With the rapid expansion of scientific advances, the intersection of ethics and the delivery of cancer care becomes ever more complicated. To shed light on some of the challenging ethical issues faced by today’s busy oncology practitioners, The ASCO Post spoke with Rebecca D. Pentz, PhD, Professor ...
The world is grappling with a pandemic and we are all adjusting to a new reality. Fewer handshakes, more masks. Fewer hugs, more fear. COVID-19 has tested us, challenged us, changed us. It’s changed the way we look, the way we work, the way we socialize. It’s changed us, but it can’t stop us. It...
Adolescents and young adults (AYA) who have survived cancer may continue to suffer from insomnia long after treatment ends, interfering with a range of daily activities. In Pediatric Blood & Cancer, Eric S. Zhou, PhD, and Christopher J. Recklitis, PhD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,...
The early initiation—at age 25 to 30—of annual breast cancer screening with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with or without mammography may reduce breast cancer mortality by more than half in survivors of childhood cancer who had been previously exposed to chest radiation, according to a study by...
In a European Intergroup for Childhood Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma/Children’s Oncology Group phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Minard‑Colin et al found that the addition of rituximab to standard Lymphomes Malin B (also known as Lymphome Malin de Burkitt, or LMB) chemotherapy ...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of tolerating cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays, historical...
GUEST EDITOR Dr. Abraham is Professor of Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine, and Chair of the Hematology and Medical Oncology Department at Taussig Cancer Institute, Cleveland Clinic. In this edition of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with pioneering art ...
The text and photograph here are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, The Anesthesia Era: 1845–1875 by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photograph appears courtesy of Stanley B. Burns, MD, and The Burns...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and Hackensack Meridian Health recently announced they have formed an Immunology Research Collaboration. Through this joint initiative, researchers can apply for funding to support innovative investigations exploring the power of the immune system and...
The global toll of breast cancer on women is staggering. In 2018, nearly two million new breast cancer cases were diagnosed, an increase of more than 20% since 2008,1 and mortality rates have increased by 14%, bringing the annual number of deaths worldwide from the cancer to more than 611,625.2...
The American Cancer Society has updated its guideline on diet and physical activity for cancer prevention. Staying at a healthy weight, staying active throughout life, following a healthy eating pattern, and avoiding or limiting alcohol may greatly reduce a person's lifetime risk of developing or...
On June 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic tumor mutational burden–high (TMB-H; ≥ 10 mutations/megabase [mut/Mb]) solid tumors, as determined by an ...
Black and Hispanic children admitted to pediatric intensive care units for cancer treatment have significantly higher death rates than non-Hispanic white patients, according to findings from a study published by Laurens et al in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Nationwide, 8.5% of black and 8.1%...
Assisted suicide gets a lot of press, as if it were a new event. About 20 to 30 years ago, it was ever present but neither defined nor acknowledged. When patients left the hospital for what they and I believed to be the last time, I did one or both of two things: gave them my home number or, if...
In a commentary published in The Lancet Oncology, Vasquez et al presented results of a survey of pediatric oncologists/hematologists across Latin America, which showed an adverse early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric cancer care. Study Details The study included a cross-sectional...
In a phase I/II Children’s Oncology Group study (AAML1421) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cooper et al identified the phase II dose of CPX-351, a liposomal preparation of daunorubicin and cytarabine, and found that a regimen consisting of CPX-351 followed by fludarabine, cytarabine,...
Lung cancer specialist Narjust Duma, MD, was born and reared in Mérida, Venezuela, a city nestled on a plateau in the Venezuelan Andes. “I’m the daughter of two surgeons. After my parents divorced, I lived with my mother and spent a lot of time at the hospital where she worked. When she was in...
F. Stephen Hodi, MD, Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, was born in Framingham and grew up in the town of Acton, a western suburb of Boston. “My dad was an engineer, and I was influenced by puzzle-solving and using...
Although 84% of children with cancer survive 5 years or more, children with refractory, relapsed, and progressive high-risk malignancies have a poor median survival of 9.5 months. The German INFORM registry is a large prospective, noninterventional, multicenter study collecting clinical and...
In 2003, Nina Kadan-Lottick, MD, MSPH, established the regional Yale HEROS multidisciplinary research and clinical program for long-term survivors of childhood cancer survivors, which is the first of its kind in Connecticut and one of the first in the United States. She intends the HEROS program to ...
The management of pediatric brain and spinal cord tumors is extremely complex, as are the survivorship issues in this highly vulnerable patient population. To shed light on the current clinical reality in this setting, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Katherine E. Warren, MD, an internationally...
On April 10, 2020, the oral MEK inhibitor selumetinib was approved for the treatment of patients 2 years of age and older with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) who have symptomatic, inoperable plexiform neurofibromas.1,2 Selumetinib is the first therapy approved for children who have this disease....
When I chose my Presidential theme for the 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting, “Unite and Conquer: Accelerating Progress Together,” in early 2019, I never imagined it would take on a new meaning 12 months later. The world is grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, and, even as we practice social distancing, I...
