Eight years ago, I was having a series of colds I couldn’t shake and pain that radiated throughout my back. Still, my symptoms weren’t concerning until, on Halloween morning in 2010, I stepped out of bed and fell to the floor in excruciating pain, unable to move. A visit to the emergency room and a ...
As reported by Bisogno et al in The Lancet Oncology, a phase III trial (EpSSG RMS 2005) has shown no benefit of adding doxorubicin to standard IVA (ifosfamide, vincristine, dactinomycin) in 3-year event-free survival among patients with high-risk rhabdomyosarcoma. Study Details In the open-label...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. “Mindfulness” has gained significant popularity in the lay press in recent...
GUEST EDITOR Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology explores the unique physical, psychosocial, social, emotional, sexual, and financial challenges adolescents and young adults with cancer face. The column is guest edited by Brandon Hayes-Lattin, MD, FACP, Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical...
Many cases of early-stage kidney cancer can be treated with a relatively new, nonsurgical procedure used to destroy tumors, a new study by Talenfeld et al in Annals of Internal Medicine suggests. The procedure, called percutaneous ablation, involves the insertion of a needle through the skin into...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Pietanza et al found no benefit of adding the PARP inhibitor veliparib to temozolomide (Temodar) in recurrent platinum-sensitive or platinum-refractory small cell lung cancer. Benefit was observed with the combination in the subgroup ...
In a single-center phase II study reported in JAMA Oncology, Matsuda et al found that adding the EGFR inhibitor panitumumab (Vectibix) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy produced high pathologic complete response (pCR) rates in patients with primary triple-negative inflammatory breast cancer. Study...
In a phase III International Liver Tumor Strategy Group trial (SIOPEL 6) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Brock et al found that sodium thiosulfate reduced cisplatin-induced hearing loss in pediatric patients with standard-risk hepatoblastoma. Study Details The trial enrolled a...
The implementation of educational interventions among heavy equipment operators, or operating engineers, in Michigan significantly increased the use of sunscreen and decreased the number of sunburns, reported Duffy et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. “The rates of...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently accepted a supplemental biologics license application (sBLA) for nivolumab (Opdivo) plus low-dose ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the first-line treatment of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients with a tumor mutational burden...
In the phase III LILAC equivalence trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, von Minckwitz et al found similar efficacy and safety with the trastuzumab biosimilar ABP 980 vs reference trastuzumab (Herceptin) in HER2-positive early breast cancer. On local review, the risk difference and risk ratio (RR) ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology, Psallidas et al developed a model that is predictive of 3-month survival in patients with malignant pleural effusion. Study Details The PROMISE study involved an analysis of 5 independent data sets from randomized trials to discover, validate, and prospectively ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently granted accelerated approval to the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for use in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). KEYNOTE-021 This...
In an analysis of long-term outcomes in the SOFT and TEXT trials reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine, Francis et al found that the addition of ovarian suppression to adjuvant tamoxifen significantly improved 8-year rates of disease-free and overall...
THE U.S. FOOD and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with refractory primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma or who have relapsed after two or more prior lines of therapy on June 13, 2018. The newest ...
In a single-center phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Teply et al found that bipolar androgen therapy can induce prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response and resensitization to enzalutamide (Xtandi) in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose disease progressed on ...
The final results of a phase III trial reported by Roger Stupp, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, and colleagues in JAMA indicate that adding antimitotic treatment with tumor-treating fields to maintenance temozolomide is associated with improved...
DESPITE STEADY declines in death rates in recent years, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in wealthy countries. In a study published by Anita Andreano, MD, of the University of Milan-Ciocco, and colleagues in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology,1 Yale researchers collaborated with ...
Cardiovascular complications, such as anthracycline-related heart failure, are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in survivors of childhood cancer, often developing at a time when these survivors are least engaged in long-term survivorship care, prompting the need for new paradigms in...
In a study of National Cancer Database data reported in Blood Advances, Bhatt et al found that 25% of patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) did not receive initial chemotherapy, despite evidence that chemotherapy is associated with a survival benefit and improvement in symptoms ...
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. Gary Deng, MD, PhD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present information on the potential health benefits ...
Valentina Nardi, MD, is a staff pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and her current clinical work includes implementing molecular assays for hematologic malignancies at the Center for Integrated Diagnostics. “I was born in Rome, but I did my high school and college education in Genoa. I ...
AT THE 71ST World Health Assembly in Geneva, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) delivered two statements positioning cancer as a priority on the global agenda of the World Health Organization (WHO). Presenting its recommendations for action to the international community, ESMO...
RESEARCHERS AT the University of California (UC), Davis, have shown that patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who received their care at a National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer center in California had a dramatically reduced risk of early mortality. Using data from the California Cancer...
A career in oncology can be extremely rewarding. Fast-paced advances in research and treatment, exciting changes in the practice environment, and the opportunity to build strong relationships with and provide critical support to patients can be incredibly professionally satisfying—but they can...
