In a United Arab Emirates single-institution study reported as a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Al-Shamsi et al found a high rate of COVID-19 infection among asymptomatic patients with solid tumors undergoing cancer treatment. Study Details The study included 109 patients receiving treatment for ...
In states that have expanded Medicaid availability as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), mortality rates for three major types of cancer are significantly lower than in states that have not expanded their Medicaid, according to findings from a new study published by Miranda B. Lam, MD, MBA, and ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Philip M. Poortmans, PhD, and colleagues, 15-year outcomes of the phase III EORTC 22922/10925 trial show continued reductions in both breast cancer mortality and recurrence with postsurgery internal mammary and medial supraclavicular (IM-MS) lymph node chain...
Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation® announced the 2020 recipients of the Conquer Cancer–Rising Tide Foundation for Clinical Cancer Research Career Pathway Grants in Symptom Management. The Career Pathway Grants in Symptom Management are awarded to recruit and retain young physician-scientists...
The COVID-19 pandemic has made 2020 a challenging year for everyone, including cancer care providers, many of whom have had difficulty obtaining personal protective equipment (PPE) for their patients and staff during the pandemic. To help ease this burden on its members, ASCO partnered with Project ...
In a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) expressed significant concerns that provisions in the 2021 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) proposed rule have the potential to undermine access to...
Kimberly Irvine was used to taking care of the people she loved. Conquering breast cancer—twice—forced the young mom to learn how to take care of herself in a whole new way. In the Your Stories episode “Being Your Own Advocate,” she shares with fellow philanthropist Riccardo Braglia, Board Member, ...
Cancer.Net provides a variety of tools and resources for caregivers, including the ASCO Answers Guide to Caregiving. This guide includes: Practical tips for supporting a patient with cancer Advice for talking with family and the health-care team Convenient symptom and medication trackers And...
As the world continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, ASCO is committed to providing the most current information and resources to its members and the larger oncology community to help ensure that patients with cancer receive high-quality care. Here, members of the ASCO International Affairs...
I think my age and apparent good health contributed to a delay in my diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme. The first symptom I had of the cancer appeared on December 26, 2014, when I was 32 years old. My family and I had just gotten home from celebrating the Christmas holiday with our relatives...
On October 2, 2020, the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) was approved for first-line treatment of adult patients with unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma.1-3 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the open-label phase III CheckMate 743 trial...
As recently reported in The Lancet Oncology and reviewed in the October 10, 2020, issue of The ASCO Post, the phase III BROCADE3 trial has shown that the addition of veliparib to carboplatin and paclitaxel improved progression-free survival in previously treated BRCA-mutated advanced breast...
A strategy of front-line maintenance treatment with the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab combined with best supportive care improved both progression-free and overall survival vs best supportive care alone across prespecified subgroups of patients with advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma that had...
Medical memoir dramas, especially those centered in the emergency room (ER), are often met with the anticipation of top-rated medical shows portrayed on TV, in which there is nonstop blood-and-guts action and sizzling tensions between shouting doctors and nurses. In her recently published memoir,...
The Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology (APSHO) presented the third annual Mary Pazdur Award for Excellence in Advanced Practice in Oncology to Christina Cone, DNP, APRN, ANP-BC, AOCNP, of Duke Cancer Institute, at this year’s JADPRO Live Virtual conference, an annual...
Coronary artery calcification scores based on routine computed tomography (CT) scans used for planning radiotherapy therapy may be able to predict which women with breast cancer have a high probability of developing cardiovascular disease. The promise of this research is that once high-risk...
The ASCO Post asked Charles L. Shapiro, MD, Professor of Medicine, Director of Translational Breast Cancer Research, and Director of Cancer Survivorship at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, for his thoughts on the exploratory analysis of PALOMA-3. He first pointed out that the...
The phase III PALOMA-3 trial significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 50% in patients with hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, but the improvement in overall survival did not reach statistical significance.1 An exploratory subgroup analysis has now shown...
Randall A. Oyer, MD, President of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), released a statement regarding the rise in mortality rates of specific cancers and the rise in the occurrence of advanced metastatic cancers in 2020. New research presented at the United European Gastroenterology ...
Geriatric oncologist and researcher Enrique Soto Pérez de Celis, MD, MSc, was born in Mexico City and grew up in the nearby city of Puebla. “There were no physicians in the family who might have influenced my decision to become a doctor, but both of my parents were academics; my mother was a...
With the worst 5-year overall survival of all cancers and the second-leading cause of cancer death, pancreatic adenocarcinoma remains a dismal prognosis for the vast majority of patients. However, more accurate tumor staging and better understanding of distinct molecular subgroups have started to...
Instituted as part of the 21st Century Cures Act, the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) fosters a unified interaction between three U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) centers: Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and Center for Devices and...
A “blood-first” approach could soon shift the diagnostic paradigm in advanced lung cancer, replacing tissue biopsy with minimally invasive assays. According to Natasha B. Leighl, MD, MMSc, FRCPC, FASCO, there is rapidly mounting evidence that liquid biopsy serves a prognostic function in advanced...
Sonali M. Smith, MD, FASCO, the Elwood V. Jensen Professor in Medicine, Interim Chief of Hematology/Oncology, and Director of the Lymphoma Program at the University of Chicago Medical Center, told The ASCO Post that communication between the patient and the caregiving team has become increasingly...
