In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Drilon et al found that the oral tropomyosin receptor kinase (TRK) inhibitor larotrectinib produced a high response rate and enduring responses in patients with TRK fusion–positive cancers. These fusions have been found to lead to...
The use of maintenance therapy in older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is theoretically sensible, but its clinical value remains uncertain. The phase III HOVON97 randomized study demonstrated that maintenance therapy with the hypomethylating agent azacitidine may improve disease-free...
HERE IS AN UPDATE on four different studies featured at the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition. Topics focus on advanced systemic mastocytosis, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), amyloidosis, and myeloproliferative neoplasms. Systemic Mastocytosis...
ASCO AND the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) have launched their new, joint platform for quality reporting, making it easier for oncologists to comply with federal government reporting requirements in 2018. The new QOPI® Reporting Registry, a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR), ...
The results of a phase II trial have shown high activity of guadecitabine, a next-generation hypomethylating drug, in treatment-naive older patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The findings were reported in The Lancet Oncology by Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson...
As reported by Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Alexandra Hospital, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III ENDEAVOR trial has shown a significant overall survival benefit for carfilzomib (Kyprolis)...
In the phase II EORTC 75111-10114 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Wildiers et al found that the addition of metronomic oral cyclophosphamide to pertuzumab (Perjeta) and trastuzumab (Herceptin) improved progression-free survival in elderly or frail women with HER2-positive metastatic breast...
The number of U.S. cases of Merkel cell carcinoma is rising about six times faster than most other cancers, and at nearly twice the rate of melanoma. Paulson et al reported these findings in The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, which are based on research conducted at the University...
THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT has been awarded the 2017 Prince Mahidol Award, a Thai Royal Family annual award for groundbreaking advances in the fields of medicine and public health. The award was received on behalf of the project by Eric Green, MD, PhD, Director of the National Human Genome Research...
It is well established that adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer—defined by the National Cancer Institute as those between the ages of 15 and 39 years—have not reaped a comparable survival benefit as either younger or older adult cancer survivors over the past 4 decades, despite...
Law and Ethics in Oncology explores the legal and ethical issues oncologists must be aware of in this era of precision medicine and changing health-care policy, both to protect patients’ rights and to safeguard against potential legal jeopardy. Increasingly, across the United States, hospitals are...
“THE RESULTS of these two trials are more similar than different. I think the best conclusion would be that we now have two trials with consistent results and can probably, in most cases, replace low–molecular-weight heparin with direct oral anticoagulants,” said Dr. Raskob, lead investigator of...
THE FIRST TWO randomized trials to directly compare direct oral anticoagulants vs low–molecular-weight heparin for management of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in patients with cancer suggest that direct oral anticoagulants may become the new standard of care.1,2 Direct oral anticoagulants appear to...
Combining ultrasound imaging with a blood test for high alpha fetoprotein levels may improve detection of early-stage liver cancer by as much as 40%, researchers at UT Southwestern’s Simmons Cancer Center found. Their findings were presented by Tzartzeva et al in Gastroenterology....
Christopher J. Recklitis, PhD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, summarizes two key papers on mental health: suicide risk among survivors of head and neck cancer vs other types of cancer; and the fear of cancer recurrence—its associations with mental health status and individual characteristics ...
At the heart of every ASCO program—every clinical practice guideline, every policy statement, every scientific meeting—is evidence. What do the data say? Evidence informs decision-making across the spectrum of cancer care, from the question a bench researcher will investigate to the treatment a...
Temporary ovarian suppression during chemotherapy as a means of preserving ovarian function and fertility in young women with early breast cancer is controversial. An eagerly awaited meta-analysis including individual patient data from five randomized controlled trials found that the use of...
We have covered many of the important presentations from the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in the pages of The ASCO Post and in our online Evening News. Here are summaries of additional noteworthy studies presented at the meeting. We hope you will find them of interest. Predicting...
The BBVA Foundation awarded its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category to American immunologist James P. Allison, PhD, whose innovative research has almost single-handedly transformed cancer treatment. His seminal research in immunotherapy has paved the way for the development of ...
In a phase III noninferiority trial reported in The Lancet, Kudo et al found that first-line lenvatinib was noninferior to sorafenib in overall survival of patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma. Study Details In the open-label trial, 954 patients from 154 sites in 20 countries in...
Patients newly diagnosed with locally advanced pancreatic cancer who received induction therapy with nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane) and gemcitabine achieved a time to treatment failure and median progression-free survival that exceeded the protocol-specified target by more...
Patients with previously treated advanced hepatocellular carcinoma derived a survival benefit from cabozantinib (Cabometyx), in the phase III CELESTIAL trial.1 “Cabozantinib represents a new treatment option for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma after prior systemic anticancer...
In the December 10, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post, I authored an article in which I raised the possibility of curing follicular lymphoma without the dreaded chemotherapy. Clearly, no good deed goes unpunished: My good friend and The ASCO Post’s editor Jim Armitage, MD, challenged me to defend that...
Following the publication of two landmark studies in the United States,1,2 laryngeal preservation with combined chemoradiotherapy has become standard practice as opposed to laryngectomy for patients with locally advanced laryngeal cancer. The Department of Veterans Affairs Laryngeal Cancer Study...
Results from the first and largest prospective trial to determine the safety of multisite ablative stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in combination with anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) suggest the combination regimen may improve outcomes...
