“What am I doing here? This question kept running through my mind as the incoming freshman medical students at the University of Chicago assembled for the first time.” The person asking the introspective question was Marvin Stone, fresh out of college, recently married to his wife, Jill, and now a...
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,...
Although remarkable progress has been made in advancing pediatric cancer research, critical unmet needs remain, especially for more aggressive cancers such as neuroblastomas and Ewing sarcoma. The Stand Up To Cancer–Cancer Research UK Pediatric Cancer New Discoveries Challenge has awarded three...
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...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recognized the recipients of its 2020 Gold Medal awards and other honors at the 62nd ASTRO Annual Meeting, which was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ASTRO Gold Medal Bruce Haffty, MD, FASTRO, and Brian O’Sullivan, MD, FASTRO, were each...
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...
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...
On October 23, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the next-generation sequencing–based FoundationOne CDx test as a companion diagnostic to identify fusions in the neurotrophic receptor tyrosine kinase (NTRK) genes NTRK1, NTRK2, and NTRK3 in DNA isolated from tumor tissue...
OneOncology, a partnership of independent oncology practices, has announced the formation of a separate subsidiary, the OneOncology Research Network (OneR). The new platform is a national nonexclusive clinical trial site management organization that will enhance the current research programs...
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...
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...
Formal discussant of these abstracts on financial toxicity, Reginald Tucker-Seeley, ScD, of USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, said the studies by Drs. Shankaran and Yabroff highlight how far the field has come in understanding the pathway from cancer diagnosis to financial hardship for...
Reducing the financial impact of cancer diagnosis and treatment may save not only bank accounts but lives as well, according to recent data. Two separate survey studies presented during the 2020 ASCO Quality Care Symposium have highlighted the pervasiveness and deadliness of financial toxicity,...
The CURE Media Group, a multimedia platform devoted to cancer updates and research that reaches more than 1 million patients, recently announced four recipients of the inaugural 2020 Lung Cancer Heroes awards and the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement award. The 2020 Lung Cancer Heroes are:...
Comparison of two techniques used in screening non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumor samples demonstrated that fragment analysis could detect large MET exon 14 skipping deletions that were missed by next-generation sequencing, according to findings presented at the Molecular Analysis for...
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...
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....
The invited discussant of PRODIGE 13 was Tim Price, MBBS, DHthSc, Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia, senior consultant medical oncologist, and Director of Medical Oncology and Clinical Cancer Research at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. As he reminded listeners, the current ASCO...
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...
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...
On November 9, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved FoundationOne Liquid CDx to be used as a companion diagnostic for olaparib. As a companion diagnostic, FoundationOne Liquid CDx will use a blood-based biopsy to identify patients with BRCA1, BRCA2, and/or ATM alterations and...
David Yankelevitz, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses the renewed interest in applying adjuvant and neoadjuvant targeted treatments to earlier-stage lung cancer, given the promising results in more advanced disease. The challenges, he says, include identifying patient...
The results of a survey of 1,038 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, administrators, and allied health professionals (such dietitians and physiotherapists) working in oncology in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) during the spring wave of COVID-19 were presented by Susana N. Banerjee,...
A study of oncology staff carried out immediately after the spring peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom indicated that many had been infected with the coronavirus, including those who did not show any symptoms. The study—presented by Favara et al at the NCRI (National Cancer Research ...
An article in the September 25, 2020, issue of The ASCO Post, “Enthusiastic Response to Novel Therapies on the Horizon in Multiple Myeloma,” contained a couple of errors in its discussion of cereblon E3 ligase (CEL) modulators. The CEL modulator CC-92480 was misidentified (as CC-92380), and the...
CancerCare, a leading national nonprofit organization providing free support services to anyone affected by cancer, welcomed new board member J. Leonard (Len) Lichtenfeld, MD, MACP, who most recently served as Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the American Cancer Society at its global headquarters...
LUNGevity Foundation, the nation’s leading lung cancer–focused nonprofit organization, recently announced the launch of the LUNGevity Action Network, a new engagement program that enables lung cancer advocacy at many levels. The Action Network empowers advocates to engage in awareness and policy...
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...
The National Academy of Medicine recently announced the election of 90 regular members and 10 international members during its annual meeting. Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated...
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...
On October 27, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the FoundationOne Liquid CDx test for three new companion diagnostic indications to help match patients who may benefit from treatment with specific FDA-approved targeted therapies. The new indications are for alpelisib...
Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, of The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, discusses lung cancer screening for aggressive early-stage lung cancer; adjuvant and neoadjuvant treatment, including the ADAURA study of EGFR-positive tumors; and how cell-free DNA analysis might be used in the future to...
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...
Daniel G. Petereit, MD, of the John T. Vucurevich Cancer Care Institute and Monument Health, discusses the Walking Forward health-care program designed for a South Dakota–based Native American population, whose members have high smoking and death rates from lung cancer as well as limited access to...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to a PD-1 inhibitor for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and also granted Priority Review to a HER2-directed antibody-drug conjugate for patients with...
Researchers have found two common genetic variants that may be used to predict whether patients with cancer may have severe adverse events when treated with the anti-VEGF monoclonal antibody bevacizumab. A genome-wide association study—according to researchers, the largest such study in patients...
Drawing on several lines of ongoing research, David A. Tuveson, MD, PhD, has created a theoretical framework to consider while developing clinical trials in pancreatic cancer. In his keynote lecture at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer, ...
In his discussion of KEYNOTE-361 and the DANUBE trial, Richard Cathomas, MD, of Kantonsspital, Graubünden, Switzerland, said both studies yielded disappointing results. Overall, in these trials as well as current evidence from other trials, treatment of platinum-eligible (cisplatin or carboplatin)...
Two different phase III studies found that combining an anti–PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor (pembrolizumab in KEYNOTE-361) with platinum-based chemotherapy or with another checkpoint inhibitor (the anti–CTLA-4 antibody tremelimumab in DANUBE) failed to significantly improve overall or...
Universal genetic testing may uncover inherited genetic mutations, and could individualize cancer therapies, improve survival, and strengthen the use of precision medicine. In a new study published by N. Jewel Samadder, MD, and colleagues in JAMA Oncology, researchers conducted genetic testing in...
Jeff M. Michalski, MD, MBA, of the Washington University School of Medicine, discusses a Children’s Oncology Group study that confirmed data previously reported: Involved-field radiotherapy is noninferior to posterior fossa radiotherapy in patients with average risk-medulloblastoma. However,...
Justin Oh, MD, of the University of British Columbia, discusses results from the ASCENDE-RT trial, which compared a low-dose–rate brachytherapy boost to a dose-escalated external-beam boost for patients with high- and intermediate-risk prostate cancers (Abstract 127).
A strategy for giving intermittent, high doses of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor sunitinib seemed to be well tolerated by patients with advanced cancer and increased drug concentrations in solid tumors, which was associated with improved survival. This research was presented by Gerritse et al at the ...
Despite the increasing use of hematopoietic stem cell transplant as curative therapy for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases, new research suggests that children who undergo a transplant for cancer may be more likely to die of treatment-related complications if they live in...