PRESS CONFERENCE MODERATOR Markus Joerger, MD, PhD, of St. Gallen Cancer Center, Switzerland, indicated that prior to the current study, it was unclear whether chemotherapy followed by surgery would be superior to chemoradiotherapy. “I think we all agree that it has been confirmed as the standard...
BASED ON THE RESULTS of COMBI-AD1 and CheckMate 238,2 invited discussant Alexander Eggermont, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology at Gustave Roussy in Paris, commented: “It’s a good day for melanoma!” In COMBI-AD, treatment with the combination of dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist)...
DURING A DISCUSSION of Dr. Vale’s poster, Stéphane Oudard, MD, Professor of Oncology and Chief of the Oncology Clinical and Translational Research Unit at Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, France, said that although newer treatments have improved survival, there are still many challenges in...
ASCO SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT and Chief Medical Officer, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FASCO, FSCT, will participate in a panel discussion at the ECRI Annual Conference "Workflow, Workarounds, and Overworked Health Systems: Innovations and Challenges for Quality, Safety, and Technology," on...
THE NOVEL COMBINATION of immunotherapy with ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus radiation achieved a clinical benefit in up to 57% of patients with solid tumors and metastases to the lungs or liver, according to evidence from a phase II trial presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society for...
A targeted therapy studied at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has produced high response rates among patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that carries a highly treatment-resistant mutation. Preliminary results were presented at the International...
Updated overall survival findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-024 trial evaluating pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a first-line monotherapy in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors express high levels of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) were presented at the...
Nationally regarded leukemia and lymphoma specialist Gwen L. Nichols, MD, was born in the Bronx, New York, and when she became of school age, her parents moved to the upstate suburb of Chappaqua, where she grew up. Asked if there were any physicians in her family who might have influenced her...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Ting Bao, MD, DABMA, MS, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present information on...
Turning the Tide Against Cancer is an annual conference sponsored by the Personalized Medicine Coalition, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Feinstein Kean Healthcare, and CancerCare. Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), AACR Chief Executive Officer, introduced the proceedings for the 2017...
On October 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), a cell-based gene therapy, to treat adult patients with certain types of large B-cell lymphoma who have not responded to or who have relapsed after at least two other kinds of treatment....
An update of the ASCO clinical practice guideline on the systemic treatment of patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) clarifies the role of immunotherapy in this setting. The update was published by Hanna et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 “This guideline update...
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) released its Atlas of EGFR Testing in Lung Cancer at the IASLC 18th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Yokohama, Japan. The EGFR Atlas provides health-care professionals with information on EGFR testing processes and...
New research shows that treating stage II and III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) node-positive resected patients with customized chemotherapy based on their specific BRCA1 expression levels, as opposed to providing the standard treatment, did not increase overall survival rates among...
A study in the UK population has shown that long-term use of the long-acting insulin glargine was associated with increased risk of breast cancer among women with type 2 diabetes. The findings were reported by Wu et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Study Details The study involved a...
Early specialist palliative care for patients that were recently diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma does not impact quality-of-life measures, according to research presented by Fraser Brims, MBcHB, MRCP, MD, FRACP, of Curtin University in Australia, at the International Association...
An Italian single-center prospective cohort study suggests that adjuvant treatment with the beta-blocker propranolol significantly reduces the risk of melanoma recurrence in patients with stage IB to IIIA cutaneous disease. The findings were reported in JAMA Oncology by De Giorgi et al. Preclinical ...
On October 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared the first 7-Tesla (7T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device, more than doubling the static magnetic field strength available for use in the United States. The Magnetom Terra is the first 7T MRI system cleared for clinical use in...
On October 12, Eli Lilly and Company announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review designation to its New Drug Application (NDA) for abemaciclib (Verzenio), a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor. MONARCH 3 The NDA was based upon the positive interim...
Jane N. Winter, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, discusses the use of novel targeted therapies for newly diagnosed and relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma.
On October 9, AstraZeneca announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for osimertinib (Tagrisso) for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation–positive non–small cell lung ...
Trastuzumab (Herceptin) therapy for breast cancers that express the HER2 protein does not increase the risk of complications at the surgical site in women who undergo immediate breast reconstruction after mastectomy, according to findings published by Shammas et al in the Journal of the American...
In a study in the Danish population reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Salz et al found that preexisting cardiovascular conditions were associated with an increased risk of heart failure in survivors of aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The standard use of anthracycline chemotherapy ...
Breast cancer during pregnancy is relatively uncommon; however, it poses a significant clinical challenge to the patient and her multidisciplinary care team. To shed light on this difficult issue, The ASCO Post spoke with Carey K. Anders, MD, a medical oncologist and researcher at the University...
Breast cancer specialist Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, was born in Manhasset, Long Island, and grew up several miles east in Muttontown, New York. Since tiny Muttontown didn’t have its own school system, Dr. Partridge went to high school in nearby Locust Valley, a town on Long Island’s North Shore,...
