As reported in JAMA, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has recommended against thyroid cancer screening in asymptomatic individuals. The current USPSTF statement is an update of a 1996 USPSTF recommendation statement. The recommendation was based on task force review of evidence on...
Getting a callback after a routine screening mammogram in 2013 did not set off any alarm bells. Having dense breasts has almost guaranteed receiving the dreaded callback ever since I started getting annual screenings. But when I got a second callback after additional images of a suspicious lesion...
Luis A. Diaz, MD, has been named Head of the Division of Solid Tumor Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Dr. Diaz most recently served as Associate Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Diaz formally...
On February 22, lenalidomide (Revlimid) was approved as maintenance therapy for patients with multiple myeloma following autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.1,2 The drug was previously approved to treat multiple myeloma (in combination with dexamethasone), anemia caused by...
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) together with the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) announced the launch of a church-based initiative addressing striking health-care disparities among African Americans with multiple myeloma. Black Americans have twice the incidence of multiple...
Minimal residual disease is a promising biomarker for guiding the management of multiple myeloma that is becoming increasingly important with the advent of more efficacious therapies, according to emerging data and expert opinion. “The story of minimal residual disease in multiple myeloma is like...
Ensartinib demonstrated intracranial responses in patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)–positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and central nervous system (CNS) metastases, according to findings presented by Reckamp et al at the 2017 European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC)...
From immunomodulatory agents and proteasome inhibitors to steroids, alkylators, and antibodies, recent years have witnessed an explosion of drug approvals for multiple myeloma. The challenge now, said Amrita Krishnan, MD, FACP, is figuring out how to incorporate them all, particularly in the...
Social media is a uniquely positioned platform that can spread specific knowledge to a larger audience. Unlike traditional media, it allows anyone to join the conversation, and according to the Pew Research Center, it is here to stay, with 79% of online American adults using Facebook and 24% using...
Validation using patient data of an outcome prediction model for the development of dyspnea subsequent to radiotherapy revealed that the prognostic factors in the model did not adequately predict for delta toxicity endpoints, according to results reported by Defraene et al at the 2017 European Lung ...
The final, 10-year follow-up of the ‘all comers’ tAnGo trial, reported by Earl et al in The Lancet Oncology, continued to show no overall benefit of adding gemcitabine to adjuvant therapy in women with early-stage breast cancer. The trial, initiated in 2001, included patients...
The standard of care for patients with bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive, high-risk non–muscle invasive bladder cancer is radical cystectomy. Novel therapies that allow patients to preserve their bladder are urgently needed. SWOG (formerly the Southwest Oncology Group), a member of...
The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is using a sophisticated new way to diagnose and treat prostate cancer more effectively. Urology specialists at Karmanos have begun using the UroNav Fusion Biopsy System, which fuses three-dimensional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) images of the prostate...
A new score that incorporates tumor biology and response outperforms conventional histopathologic criteria for the staging of breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, finds a retrospective validation cohort study.1 Investigators led by John R. Bergquist, MD, MS, MA, a general surgery...
Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemoperfusion is efficacious when used as part of multimodality therapy for low-volume peritoneal metastases of gastric cancer, suggests a prospective single-arm phase II trial.1 Among the 19 patients enrolled, all of whom had stage IV disease with either...
Gary K. Schwartz, MD, Chief of Hematology/Oncology and Deputy Director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, New York, is not sold on using the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) for all patients with...
The race is on to identify combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors that can improve outcomes over the use of immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy. Updated results of the phase III CheckMate 067 trial found the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) improved survival in...
A recent study by Mokdad and colleagues, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, looks at cancer demographic data for 28 cancers and compares mortality rates in 1980 to results in 2014.1 Publishing mortality rates by geographic area and the observation of significant differences is not new. The...
A late-breaking subanalysis of the phase III CONVERT trial presented by Gomes et al at the 2017 European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) shows that white blood cell–boosting drugs are safe during concurrent chemoradiotherapy of small cell lung cancer (SCLC, Abstract LBA2_PR). “The...
Researchers have identified a subtype of triple-negative breast cancer that may be responsive to inhibition of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6), according to findings presented by Asghar et al at the 2017 IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference, held in Brussels (Abstract 44P). This study also...
This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) will launch a pilot project for prequalifying biosimilar medicines, a step toward making some of the most expensive treatments for cancer more widely available in low- and middle-income countries. The decision comes after a 2-day meeting in Geneva...
As reported by Katherine S. Virgo, PhD, MBA, of Emory University, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has issued a provisional clinical opinion on second-line hormonal therapy for chemotherapy-naive castration-resistant prostate cancer. The provisional clinical opinion applies...
Spanish-speaking patients with cancer have new tools to help them understand treatment options for their disease. The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has released a series of Spanish-language patient videos on radiation therapy for cancer, including breast, prostate, lung, brain,...
According to a study reported by Hamada et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, postdiagnosis aspirin use was associated with improved survival vs nonuse among patients with colorectal cancer who have lower, but not higher, tumor levels of CD274 (programmed cell death 1 ligand 1; PD-L1). Study...
