The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Yen Nien (Jason) Hou, PharmD, DiplOM, LAc, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on ...
ASCO has elected Robin Zon, MD, FACP, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, to lead as its President beginning in June 2024. Dr. Zon will take office as President-Elect immediately following the ASCO Annual Business Meeting in Chicago on June 5, 2023. Five additional members were also elected to ...
Even as they’ve revolutionized cancer treatment, immune checkpoint inhibitors have been shown to produce a range of adverse immune-related side effects. Researchers have now identified inherited genetic variations that may place patients at high risk for complications when undergoing treatment with ...
Gladys Magaly Rodriguez, MD, was born in Piedras Negras, Mexico, a city situated along the banks of the Rio Grande. At age 6, her family immigrated to Eagle Pass, Texas, a border town of some 30,000 people that is predominantly Latinx and Spanish speaking. “Even though I lived and attended school...
On November 10, 2022, tremelimu-mab in combination with durvalumab and platinum-based chemotherapy was approved for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with no sensitizing EGFR mutation or ALK genomic tumor aberrations.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was supported by...
Lymphoma expert Alex Herrera, MD, was born in Miami; his parents were just 19 years old when he was born. Dr. Herrera’s father was born in Puerto Rico to Cuban and Ecuadorian parents. His mother was born in Cuba and came to the United States via Operation Peter Pan, the clandestine program that...
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, signed into law on August 16, 2022, contains several important provisions regarding health care and drug pricing.1 In this article, I provide an overview of the legislation’s implications for oncology care, focusing on its provisions concerning drug price...
In an analysis from the HOPE trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mina S. Sedrak, MD, MS, and colleagues found that approximately one-fifth of older women with early-stage breast cancer received a relative dose intensity (RDI) of neoadjuvant/adjuvant chemotherapy that was below...
In an analysis from the BMT Survivor Study (BMTSS) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Smita Bhatia, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that survivors of blood or marrow transplantation (BMT) were more likely to have high out-of-pocket medical costs vs comparator siblings during the COVID-19...
In a Swedish study (GÖTEBORG-2) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hugosson et al found that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-targeted prostate biopsy was associated with a lower risk of overdiagnosis of clinically insignificant prostate cancer compared with MRI-targeted and...
Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine has named Sheri Robb, PhD, a Walther Professor of Supportive Oncology. This is one of five endowed positions to develop a supportive oncology program that encompasses research and patient care. Dr. Robb is a nationally renowned music therapy researcher,...
On November 10, 2022, brentuximab vedotin was approved for use in combination with doxorubicin, vincristine, etoposide, prednisone, and cyclophosphamide for pediatric patients aged ≥ 2 years with previously untreated high-risk classical Hodgkin lymphoma.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was...
The final results of the phase III CheckMate 651 trial showed no significant overall survival benefit with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs the EXTREME regimen (cetuximab plus cisplatin or carboplatin plus fluorouracil for up to six cycles, followed by cetuximab maintenance) in recurrent or...
On December 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved nadofaragene firadenovec-vncg (Adstiladrin), a nonreplicating adenoviral vector–based gene therapy indicated for the treatment of adult patients with high-risk bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive non–muscle-invasive...
An oncolytic therapy delivered within the urinary bladder in combination with pembrolizumab has yielded the “best results seen in the field” in patients with bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive bladder cancer, according to data presented during the 2022 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fu et al found that the WEE1 kinase inhibitor adavosertib was active in patients with refractory solid tumors with CCNE1 amplification, with evidence of increased activity in epithelial ovarian cancer. Study Details In the trial, 30...
In a Dutch-Danish phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Rohaan et al found that tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy prolonged progression-free survival vs ipilimumab in patients with advanced melanoma. Study Details The open-label trial included 168 patients...
In a European cohort study (EPI-CT) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Hauptmann et al found an increased risk of brain cancer with increasing brain radiation dose among children and young adults who had undergone computed tomography (CT) scans. Study Details The study used pooled data from nine...
In the Canadian 5C study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Puts et al found that a geriatric assessment and management intervention did not improve quality of life, unplanned health-care use, mortality, or toxicity compared with usual care in patients aged 70 years or older with cancer. ...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, Hammad et al found that adjuvant therapy was associated with better outcomes vs no adjuvant therapy in patients with node-negative disease after neoadjuvant therapy and resection of pancreatic carcinoma. Study Details The study used data...
In updated analyses from the phase III HER2CLIMB trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Nancy U. Lin, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of tucatinib to trastuzumab and capecitabine showed improved outcomes among previously treated patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and baseline brain...
Investigators revealed that the travel time to the nearest mammography facility may be long for a considerable proportion of patients in the United States, particularly affecting more than 50% of patients in the rural areas of 28 states, according to a new study published by Wiese et al in the...
The novel drug modakafusp alfa has shown early promise in combating relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, according to new findings presented by Vogl et al at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition (Abstract 565). Background Modakafusp alfa is a fusion protein...
The novel MinimuMM-seq technique may make it possible to detect tumor cells in individuals at higher risk for multiple myeloma, assess the risk of disease progression in patients with myeloma, and track genetic changes in tumor cells over time from a single blood sample, according to a new study...
Jennifer R. Brown, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses phase III findings of the ALPINE study, which showed that zanubrutinib is more efficacious and better tolerated than ibrutinib as a treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small...
