Elizabeth R. Plimack, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses key abstracts discussed at this year’s meeting on bladder cancer and offers her views on the latest trends and findings (Abstracts 391, 393, 434).
In the days and weeks leading up to President Biden’s inauguration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—under the prior administration—issued a number of rules and regulations that affect cancer care delivery. Many of those rules and regulations are now subject to review by the new...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a revised Medicare Physician Fee Schedule conversion factor of $34.8931 for 2021. This represents a 3.3% reduction from the 2020 conversion factor of $36.0869. CMS updated the conversion factor as a result of a provision in the $1.4...
On December 23, 2020, ASCO submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to the Reducing Provider and Patient Burden and Promoting Patients’ Electronic Access to Health Information proposed rule. This rule builds on the CMS Interoperability and Patient...
A new article published in JCO Oncology Practice puts forth a framework to guide researchers, health-care leaders, advocates, community- and patient-focused service organizations, and policy leaders in their work to address and promote health equity in cancer care access and treatment outcomes.1...
Molecular profiling allows clinicians to identify the molecular and genetic signatures that help to deliver treatments that are highly specific to a tumor. This tool has made possible a number of advances in the past year that are improving care for patients with gastrointestinal cancers. In...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Kenya. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
I had my first experience with cancer when I was just 3 or 4 years old and complained to my mother that my “tummy hurt.” I was diagnosed with Wilms tumor, the same cancer my 18-month-old brother died of before I was born. I remember being in the hospital for weeks at a time and being known by...
Joan H. Schiller, MD, FASCO, was recently honored by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) with the Paul A. Bunn, Jr, Scientific Award. Dr. Schiller’s many accomplishments include helping to break the taboo of talking about lung cancer and expanding public...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network© (NCCN) recently announced the appointment of Crystal S. Denlinger, MD, FACP, to the newly created role of Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer. In this position, Dr. Denlinger will help to steer strategic direction for the nonprofit as well as...
Pan-Chyr Yang, MD, PhD, Chair Professor at the National Taiwan University Hospital and Academician of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, received the Joseph W. Cullen Prevention/Early Detection Award from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) at the virtual IASLC 2020 World...
Invited discussant of KEYNOTE-598,1Yun Fan, MD, Director of Thoracic Tumor Center at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital in Hangzhou, China, suggested that patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with low PD-L1 expression and those with high tumor mutational burden may, in fact, derive the most...
Among patients who survive a primary cancer, concern about recurrence, especially metastatic disease, is extremely common; however, information about future risk for subsequent primary cancers is seldom communicated to these patients, leading to missed opportunities to prevent or detect subsequent...
The risk of developing or dying of a new primary cancer, particularly those cancers associated with smoking and obesity, was greater among survivors of adult-onset cancers than the expected risk in the general population, according to an analysis of data from more than 1.5 million cancer...
John Bartlett, MD, a visionary physician-scientist and pioneer in HIV/AIDS study and treatment who built the infectious diseases division at The Johns Hopkins, died on January 19, 2021, in New York. He was 83 years old. “Over his long and illustrious career, John Bartlett epitomized the best of...
Gert Brieger, MD, MPH, PhD, former Director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Institute of the History of Medicine, died on January 13, 2021, due to heart failure. He was 89. Dr. Brieger is credited with transforming the department from a research center with occasional students to ...
When Joseph V. Simone, MD, was 6 years old, he had his first experience with the death of a child. His 9-month-old brother became sick with the croup and was taken to the nearby children’s hospital, where he died a few days later, leaving Dr. Simone and his family devastated. Caring for sick...
To hear an interview with Dr. Freireich by Daniel F. Hayes, MD, FASCO, of the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and Past President of ASCO, visit the Journal of Clinical Oncology’s podcast, Cancer Stories, wherever you get your podcasts. In this episode, the Cancer Stories podcast reflects ...
Legendary oncologist Emil J Freireich, MD, FASCO, died from COVID-19 on February 1, 2021, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he had worked for 50 years. He was 93. During a career that spanned more than 6 decades, Dr. Freireich was relentless in pursuing cures...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Allison Magnuson, DO, of the University of Rochester Medical Center & Wilmot Cancer Institute, and Mina S. Sedrak, MD, MS, of the City of Hope National Medical Center, along with colleagues, have developed a novel risk tool—the Cancer and Aging...
COVID-19 has caused 475,000 deaths in America, disproportionately among communities of color, poverty, immigrants, and older age. It has exposed a variety of inequities within our health-care system. However, the patients at greatest risk of death from COVID-19 are those with cancer. While 1.8% of...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel therapeutic approaches in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). For full...
Invited study discussant Rachna T. Shroff, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona, and Chief of GI Medical Oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, said the study presented by Dr. Javle1 showed the FGFR2 inhibitor infigratinib to be active in FGFR2 fusion–positive...
The novel targeted agent infigratinib (BGJ398) showed clinically meaningful activity against chemotherapy-refractory cholangiocarcinoma in patients with fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR2) fusions and rearrangements. The confirmed overall response rate was 23% (34% confirmed/unconfirmed), the ...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on the assessment and treatment of patients with B-cell and T-cell non-Hodgkin...
The ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been felt in every area of health care. In our medical specialty, oncology, clinical trials of new treatments were upended by COVID-19. In the early months of the pandemic, widespread interruptions in trial enrollment prevented some patients...
Although optimal regimens are still being determined, checkpoint inhibition has clearly established itself in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, as judged by the number of abstracts on the topic at the 2021 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. The ASCO Post brings readers short summaries of ...
The invited discussant of CodeBreak 100 was Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a thoracic oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston.1Charu Aggarwal, MD, MPH, Leslye M. Heisler Associate Professor for Lung Cancer Excellence at the University of...
Elizabeth R. Plimack, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses key abstracts discussed at this year’s meeting on renal cell carcinoma and offers her views on the latest trends and findings (Abstracts 269, 308, 270, 313).
On February 22, President Joseph R. Biden issued remarks to proclaim that over 500,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19 infection. He and Vice President Kamala Harris held a moment of silence and ordered flags be lowered to half-mast at federal buildings for the next 5 days to honor those who...
A new study published by Corinne Leach, MPH, MS, PhD, and colleagues in the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology reported that early in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, one-third of cancer survivors worried about treatment and cancer care disruptions. Using a mixed-methods approach,...
Elizabeth R. Plimack, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses phase III results from the KEYNOTE-426 study—specifically, an exploratory subgroup analysis of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma who were randomly assigned to receive pembrolizumab plus axitinib and completed 2 years of...
Research published by Martel et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network examined body mass index (BMI) data for patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer—and found a 5% weight loss in patients over 2 years was associated with worse outcomes. Weight gain over the same...
Researchers have identified a cellular resilience mechanism through which acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells survive cancer treatment and repopulate, leading to disease relapse. The research, published by Cihangir Duy, PhD, MS, and colleagues in Cancer Discovery, also suggests that certain drugs...
Felix Y. Feng, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses study findings showing that molecular determinants may help clinicians select patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who may derive the most benefit from apalutamide and other androgen-signaling...
On February 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cemiplimab-rwlc (Libtayo) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have high PD-L1 expression (tumor proportion score [TPS] > 50%) as determined by an FDA-approved...
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, discusses final results of the phase III TITAN study, which showed apalutamide plus androgen-deprivation therapy improved overall survival, reducing the risk of death up to 48%. This combination treatment also delayed...
The randomized phase II NEOSTAR trial, which examined single-agent and combined neoadjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in patients with stage I to III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), found combination therapy produced a significant clinical benefit (as assessed by major pathologic...
Recommendations designed to address the underrepresentation of Black patients in clinical trials for multiple myeloma were recently released. Details about the initiative, published by Gormley et al in Blood Cancer Discovery, form a road map for designing multiple myeloma clinical trials to...
Ruxolitinib was superior to best available therapy in achieving efficacy as determined by best overall response and duration of response, with acceptable safety in adolescents and adults with steroid-dependent or steroid-refractory chronic graft-vs-host disease effects. These findings were shown in ...
Stem cell transplants are not frequently offered to older patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). According to a study from the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMTCTN 1102), these patients may indeed achieve a survival benefit from stem cell transplant. As...
A post hoc analysis of the phase II DREAMM-2 trial showed single-agent belantamab mafodotin-blmf to be efficacious and tolerable in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma treated with at least three prior therapies, investigators reported at the 2020 American Society of Hematology...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recognized three Choosing Wisely® Champions, practitioners working to tackle overuse of hematology tests and treatments, at the 2020 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition. Choosing Wisely is a program of the ABIM Foundation and Consumer Reports that aims to...
Belantamab mafodotin-blmf combined with pomalidomide and dexamethasone led to a very good partial response (VGPR) or better in approximately three-quarters of patients with multiple myeloma that was double-class or triple-class refractory, according to Suzanne Trudel, MSc, MD, FRCPC, of Princess...
Ajay K. Nooka, MD, MPH, FACP, Associate Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University and Medical Director, Winship Research Informatics Shared Resource at Winship Cancer Institute, Atlanta, considered the presentations on bispecific T-cell–engaging antibodies in myeloma to be...
B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) is the most frequent target of immunotherapies in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, but bispecific T-cell–engaging antibodies with novel targets are also achieving promising results. Studies presented at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual...
Sagar Lonial, MD, FACP, the Anne and Bernard Gray Family Chair in Cancer, Chair and Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, commented on the APOLLO trial for The ASCO Post. “APOLLO is a highly awaited study, as the use of daratumumab plus...
The first phase III study to evaluate the subcutaneous form of daratumumab has met its primary endpoint, investigators of the APOLLO trial reported at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1 The triplet of daratumumab, pomalidomide, and low-dose dexamethasone ...
Despite the marked efficacy of ibrutinib, acalabrutinib, and venetoclax in chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL), treatment failure can occur through the development of resistance. In addition, patients in whom Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors and BCL2...
Selinexor: On December 18, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved selinexor (Xpovio) in combination with bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone for the treatment of adult patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior therapy. Venetoclax: On October 16,...