Using a novel approach called tumor-treating fields—which involves the delivery of low-intensity electric fields to the brain by a patient-operated device—along with standard-of-care temozolomide therapy improved overall survival and progression-free survival vs temozolomide alone in patients with...
Geoffrey I. Shapiro, MD, PhD, Director of the Early Drug Development Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, explained the current research initiatives involving cyclin D–dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitors. Mechanism of Action How do CDK4/6 inhibitors work at the cellular level in...
The robust progression-free survival benefits achieved with the use of the CDK4/6 inhibitors palbociclib or ribociclib in the metastatic setting provided the impetus to study these agents in early-stage breast cancer. Adjuvant studies are underway, but they take time to mature. For evaluating...
The novel mechanism of action of drugs that inhibit the cyclin D–dependent kinases CDK4 and CDK6 has prompted effective new treatment strategies. Although the bulk of the data supporting the use of selective CDK4/6 inhibitors is currently in breast cancer, patients with other tumor types are...
This CE/CME/CEU-accredited supplement is jointly provided by To earn credit/contact hours, you must read all the articles in this supplement and then go to: https://education.annenberg.net/cdk46inhibition Release date: May 10, 2017 Expiration date: May 10, 2018Annenberg Center for Health...
Higher costs for complex cancer surgery may be an indicator of worse—rather than better—quality of care, according to new research by experts at Rice University and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their findings are published by Ho et al in Surgery, and provide...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Mark G. Kris, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, ASCO and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have issued an update to the ASCO/CCO clinical practice guideline on adjuvant systemic therapy and adjuvant radiation therapy for stage...
A propensity score analysis in a prospectively maintained database at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has shown that use of perioperative hepatic arterial infusion pump chemotherapy after complete resection of colorectal liver metastases is associated with a marked improvement in...
On April 28, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved midostaurin (Rydapt) for the treatment of adult patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who are FLT3 mutation–positive, as detected by an FDA-approved test, in combination with standard cytarabine and...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded the approved use of regorafinib (Stivarga) to include treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who have been previously treated with the drug sorafenib (Nexavar). This is the first new FDA-approved treatment for liver cancer in...
Patients with lung cancer treated with programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1) checkpoint inhibitors may be at increased risk of adverse events after receiving the seasonal influenza vaccination, according to the first study measuring this effect. The results, to ...
A new position statement, jointly published by seven international and European organizations, identifies fracture-related risk factors in patients treated with aromatase inhibitors and outlines key management strategies to help prevent bone loss and related fractures. It was published by Hadji et...
In newly updated clinical guidelines from the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, along with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues at The University of Texas MD Anderson...
On April 25, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posted warning letters addressed to 14 U.S.-based companies illegally selling more than 65 products that fraudulently claim to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure cancer. The products are marketed and sold without FDA approval, most commonly on ...
The latest in a series of studies led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine shows that addition of a widely available, noninvasive imaging test called 99mTc-sestamibi SPECT/CT (single-photon emission computed tomography plus computed tomography) to conventional CT or magnetic resonance imaging...
Women enrolled in California's Medicaid program (Medi-Cal) who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness have been screened for cervical cancer at much lower rates than other women, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), published by...
In the largest-known study on bone metastases in thyroid cancer, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that patients with follicular and medullary thyroid cancer had the highest rate of cancer-related bone lesions and fractures and an increased risk of death....
The 21-gene recurrence score assay, Oncotype DX, determines a score that estimates the likelihood of distant recurrence of disease in women with early-stage estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer; this score is used to assess the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy. Testing with this assay is...
Research from epidemiologists at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, published by Minlikeeva et al in Cancer Causes & Control, suggests that hypertension and diabetes and the use of medications to treat these comorbidities may have an effect on survival outcomes in women with ovarian cancer. Study...
Casali et al have reported 10-year progression-free and overall survival rates among patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) receiving imatinib at 400 or 800 mg/d in the phase III European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer,...
Chemotherapy-associated cognitive dysfunction, often referred to as “chemobrain” or “chemofog,” is a common occurrence during active cancer treatment and may continue after treatment is completed. However, since treatment other than chemotherapy, including radiation therapy, surgery, and hormonal...
Survivors of melanoma are more likely to limit their exposure to ultraviolet radiation than those who have not had the disease, but more than 10% continue to intentionally tan, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.1 The study surveyed 724 people diagnosed ...
Long-term survivors of melanoma are more likely than those who have not been diagnosed with the disease to use sunscreen, protective clothing, and other means to limit exposure to the sun, according to a survey of melanoma survivors and controls about ultraviolet radiation exposure and protective...
Better vision function seems to be related to better quality of life after treatment for head and neck cancer, particularly among patients who have had surgery, according to Hsiao-Lan Wang, PhD, RN, Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of South Florida. Head and neck...
The human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER) family consists of four members—epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), HER2, HER3, and HER4—all transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinases, which regulate cell growth and survival, differentiation, and migration, as well as other cellular responses.1 ...
End-of-life care in any patient with cancer is challenging for the patient, family, and physician. Issues faced at the end of life include pain, depression, loss of dignity, and hopelessness. In the geriatric patient, additional complexities are present in the form of comorbid conditions,...