Despite survivorship guidelines from ASCO and other organizations regarding follow-up care after cancer treatment ends, follow-up care is generally lacking for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors. Since AYA cancer survivors are at an increased risk for late effects from their cancer...
Sumanta K. Pal, MD, of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses phase III study findings from IMmotion151, which looked at atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sunitinib in untreated metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), and results from a safety and efficacy trial of axitinib in...
Data on CB-839, a first-in-class glutaminase inhibitor, will be presented by Tannir et al at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco (Abstract 603). The data are from the CX-839-001 study, which includes cohorts evaluating the safety, efficacy and recommended phase II dose of ...
Combining the antiangiogenic agent axitinib (Inlyta) with the immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was found to have promising antitumor activity and no unexpected side effects in an early-phase clinical trial in patients with advanced kidney cancer who had not been previously treated. The full...
In Clinical Cancer Advances 2018: ASCO’s Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer, which highlights the most impactful cancer research progress and the importance of federally funded research, ASCO recognized a type of adoptive cell immunotherapy—chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy—as...
AS REPORTED BY Catherine Van Poznak, MD, FASCO, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have collaborated in providing a focused update for the ASCO clinical practice guideline on the role of bone-modifying...
AS REVIEWED in this issue of The ASCO Post, Patel and colleagues have presented data from the phase I JAVELIN study evaluating avelumab (Bavencio) in platinum-refractory patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma.1 The drug is active with durable responses when compared with historical...
AS REPORTED in The Lancet Oncology by Manish R. Patel, MD, of Florida Cancer Specialists/Sarah Cannon Research Institute, and colleagues, the anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody avelumab (Bavencio) produced durable responses in patients with locally advanced or metastatic...
In a single-center phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Giaccone et al found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) produced durable responses in patients with recurrent thymic carcinoma. Study Details In the study, 40 evaluable patients with advanced disease progressing after at least one line ...
IN INTERVIEWS with The ASCO Post and in discussions held during the meeting, several breast cancer experts weighed in on the findings of GeparSepto and CALGB 40502. Eric P. Winer, MD, FASCO, Chief of the Division of Women’s Cancers and the Thompson Senior Investigator in Breast Cancer Research at ...
TWO IMPORTANT STUDIES, both updates of earlier findings and presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, provided different findings as to the relative benefit of nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane), vs solvent-based paclitaxel in breast cancer. “The two studies...
THE PHASE III SUCCESS A trial, presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, found no benefit for extending the use of intravenous zoledronic acid from 2 years to 5 years.1 “At this time point, our study showed no difference in disease-free survival or overall survival between 5 years ...
ANOTHER TRIAL has validated that 1 year of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) remains the standard in HER2-positive breast cancer, but the margin of difference, compared with just 9 weeks of the drug, was slim, based on the findings of the phase III SOLD trial reported at the 2017 San Antonio Breast...
THE INVESTIGATIONAL agent BLU-285 (avapritinib) has shown significant activity in patients with advanced or aggressive forms of systemic mastocytosis, a rare blood disorder that originates in mast cells, according to the findings of a phase I trial reported at the 2017 American Society of...
IN PREVIOUSLY treated patients with amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis, the chimeric fibril-reactive monoclonal antibody 11-1F4 (CAEL-101) produced organ responses in about two-thirds of patients in a phase Ia/b trial reported at the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting &...
DARATUMUMAB (DARZALEX) may be an effective treatment for systemic amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis, according to phase II studies reported at the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1,2 While the cohorts were small and the arms uncontrolled, the findings...
The ongoing phase III CheckMate-227 study met its coprimary endpoint of progression-free survival with a combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) vs chemotherapy in patients with first-line advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have a high (≥ 10...
As reported by Gallamini et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the Italian GITIL/FIL HD 0607 trial has shown good long-term outcomes with the switch from ABVD (doxorubicin, vinblastine, vincristine, and dacarbazine) to escalated BEACOPP (bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide,...
In a phase III clinical trial of patients with previously untreated metastatic renal cell cancer combining the immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq) with the targeted therapy bevacizumab (Avastin) delayed cancer growth by about 3 months longer than sunitinib, another targeted therapy. The benefit...
Researchers have developed a model to predict overall survival for people with advanced urothelial cancers treated with the immune checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq). The model, which is based on six clinical factors, may help inform treatment decisions for use of atezolizumab in these...
In the phase II Alliance A091401 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, D’Angelo et al found evidence of activity of nivolumab plus ipilimumab in advanced sarcoma. Study Details The study comprised two noncomparative randomized phase II trials in which a total of 85 eligible patients...
STEPHEN LEONG, MD, of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center, Aurora, discussed the RAINFALL findings at the symposium, commenting, “The study did meet its primary endpoint of progression-free survival; however, it was disappointing not to see a benefit in overall survival or...
AS REVIEWED in this issue of The ASCO Post, ASCO and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have issued an updated guideline on the role of bone-modifying agents in metastatic breast cancer.1 The updated guideline supports a change in clinical practice for our patients with breast cancer and bone metastasis....
DISCUSSANT ZSOFIA KINGA STADLER, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, found the nivolumab (Opdivo)/ipilimumab (Yervoy) combination results very encouraging but was also impressed with the monotherapy arm. Both approaches are significant advances in treatment, she said. “The treatment of ...
IN THE FIRST REPORT of the full cohort of CheckMate-142, nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) led to a 1-year overall survival rate of 85% in previously treated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have DNA mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instability–high...