Studies show that only about one-third of patients with acute myeloid leukemia who have detectable amounts of cancer cells in their blood at the time of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation will be alive 3 years later, compared with nearly three-quarters of those patients without minimal...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT of ARIEL3, Sandro Pignata, MD, of the IRCCS National Cancer Institute, “Fondazione G. Pascale,” Naples, Italy, said: “This is new evidence for maintenance therapy with rucaparib [Rubraca]. These results are extraordinary, particularly in the BRCA mutation patients, but also in...
INVITED DISCUSSANT Paul Baas, MD, PhD, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute, called the MAPS2 trial an “excellent example of how studies in mesothelioma should be run.” As Dr. Baas pointed out, both arms performed well as second- and third-line treatment, with median progression-free survival with ...
OSIMERTINIB (TAGRISSO) showed encouraging results as first-line therapy for patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)–mutated non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the phase III FLAURA trial, according to results presented at the 2017 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)...
OSIMERTINIB (TAGRISSO) showed encouraging results as first-line therapy for patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)–mutated non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the phase III FLAURA trial, according to results presented at the 2017 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Barbera et al found that a province-wide effort to improve symptom screening and management has increased the frequency of screening but has not improved opioid prescription rates in elderly cancer patients with severe pain. A previous study...
Palliative care professionals are invited to participate in a unique project sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. Collinge and Associates, Inc, is seeking interdisciplinary professionals to help develop and evaluate a new online continuing education (CE/CME) course on the use of integrative...
On September 26, Eisai Inc announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for review a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for lenvatinib (Lenvima) for potential use in the first-line treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. “Patients with...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT, Manuela Schmidinger, MD, of the Medical University of Austria, Vienna, commented on the CheckMate 214 findings. “We have just seen a change in the paradigm in the treatment of metastatic renal cell cancer.” “More than a decade ago, VEGF [vascular endothelial growth factor]...
A CHANGE IN PARADIGM may be on the horizon for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma. According to the results of CheckMate 214, the combination of ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) outperformed the standard of care—sunitinib (Sutent)—for first-line treatment, with improved...
PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT advance in the treatment of newly diagnosed primary melanoma has been the incorporation of sentinel lymph node biopsy as part of initial surgical management. The routine use of sentinel lymph node biopsy, often termed “sentinel lymphadenectomy,” in appropriately...
NICHOLAS TURNER, MD, of The Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK, called the findings of MONARCH 3 “practice-changing.” The cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors have answered the need for agents that target the biology of estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, ...
THE VALUE OF cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors in advanced breast cancer became ever more certain with the announcement of interim data from MONARCH 3, which evaluated abemaciclib in combination with endocrine therapy as first-line therapy for hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative...
EARLY IN our careers, few of us imagined that a vaccine could one day prevent cancer. Now, there is a vaccine that keeps the risks from human papillomavirus (HPV) at bay, and yet universal adoption of the HPV vaccine has been incomplete. As a result of misinformation about the vaccine—and its...
Historically, randomized controlled trials have served as the state-of-the-art method for determining the efficacy and safety of new, innovative treatment regimens for patients with cancer and other diseases. It is imperative that such trials are carefully designed to ensure that they are...
As reported in JAMA by Giuliano et al, 10-year overall survival in the ACOSOG Z0011 (Alliance) trial with sentinel lymph node dissection (SLND) alone was noninferior to that with axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in women with clinical T1 or T2 invasive breast cancer, no palpable axillary...
Currently, two medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reduce the risk of breast cancer: tamoxifen and raloxifene. Both medications, selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), have been shown to reduce the risk for breast cancer by up to 50% in prevention...
In a retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sznol et al have provided a pooled safety profile of combination nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) treatment in patients with advanced melanoma. Study Details The study included data from 448 patients from a phase Ib...
A systematic review and meta-analysis has found no association between vasectomy and high-grade, advanced, or fatal prostate cancer but a weak association with any prostate cancer. These findings were reported in JAMA Oncology by Bimal Bhindi et al. R. Jeffrey Karnes, MD, of the Mayo Clinic,...
Health-care systems use performance measures for cervical cancer screening based on guidelines from such organizations as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to monitor the appropriateness of cervical cancer screening. According to the performance measure in the Healthcare...
The text and photograph on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photo below is from the volume titled “The Anesthesia Era: 1845–1875.” The photograph...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On May 9, 2017, avelumab (Bavencio) was granted...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On May 1, 2017, durvalumab (Imfinzi) was granted...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On June 22, 2017, the combination of rituximab (Rituxan)...
The ASCO Post issue of June 25, 2017, did an excellent job of summarizing the results and controversy generated by the initial results of the APHINITY trial, reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting and published simultaneously online in The New England Journal of Medicine.1 With a median follow-up ...