In a study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Boulad et al found a low rate of COVID-19 morbidity among infected pediatric patients with cancer seen in the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center pediatric program, as well as a low rate of infection in patients without COVID-19...
According to the National Alliance for Caregiving, the number of adult individuals in the United States providing care for patients with cancer ranges between 2.8 million and 6.1 million. Caregivers for patients with cancer who live more than 1 hour away report having higher levels of anxiety and...
In my native language, there is a saying that is translated as, “A child who does not travel only appreciates their mother’s cooking.” In the broad sense, as we grow up and experience the different things that life has to offer, two things happen if we allow our minds to open up: we realize there...
In hindsight, the symptoms I began experiencing in the fall of 2013—sudden excruciating back bone pain and severe fatigue—should have tipped me off that I had a serious disease, but 7 years ago, they were easy to explain away. The bone pain was similar to what I had experienced several years...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. Despite significant improvements reported in survival rates, symptom management in pediatric...
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in partnership with the International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP), has launched the Global COVID-19 Observatory and Resource Center for Childhood Cancer. The website offers health-care providers around the world a space to share the latest...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir for the treatment of suspected or laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in adults and children hospitalized with severe disease. Severe disease is defined as low...
The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has challenged us, as a society, to evaluate our core values and philosophy. Ventilators, a precious and limited commodity, are now in short supply. Humanity is at a precipice, and we physicians are facing an ethical dilemma, how best to allocate ventilators, and, ...
In the fall of 2009, I began experiencing some abdominal discomfort, pain in my right shoulder, and severe fatigue that were easily explained away as the result of gallstones and by my career as a paramedic. I had many of the risk factors for gallbladder disease, and both my mother and sister...
In a Children’s Oncology Group analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gupta et al found that discontinuation of pegylated asparaginase (PEG-ASNase) was associated with poorer disease-free survival among pediatric patients with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). However,...
In an update of a phase I trial of anti-CD22 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in children and young adults with relapsed or refractory CD22-positive B-cell malignancies reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Shah et al described findings in cohorts receiving treatment at doses...
Cancer and its treatment can cause infertility in both men and women. Educate your patients about this potential side effect by giving them the ASCO Answers fact sheet Your Fertility and Cancer Treatment. This fact sheet covers: An overview of what the terms fertility and infertility mean What...
It was a great honor for the Russian Society of Clinical Oncology (RUSSCO) to collaborate on the ASCO IPCW, and for me to be a co-organizer of the event from the Russian side. RUSSCO is a professional cancer society with the mission to advance cancer treatment and cures. The organization...
ASCO, in collaboration with international oncology societies, hosts International Palliative Care Workshops (IPCWs) designed to teach participants practical skills in patient communication and the management of cancer symptoms and pain. The IPCWs are led by ASCO member volunteers and local experts...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Improving care for children with cancer worldwide could bring a triple return on investment and prevent millions of deaths, according to a new Commission report published by Atun et al in The Lancet Oncology. Without additional investment in childhood cancer care, new estimates produced for the...
In a correspondence published in The Lancet Oncology, Rishi S. Kotecha, MB, ChB, of the Government of Western Australia Department of Health, identified challenges in protecting children with cancer from COVID-19 infection and stressed that some measures proposed to protect adults with cancer may...
In a phase II trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Gross et al found that the oral MEK inhibitor selumetinib produced a high response rate and durable responses in children with neurofibromatosis type 1 and symptomatic inoperable plexiform neurofibromas. Study Details The study,...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays, historical...
In the phase I/II ADVL1412 study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Davis et al identified the phase II dosage of nivolumab monotherapy in children and young adults with relapsed or refractory solid tumors or lymphoma. Objective responses were observed in patients with lymphoma, but not in those with ...
An analysis of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Yan et al found that adherence to Children’s Oncology Group (COG) recommended surveillance for second malignant neoplasms and cardiac dysfunction in high-risk childhood cancer survivors is ...
The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer has found that cancer death rates continued to decline from 2001 to 2017 in the United States for all cancer sites combined. The report was published by Hensley et al in the journal Cancer. The annual report is a collaborative effort among the ...
Now in its seventh year, the Haploidentical Transplant Symposium (HAPLO) continues to explore advances in haploidentical and other novel cellular therapies. The most recent of these meetings—HAPLO2019—met in Orlando, Florida, 2 days before the start of the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH)...
According to research published by Andrea Hayes-Jordan, MD, FACS, and colleagues in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, children and young adults with colon cancer are more likely to have shorter overall survival and recurrence-free survival than middle-aged adults. In a...
Venipuncture is the most commonly performed invasive procedure in hospitals daily. The risk of this procedure is nerve damage or an arterial nick. Of course, there are other possible issues, such as hematoma and injection-site infection. Then there’s dealing with caterwauling children and swooning...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel therapies for newly diagnosed and relapsed or refractory acute...