phase I/II SPARTACUS study reported in JAMA Oncology, Leung et al found very low rates of severe genitourinary and gastrointestinal toxicity and worsening in only one patient-reported outcome domain among women receiving adjuvant stereotactic hypofractionated pelvic radiation...
Overall cancer rates in Canada are declining, but the number of cases and deaths are increasing slightly because of population growth and an aging population, according to a new study published by Brenner et al in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The study is the result of a...
In the phase III AGILE trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Montesinos et al found that the addition of ivosidenib to azacitidine in induction therapy significantly prolonged event-free survival in patients with newly diagnosed IDH1-mutated acute myeloid leukemia. An overall...
Elective abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in patients with a cancer diagnosis is associated with several poor postoperative outcomes, according to a newly published study from researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Roush et al reported their findings in the Journal of...
Using whole-genome sequencing to contrast genomic alterations in patients with stable Barrett’s esophagus compared to patients whose Barrett’s progressed to esophageal adenocarcinoma, Paulson et al reported that DNA changes presaging esophageal cancer can be spotted years before cancer develops....
In the largest and most detailed population-based cohort study to date, researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that individuals with autism spectrum disorders, when present with comorbid intellectual disability and/or birth defects, were at a higher risk of cancer in early...
Recent findings with the use of sequencing technology have suggested that the gut microbiome may play a role in the treatment of cancer. A review paper published in JAMA Oncology by Liu and Shah captured the current understanding of the connection between the gut microbiome and therapeutic response ...
In the Japanese phase II BOOSTER trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Saji et al found that compared with continuing paclitaxel/bevacizumab, a maintenance strategy of switching to endocrine therapy plus bevacizumab (with the option of reinitiating paclitaxel/bevacizumab) was associated with a...
In a study reported in JAMA Surgery, Hanson et al found no difference in long-term satisfaction with breasts among women with early breast cancer who underwent breast-conserving surgery with radiation therapy vs mastectomy and breast reconstruction without radiation therapy. Women who underwent...
OCE Insights is an occasional column developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this installment, Mirat Shah, MD, of the Office of Oncologic Diseases, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA; Atiqur...
The novel antibody-drug conjugate mirvetuximab soravtansine could become the new standard of care for patients with folate receptor alpha–positive, platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, according to data presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2022 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer.1...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers, including certain leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myeloma. However, Black and Hispanic patients were largely absent from the major clinical trials that led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...
In the PRADA study—reported by Thiruchelvam et al in The Lancet Oncology—researchers found that a strategy of preoperative radiotherapy and deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap reconstruction was feasible and safe in women requiring mastectomy for breast cancer. As stated by the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Andrew J. Armstrong, MD, ScM, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III ARCHES trial showed a significant benefit with the addition of enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) in patients with metastatic...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has released the latest recommendations from the NCCN Advisory Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination and Pre-exposure Prophylaxis. The updated recommendations point to two booster vaccine doses for people who are immunocompromised (meaning three...
Marcia R. Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, of the University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses a way to possibly transform cancer outcomes by teaming up basic scientists, clinical researchers, and community advocates to work together, decode the complexity of cancer, and find points at...
Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, Director of Breast Cancer Research and Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, commented on this study on recurrence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). “This is an interesting study that evaluated whether...
Contrary to what has been assumed, all recurrences of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are not genetically the same, according to a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022.1 Almost 20% of ipsilateral recurrences found in the study were genetically...
Two new, large studies led by researchers at the American Cancer Society showed an increase in the use of proton-beam therapy for patients with cancer in the United States during the past decade. However, Black patients were less likely to receive proton-beam therapy than White patients, and the...
Breast density is one factor in assessing a person’s risk of developing breast cancer. Existing breast density notification laws have increased awareness among patients and providers, but clinical records had not been incorporated in studies to confirm the accuracy of personal breast density...
In a phase Ib study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fu et al found that the combination of navicixizumab (a bispecific antiangiogenic antibody to VEGF and delta-like ligand 4) and paclitaxel showed activity in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. Delta-like ligand 4 is a...
In a Japanese case-control study reported in JAMA Oncology, Momozawa et al found that germline BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants were associated with an increased risk of biliary tract, esophageal, and gastric cancers, in addition to an increased risk of cancers that have well-established associations...
In a pivotal phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Samer K. Khaled, MD, and colleagues found that narsoplimab, an inhibitor of mannan-binding lectin-associated serine protease-2, showed efficacy in the treatment of adult patients with hematopoietic stem cell...
The risk of self-harm after incident psychiatric disorder diagnosis in patients with 26 cancer types and the risk of unnatural deaths after self-harm were examined in 459,542 individuals in a study published by Chang et al in Nature Medicine. Patients with cancer may experience substantial...
In a phase III trial (Ewing 2008R3) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Koch et al found that the addition of treosulfan and melphalan high-dose chemotherapy (TreoMel-HDT) followed by reinfusion of autologous hematopoietic stem cells to consolidation did not improve event-free survival vs ...
