A new ASCO guideline update provides further recommendations on the use of biomarkers to guide decision-making on adjuvant endocrine therapy and chemotherapy in patients with early-stage breast cancer.1 The update includes clarification of the use of certain genomic tests, based on age or...
Preliminary results of the basket BEGONIA trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd), paired with the immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab, has strong activity in advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer among patients not biomarker-selected for...
In an analysis presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 8028) and simultaneously reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Thomas Martin, MD, and colleagues provided data from the 2-year follow-up of the pivotal CARTITUDE-1 trial of the anti–B-cell maturation agent (BCMA) chimeric...
In an analysis presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 7518) and simultaneously reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Michael Wang, MD, and colleagues provided data from the 3-year follow-up of the pivotal ZUMA-2 trial of the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy...
Researchers from the SWOG Cancer Research Network, a clinical trials group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), found that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of Medicaid insurance in 2014 was followed by a significant increase in the proportion of patients enrolling in SWOG trials...
The combination of two targeted therapies, the BRAF inhibitor dabrafenib and the MEK inhibitor trametinib, significantly increased the overall response rate compared to the standard-of-care chemotherapy combination of carboplatin plus vincristine in pediatric patients with BRAF V600...
The use of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki doubled progression-free survival compared with the standard-of-care treatment plus conventional chemotherapy. It also significantly improved overall survival for patients with metastatic breast cancers expressing low levels of the HER2 receptor,...
Colonoscopies performed with computer-aided detection, or artificial intelligence (AI), saw an increase in the overall rate of detection of adenoma, or cancerous and precancerous polyps, by 27% in average-risk patients, according to new data presented by Shaukat et al at Digestive Disease Week 2022 ...
Over the past year (May 2021–May 2022), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved and expanded indications for many drugs related to the treatment of different types of cancers and adverse events. The new approvals and accelerated approvals are listed below. FAM-TRASTUZUMAB...
On a cool, gray November morning, I took the call from a walk-in doctor about Carla, a 26-year-old woman with progressive lymphadenopathy who was refusing investigations because of severe needle phobia. Carla was willing to meet with me to discuss treatment options for a suspected diagnosis of...
In the summer of 2017, while visiting Normandy, 64-year-old Mark’s right testis became enlarged and tender. His initial workup identified a large testicular Leydig cell tumor with adverse pathologic features; computed tomography showed no evidence of metastasis.1,2 His medical history was otherwise ...
On May 27, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the following for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: Nivolumab (Opdivo) in combination with fluoropyrimidine- and platinum-based chemotherapy Nivolumab in...
Several recent studies examining the global burden of cancer on adolescents and young adults (AYAs) show the growing magnitude of the disease’s impact on the lives of individuals between the ages of 15 and 39. Although considered a rare occurrence, cancer in this age group has risen by...
A sizable proportion of patients with advanced melanoma will experience disease progression on anti–PD-1 therapy, and the optimal treatment of such patients represents an unmet need. Two studies presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022 explored separate...
In an ancillary study of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group E4112 study reported in JAMA Network Open, Fazeli et al found that patient preference of type of surgery and type of surgery received for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) were influenced by preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Garcia-Aguilar et al found that total neoadjuvant therapy followed by a watch-and-wait strategy vs total mesorectal excision based on response allowed for organ preservation in approximately half of patients with rectal...
In a study reported as a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, Alexander M. Menzies, MD, and colleagues found that patients with metastatic melanoma who had progressive disease while receiving relatlimab/nivolumab had poor responses to anti–CTLA-4–based treatment. As noted...
The human epidermal growth factor (HER) family of receptors are a well-established therapeutic target. Indeed, seminal studies conducted nearly 2 decades ago identified a key association between activating mutations in the kinase domain of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, also known as...
Poor outcomes are observed in patients with myeloma who are refractory to multiple classes of therapies, with the average patient experiencing disease progression in up to 6 months and living no longer than 6 to 15 months. Patients often rapidly cycle through regimens that use less effective or...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thierry Facon, MD, of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Lille, and colleagues, a prespecified interim analysis of overall survival in the pivotal phase III MAIA trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of daratumumab to...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Philippe Moreau, MD, of the University Hospital Hôtel-Dieu, Nantes, and colleagues, an interim analysis of part 2 of the phase III CASSIOPEIA trial has showed significantly prolonged progression-free survival with maintenance daratumumab vs observation...
As a first-line treatment of inter-mediate- or high-risk diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, the addition of the antibody-drug conjugate polatuzumab vedotin-piiq to standard-of-care therapy resulted in a 27% reduction in the relative risk of disease progression, relapse, or death, with a similar safety...