Identifying patients at risk for adverse outcomes and intervening with intensive clinical services may improve cancer care while saving billions of dollars in avoidable emergency department (ED) visits. And, in fact, cancer centers may already have all the information they need to do so, according...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Nedal Estfan, MD, a noted Syrian oncologist who was at the forefront of his county’s earliest efforts to establish a national cancer care system during a time of political and military turmoil....
At the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) 2020 Virtual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies, William Wierda, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, reviewed current data on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), including promising new combinations of modern...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has made great strides in treating patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large-B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and refractory mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), but there may be newer strategies that can produce equivalent outcomes, and not all patients with...
As in past years, the results from ASCO’s 2020 National Cancer Opinions Survey showed a startling dichotomy in the perceptions of Americans on a variety of health-care issues. As expected, the two major events this year, the COVID-19 pandemic and a national reckoning over racial injustice,...
What a difference 20 years have made! In the year 2000, the results of the ECOG 1594 trial were reported at the plenary session of the ASCO Annual Meeting. The study demonstrated comparable outcomes between four different platinum-based chemotherapy regimens for the treatment of metastatic...
Older women with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer have poorer survival than younger women, but this gap might be closed by offering surgery to women over age 70 who are fit and have resectable tumors. According to a study presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC 12),...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) announced the appointment of Beth Gaffney, MBA, as the new Vice President of U.S. and Global Business Development. In this role, Ms. Gaffney will oversee both U.S. and global business activities and the development of the NCCN brand worldwide. Ms....
Is intensive monitoring of patients after curative colorectal cancer resection warranted? Not necessarily, according to the findings of PRODIGE 13, reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020.1 “After curative surgery, the addition of CEA [carcinoembryonic...
For more than 4 decades, the University of Chicago Cancer Research Foundation’s Simon M. Shubitz Cancer Prize and Lectureship has honored an internationally renowned individual for his or her exceptional contributions to cancer research and clinical care. The recipient of this year’s award is...
Sharing their thoughts on KEYNOTE-355 were Amy Tiersten, MD, Professor of Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and Erika Hamilton, MD, Director of the Breast and Gynecologic Research Program at Sarah Cannon Research Institute/Tennessee Oncology, Nashville, who presented...
Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, has been named Deputy Editor of ASCO’s JCO Oncology Practice (JCO OP). Dr. Abraham is Chairman of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Cleveland Clinic and Professor of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. The mission of JCO OP, now in...
In a single-institution phase I dose-escalation and -expansion trial reported as a letter in Nature Medicine, Shah et al found that treatment with tandem bispecific anti-CD20/anti-CD19 4-1BB–CD3ζ lentiviral (LV20.19) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells produced high response rates in adult...
In a single-institution phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Pelster et al found that nivolumab plus ipilimumab produced durable responses and improved survival outcomes in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma. Study Details The trial enrolled 35 patients at The...
In a retrospective analysis reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Durani et al found that use of surveillance imaging in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) decreased following publication of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Choosing Wisely recommendations to limit such imaging ...
“Triple-negative breast cancer has multiple different subtypes, and there are targeted therapies that can be used based on the biomarkers that we identify for each patient,” Kari B. Wisinski, MD, noted in a review of recently approved and emerging therapies at the 2020 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer...
In the preceding two issues of The ASCO Post, we explored the overall history of geriatric oncology from 1980 to 2020. In this concluding part of the series, we focus on the invaluable contributions made by oncology nurses to the field. Over the past several decades, geriatric oncology has...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Takashi Kojima, MD, of the National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Japan, and colleagues, the phase III KEYNOTE-181 trial has shown that second-line pembrolizumab improved overall survival vs the investigator choice of chemotherapy in...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by Alexander Drilon, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues and by Lori J. Wirth, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues, the phase I/II LIBRETTO-001 trial has shown marked activity of the RET kinase ...
Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, PhD, is the new President of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI). She began her 2-year term at the close of the virtual 2020 AACI/Cancer Center Administrators Forum (CCAF) Annual Meeting. A member of AACI’s Board of Directors since 2016, Dr. Knudsen chaired ...
Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah recently announced leadership appointments for two long-standing cancer center members. Brad Cairns, PhD, has accepted an appointment as Chief Academic Officer at HCI, and Alana Welm, PhD, has accepted an appointment as Senior Director of...
Chile has a population of approximately 19 million living predominantly in urban areas (87.7%), with a population density of 66 inhabitants per square mile.1 For the year 2020, approximately 12% of its population was older than 65 years.1 Socioeconomic Trends and Cancer The country has experienced ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Thomas Powles, MD, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Bladder 100 trial found that maintenance treatment with avelumab plus best supportive care significantly improved overall survival...
Yet another blow has been dealt for the alkylating agent trabectedin in advanced ovarian cancer. The international phase III INOVATYON study found no improvement in overall or progression-free survival for trabectedin plus pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PEG-LD) vs carboplatin/PEG-LD in patients...
Formal discussant of the abstract, Monika K. Krzyzanowska, MD, a medical oncologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, said this study extends the evidence base on geriatric assessment in oncology and shows that geriatric assessment should be...
As the number of older patients with cancer continues to rise, interventions that reduce the high rates of symptoms, toxicity, and distress in this population are urgently needed. Research presented during the 2020 ASCO Quality Care Symposium has added to the growing body of evidence supporting...