In a small multi-institutional study, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system improved providers’ assessments of whether patients with bladder cancer had complete response to chemotherapy before a radical cystectomy. These findings were published by Sun et al in Tomography. Yet the researchers ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Zapatero et al, 10-year results of the Spanish phase III DART 01/05 trial did not support the 5-year findings of significantly improved biochemical disease–free, metastasis-free, and overall survival with long-term vs short-term androgen deprivation plus...
In an interim analysis of a Chinese phase III trial (FZOCUS-2) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Li et al found that maintenance treatment with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor fuzuloparib significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with...
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Heesterbeek et al found that results of noninvasive prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidy screening using cell-free DNA derived from maternal plasma raised suspicion of maternal malignancy in a very small proportion of pregnant women....
One month after Russia invaded Ukraine, on March 21, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis welcomed four Ukrainian children with cancer to be treated in the United States. Two of the children are pictured in the photos below. The four children, aged 20 months to 8 years old, traveled to...
In the article “OlympiA Trial: Adjuvant Olaparib Significantly Improves Overall Survival in Germline BRCA-Mutated Breast Cancer,” which began on page 1 of the April 10 issue of The ASCO Post, a few unfortunate errors appeared, notably an incorrect P value for the overall survival comparison (after...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) awarded the 2022 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research to Tony Hunter, PhD, FAACR, Fellow of the AACR Academy, at its Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Dr. Hunter is the American Cancer Society Professor and Renato Dulbecco Chair at ...
The Iranian revolution of 1979 transformed Iran from an absolute monarchy under Shah Mohammad Pahlavi to an Islamist republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. The author of a new book called The Magic of Normal, Maky Zanganeh, PhD, was born in Iran in 1970. As a young woman, she experienced the war in her ...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies are a significant advance, but they require careful patient selection, dependency on patients’ own T cells, lymphodepleting chemotherapy, possible bridging therapy, manufacturing timelines with extensive health-care coordination and cost, in...
In an analysis of data from the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) reported in Chest, Paul F. Pinsky, PhD, of the Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that incidental respiratory disease–related findings on low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening...
Amandeep Salhotra, MD, Associate Professor of Leukemia at City of Hope, in California, said this study should form the basis for a prospective phase III study in which older patients with AML (60–75 years) should have equal chance at randomization to either arm to remove bias on the part of...
For older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), front-line treatment with liposomal daunorubicin/cytarabine (CPX-351) appears to be equivalent to treatment with a hypomethylating agent plus venetoclax, according to data presented at the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting ...
Mikkael Sekeres, MD, Chief of the Division of Hematology at the University of Miami Health System and a hematologist at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, applauded the IDIOME1 and IDEAL2 investigators for conducting studies. These studies, he noted, were “very difficult because of the rarity...
The oral targeted small-molecule inhibitors of mutant IDH1 and IDH2 appear to be active in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) harboring these mutations, according to two phase II trials by the Groupe Francophone des Myélodysplasies (GFM) and its German colleagues in the European MDS...
In an analysis from the Women’s Health Initiative reported in JACC: CardioOncology, Kerryn W. Reding, PhD, MPH, RN, of the University of Washington at Seattle, and colleagues, identified the incidence of hospitalization for heart failure among postmenopausal breast cancer survivors. They reported...
The “holy grail” of triple-negative breast cancer therapy has been effective incorporation of drugs to improve outcomes in the early nonmetastatic setting. Although outcomes have improved with better chemotherapy drugs and schedules, triple-negative breast cancer still carries the worst prognosis...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, of Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, a preplanned interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial has shown improved event-free survival with the addition of pembrolizumab to...
As summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, the highly anticipated results of the GOG 281/LOGS study, which randomly assigned patients with recurrent low-grade serous ovarian cancer to the MEK inhibitor trametinib vs standard-of-care chemotherapy or endocrine therapy, have now been reported by...
As reported in The Lancet by David M. Gershenson, MD, of the Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues, the phase II/III GOG 281/LOGS trial showed that trametinib improved progression-free survival vs standard-of-care treatment...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On March 18, 2022, fixed-dose nivolumab and...
On March 9, 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) issued a new report, Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation, recommending the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implement new guidelines to standardize the collection of data on sex, gender,...
Editor’s Note: The following is adapted from Dr. Hrynkiv’s presentation at the March 18 ASCO/ECO Briefing: Cancer Care During the War in Ukraine. Find resources for impacted patients and providers at asco.org/ukraine and onco-help.org. Official statistics regarding damage and losses in Ukraine are...
The members of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) have chosen Philip D. Greenberg, MD, FAACR, as the Association’s President-Elect for 2022–2023. Dr. Greenberg is the Rona Jaffe Foundation Endowed Chair and Professor and Head of the Program in Immunology, Clinical Research...
The theme of the 2022 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium was “Accelerating Access to Precision Care Through Innovation.” Several studies presented at this meeting focused on older patients, who represent the majority of patients with gastrointestinal malignancies. Data reviewed at the meeting...
Norman E. Sharpless, MD, has announced that he has decided to step down from his position as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a position he has held since 2017. Dr. Sharpless will continue as NCI Director through April 29, 2022, to...