A STUDY evaluating the impact of breast cancer screening has shown that the benefits of regular mammograms extend well beyond reduced mortality. According to data presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS) 2018 Annual Meeting, women with breast cancer who underwent regular...
THE RECENTLY issued 8th revision to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Breast Cancer Staging System incorporates tumor biology and prognostic stage groups and thus has become more accurate and clinically relevant, according to two speakers at the 2018 Miami Breast Cancer Conference.1,2...
ASCO invites you to participate in the 2018 ASCO Practice Census. Just as you monitor the health of your patients, ASCO regularly gathers information on the oncology practice environment, and we need your help to do so. The ASCO Practice Census is an annual survey designed to capture comprehensive, ...
As you know, for more than 2 years, ASCO has been working closely with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) to shape the future of maintenance of certification (MOC) and assessment for our specialty. The ASCO MOC Task Force was charged by ASCO’s membership to make the process for...
The ASCO updated guidelines on the treatment of metastatic non-castrate prostate cancer penned by Morris and his colleagues1 provide valuable information annotated to the strengths of evidence in recently reported prostate cancer studies. CHAARTED, GETUG-AFU 15, LATITUDE, and STAMPEDE have...
Parents of adolescents believed that the potential to prevent certain types of cancer is the best reason for their children to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, whereas other reasons health-care providers often give were far less persuasive. Findings from this study were published by...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Antonio C. Wolff, MD, of Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, and colleagues, ASCO and the College of American Pathologists (CAP) have issued a clinical practice guideline focused update on HER2 testing in breast cancer....
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Michael J. Morris, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on optimizing anticancer therapy in men with metastatic non-castrate prostate cancer.1 To ...
Biologics are credited with increasing median overall survival in colorectal cancer to approximately 30 months. Their optimal use was discussed by Axel Grothey, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in an article he coauthored for the Journal of Oncology Practice 1...
Ivosidenib, an isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) inhibitor, yielded durable and molecular remissions in some patients with IDH1-mutated advanced relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). At a dose of 500 mg/d, ivosidenib was associated with a low frequency of grade 3 or higher...
It is widely acknowledged that the costs of cancer care are much higher in the United States than in Canada, with outcomes that are thought to be similar. A new study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting supports that view, by documenting and quantifying the differences in health-care costs...
In patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, the risk of disease progression was reduced by 80% with the combination of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and rituximab (Rituxan) over rituximab alone, in the international phase III iNNOVATE trial, reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting1 and...
With a growing emphasis on value in cancer care, some types of resource-intensive therapies may need to be reconsidered. One such treatment may be hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy, which showed no benefit during surgery for colorectal cancer confined to the peritoneum in the PRODIGE 7...
Formal discussant of the GeparNuevo presentation, Charles G. Drake, MD, PhD, of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, said, “It is important that neoadjuvant immunotherapy combinations are being studied. There is a lot of enthusiasm for...
The addition of durvalumab -(Imfinzi) to anthracycline/taxane-based chemotherapy had encouraging results as neoadjuvant therapy for early triple-negative breast cancer in the randomized phase II GeparNuevo study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 The results were positive in a subgroup of...
Positive interim data were recently presented from an ongoing phase II study of tazemetostat—a potent, selective, orally available EZH2 inhibitor—as a monotherapy for patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma. The data, presented by Salles et al at the 23rd Annual...
In the modern era of targeted therapy, some patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma may be able to forgo nephrectomy and be treated with sunitinib (Sutent) alone, according to results of the phase III CARMENA trial reported during the Plenary Session at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 The...
The call from the dermatologist came at noon on Good Friday, just after my wife left with our two young daughters for a week on her family’s tree farm in Northern Michigan. I was on call for the hospital inpatient leukemia service, so I could not join them. When the dermatologist solemnly began,...
Testing for minimal residual disease (MRD) has become an established part of the management of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), but in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the technology still warrants validation. To address issues and set new standards, the European LeukemiaNet Working Party recently ...
Results from the phase III QuANTUM-R study of single-agent quizartinib in relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were presented by Cortes et al at the 23rd Annual Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) (Abstract LB2600). Study Findings QuANTUM-R study results showed...
An interim analysis of the phase III ARROW trial reported in The Lancet Oncology by Moreau et al indicated that a higher-dose once-weekly schedule of carfilzomib was associated with prolonged progression-free survival vs a twice-weekly schedule in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple...
Fourteen-month results from the JULIET clinical trial showed ongoing durable responses are achievable with tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) when administered to adult patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). This updated analysis was presented by Borchmann et al at ...
The ELOQUENT-3 trial, an international phase II study evaluating the addition of elotuzumab (Empliciti) to pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and low-dose dexamethasone in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, achieved its primary endpoint, showing a statistically significant and clinically...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Zhu et al, the phase II KEYNOTE-224 study has shown activity of pembrolizumab in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) pretreated with sorafenib. Study Details In the study, 104 eligible patients who were intolerant of or progressed on sorafenib were...
On June 11, the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates voted 56% to 44% to reject a report by its Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) that recommended the AMA maintain its Code of Medical Ethics’ opposition to medical aid in dying. Instead, the House of Delegates...