In the primary analysis of the phase III ZUMA-7 trial, examining second-line therapy for relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma, the CAR T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel led to a fourfold increase in event-free survival over the standard of care. These findings were presented at the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Nathan H. Fowler, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues, a phase IIb trial (UNITY-NHL) has shown that the dual PI3Kδ/casein kinase (CK)1ε inhibitor umbralisib produced durable responses in patients with relapsed...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Matthew J. Matasar, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III CHRONOS-3 trial has shown that the addition of the pan-class I PI3K inhibitor copanlisib to rituximab significantly improved progression-free survival vs rituximab ...
Two different trials presented at the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition found that fixed-duration treatment with ibrutinib and venetoclax achieved deep and sustained undetectable measurable residual disease (MRD) status when used as first-line therapy for...
In a Japanese phase III trial (JCOG0802/WJOG4607L) reported in The Lancet, Saji et al found that segmentectomy was both noninferior and superior to lobectomy as measured by overall survival in patients with small-sized peripheral non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Study Details In the open-label...
Immunotherapy has become a potential strategy in treating triple-negative breast cancer, though many questions remain to be answered before long-term survival is achieved by all patients. This exciting field of breast cancer research was explored at the 2022 Miami Breast Cancer Conference by...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
Taking aspirin daily does not prevent breast cancer recurrence, according to research presented during the February ASCO Plenary Series Program.1 Results of the double-blind phase III study of more than 3,000 patients with high-risk, HER2-negative breast cancer showed no improvement in invasive...
In a single-center study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Ceballos et al identified turnaround times for request and receipt of melanoma BRAF testing results. They also analyzed factors in differences in turnaround times and effects on time to initiation of treatment. The study included 66...
In a single-institution phase II study reported in JAMA Oncology, Halperin et al found that the combination of atezolizumab and bevacizumab showed activity in treatment of advanced well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors. As stated by the investigators, “Therapies for patients with advanced...
The OlympiA trial of adjuvant olaparib in patients with HER2-negative, high-risk early-stage breast cancer and BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations has now demonstrated a significant overall survival benefit, reducing the risk of death over placebo by 32% and yielding an absolute improvement of 3.8% at 3...
In the recently published results of the RELATIVITY-047 trial,1 summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, the addition of relatlimab to nivolumab monotherapy was associated with improved progression-free survival compared with nivolumab alone in patients with previously untreated advanced,...
The combination of the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy and the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab yielded antitumor activity as second-line therapy in patients with platinum-refractory, checkpoint inhibitor–naive, metastatic urothelial cancer, according to the results of...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III IMmotion151 trial has shown no significant difference for the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sunitinib in patients ...
In the phase III TAPPAS trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Jones et al found that the addition of carotuximab to pazopanib did not improve progression-free survival in patients with advanced angiosarcoma. Carotuximab is an IgG1 antibody that binds endoglin, which is highly expressed on proliferating...
On April 5, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to alpelisib (Vijoice) for adult and pediatric patients aged 2 years and older with severe manifestations of PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum (PROS) who require systemic therapy. PROS encompasses a group of rare...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Rebecca Kristeleit, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ARIEL4 trial has shown a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival with rucaparib vs chemotherapy in patients with relapsed ovarian cancer and deleterious BRCA1/2 mutations. Study...
In a population-based cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Chen et al found that the incidence of overall cutaneous melanoma and thinner tumors was stable in the United States from 2010 to 2018, with an increased incidence of the thickest (T4) melanomas being observed. Lower socioeconomic status ...
In a phase II study (TITAN-TCC) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Grimm et al found that a nivolumab/ipilimumab boost in patients with advanced urothelial cancer who did not respond to nivolumab monotherapy alone increased objective response rates, with the benefit being greatest in...
A disease control rate of 100% was achieved in gastrointestinal cancers treated with the KRAS G12C inhibitor adagrasib in the phase II KRYSTAL-1 trial, presented at the 2022 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 The population included primarily those with pancreatic cancer; other noncolorectal ...
Invited discussant Ian Chau, MD, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London and Surrey in the United Kingdom, said the findings from COSMIC-312 are not mature enough to establish cabozantinib/atezolizumab as a new front-line option for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma...
With the investigational checkpoint inhibitor tislelizumab, durable responses were achieved by some patients with previously treated advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, regardless of the number of prior lines of therapy, in the phase II RATIONALE 208 trial. These findings were presented during the...