On December 14, Monica M. FACS, Bertagnolli, MD, FASCO, Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), released the following statement: I was very recently diagnosed with early breast cancer. The prognosis is very favorable. The cancer is hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer...
Richter syndrome is an aggressive lymphoma that develops in up to 1% of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and it serves as an example of histologic transformation. While recent advances have transformed the treatment landscape of CLL, Richter syndrome remains associated with poor...
Zanubrutinib showed superior efficacy to ibrutinib—with fewer side effects—in the first head-to-head comparison between the Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), according to data presented by Jennifer...
A novel study evaluating the addition of venetoclax to the intensive chemotherapy regimen of cladribine, idarubicin, and cytarabine as a front-line therapy demonstrated high rates of disease control and remissions in younger patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and high-risk...
A new phase II trial demonstrated that the chemotherapy-free regimen of ponatinib and blinatumomab may have achieved high response rates and reduced the need for an allogeneic stem cell transplant for patients with recently diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome–positive (Ph+) acute lymphoblastic...
Researchers observed encouraging response rates in older or high-risk patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) when treated with the triplet combination therapy of azacitidine, venetoclax, and magrolimab in a phase I/II trial, according to new findings presented by Daver et al at...
The bispecific T-cell engager molecule blinatumomab was found to improve overall survival for patients with no measurable residual disease (MRD) after initial treatment for B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), according to the phase III ECOG-ACRIN E1910 trial presented by Litzow et al at...
The use of a simplified treatment regimen by oncologists—along with management recommendations and 24/7 support provided by a limited and dedicated group of academic disease experts—resulted in a decrease in early deaths from acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). In the multicenter prospective trial...
The chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel was deemed safe and showed encouraging signs of efficacy in a small pilot trial involving patients with lymphoma of the brain and/or spinal cord, according to findings presented by Caron A. Jacobson, MD, MMSc, and colleagues ...
A new clinical tool may pinpoint which patients with clonal hematopoiesis are at highest risk for cancer progression, according to new findings presented by Weeks et al at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition (Abstract 926). Background Clonal hematopoiesis—a...
A three-drug combination that showed success at sending patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) into deep remissions in a clinical trial may be effective at treating patients with high-risk types of the disease, according to new findings presented by Ryan et al at the 2022 American Society ...
Long-term recurrence and survival data are now available from the groundbreaking TAILORx trial. With 12 years of follow-up, the updated analysis—reported by Sparano et al at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) 2022 (Abstract GS1-05)—confirms the original findings that chemotherapy may...
On December 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to adagrasib (Krazati), a RAS GTPase family inhibitor, for adult patients with KRAS G12C–mutated, locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as determined by an FDA-approved test, who...
The use of stem cell transplantation for acute myeloid leukemia increased by about 55% worldwide from 2009 to 2016, according to new findings presented by Niederweiser et al at the 64th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition (Abstract 3638). Although the largest...
Patients of non-European ancestry and especially those of low socioeconomic status are more likely to receive the most specialized types of allogeneic stem cell transplantation that require the highest level of care, according to new findings presented by Fingrut et al at the 2022 American Society...
Abdul Rahman Al Armashi, MD, of Seidman Cancer Center, Case Western University, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, discusses a retrospective analysis, using a CDC database, in one of the largest subgroup-based racial population studies analyzing mortality trends in patients with acute...
Research shows that long-term survivors of pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma are at an elevated risk for a variety of health conditions, including cardiopulmonary morbidity, cognitive impairment, and premature death, and could also be at heightened risk for the premature onset of dementia. A new study of...
A previous analysis by Khurana et al on the impact of inclusion/exclusion criteria in clinical trial design for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) found that up to 24% of patients treated with standard immunochemotherapy were excluded based on five lab-based criteria alone. A new...
Kathryn R. Tringale, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses an assessment of 559 patients with primary central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma and the factors associated with consolidation therapy selection, outcomes after consolidation therapy accounting for patient factors, and...
Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center showed that inhibiting menin with an oral small-molecule inhibitor of the menin-KMT2A interaction, SNDX-5613—now named revumenib—yielded encouraging responses for patients with advanced acute leukemias and KMT2A rearrangements or...
Jorge E. Cortes, MD, of Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University, discusses new findings on vodobatinib, which was administered to patients with chronic-phase Philadelphia chromosome–positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and appeared to be efficacious and safe in people who had received...
Eunice S. Wang, MD, of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the outcomes of patients newly diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were treated with cytarabine plus daunorubicin plus gemtuzumab ozogamicin (GO). These patients experienced higher rates of measurable residual...
The latest analysis of the TROPiCS-02 breast cancer trial shows that sacituzumab govitecan-hziy is effective in patients with a wide range of Trop-2 expression levels. The findings were reported at the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine and...
Results of a planned interim overall survival analysis of the phase III monarchE trial offer further support for the addition of abemaciclib to adjuvant endocrine therapy for patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, node-positive, high-risk breast cancer, according to Stephen R.D....
In a new survey, a majority (64%) of patients diagnosed with breast cancer younger than 46 years reported significant impacts to their sexual health, yet 86% of patients reported that their health-care provider was unable to help address sexual health issues, according to findings presented by...