President Biden is soon expected to sign into law the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 omnibus funding bill, which provides funding for all federal agencies through September 30, 2022. The bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate during the week of March 7, 2022. The bill...
A rapid recommendation update to an ASCO guideline offers revised parameters for adjuvant therapy in patients with resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have stage IB to IIIA disease.1,2 The new guidance reflects the findings from two randomized clinical trials that assessed the use of...
“Refugees and displaced people may see their cancer treatment interrupted, or they may develop a new cancer while they are in host countries. They often present with advanced disease and suffer more complications. These patients have poor outcomes because of poor hygiene and living conditions, as...
Somatic genomic testing should be a routine part of clinical care for many patients with metastatic or advanced solid tumors, according to a new ASCO provisional clinical opinion.1 As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the expert panel found that genomic testing in oncology practice has...
In 1999, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) President Paul Marks, MD, recruited Barrie Cassileth, PhD, to establish an Integrative Medicine Service that “provided evidence-based complementary therapies that improve patients’ quality of life by alleviating physical and emotional symptoms...
Three grants for research that could transform cancer therapies have been awarded by the AACR-MPM Oncology Charitable Foundation Transformative Cancer Research Grants Program, an innovative partnership between the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the UBS Oncology Impact Fund...
When St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital was opened in 1962, childhood blood cancer, especially acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), had an exceptionally grim prognosis. However, years of unflagging clinical research led by Donald P. Pinkel, MD, the pediatrician who developed an aggressive...
The National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) announced the launch of its new flagship research initiative, the DNA Damage Response Consortium, in partnership with Yale Cancer Center. The consortium will bring together a diverse team of adult and pediatric researchers to advance a new class of potential...
Nothing can really prepare you for cancer, but it helped that I have dedicated my life in service to others as a minister and advocate for social justice and health equity in breast cancer survivorship. Before my own breast cancer diagnosis in 2016, I had spent years as a volunteer for several...
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. In this installment, Yen Nien (Jason) Hou, PharmD, DiplOM, LAc, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on ...
Although The Social Conquest of Earth was published a decade ago, it is worth revisiting, because, as oncology luminary Harold Varmus, MD, stressed: “It is a tour de force that we ignore at our planet’s peril.” Its author, Edward O. Wilson, PhD, known as “the father of sociobiology,” died at the...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present the Hematology Expert Review, an occasional feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Abutalib, Kröger, and Mikulska focus on the challenges of providing cancer care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Here they present two...
On February 28, 2022, ciltacabtagene autoleucel was approved for treatment of adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma after at least four lines of therapy, including a proteasome inhibitor, an immunomodulatory agent, and an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody.1 Ciltacabtagene autoleucel is a...
Jeffrey Peppercorn, MD, MPH, has been appointed as the next Editor-in-Chief of the ASCO journal JCO Oncology Practice (JCO OP). The journal publishes impactful information and insights to keep oncology practice current on changes and challenges inherent in delivering equitable, high-quality...
The Prevent Cancer Foundation recently announced funding for seven scientists who are researching cancer prevention and early detection. Each scientist has been awarded $100,000 for 2 years. The following individuals are the 2022 research grantees: Sarah Bernhardt, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow Oregon...
In the recently published results of the RELATIVITY-047 trial,1 summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, the addition of relatlimab to nivolumab monotherapy was associated with improved progression-free survival compared with nivolumab alone in patients with previously untreated advanced,...
In a phase II/III trial (RELATIVITY-047) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hussein A. Tawbi, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues found that the addition of relatlimab, a lymphocyte-activation gene 3 (LAG-3)–blocking antibody, to nivolumab...
On February 2, 2022, City of Hope announced that it has completed its previously announced acquisition of Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a network of oncology hospitals and outpatient care centers across the United States. City of Hope, in Duarte, California, now has expanded its...
The Hamoui Foundation and LUNGevity Foundation recently announced the 2022 recipients of the first The Hamoui Foundation/LUNGevity Clinical Research Award for RET-Positive Lung Cancer. RET is a driver mutation found in approximately 1% to 2% of people with non–small cell lung cancer. The goal of...
The American Cancer Society has awarded more than $16 million in grants to establish Cancer Health Equity Research Centers (CHERC) at minority-serving institutions. The inaugural cohort of institutions includes the Arizona Board of Regents–University of Arizona, the University of Illinois at...
In a recently published paper in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 R. Donald Harvey, PharmD, BCOP, FCCP, FHOPA, of Emory University, Atlanta, and coleagues reflected on the growth in availability of oral anticancer therapies over the past decade and noted that as these treatments are easy to take ...
Reid M. Ness, MD, MPH, of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses significant updates to the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology for colorectal cancer screening: lowering the age from 50 to 45 for the initiation of average-risk screening for all combinations of race, ethnicity, and...
Thomas W. Flaig, MD, of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, discusses the rapidly changing treatment landscape for patients with bladder cancer, including PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors now approved for urothelial carcinoma; a category 1 indication for pembrolizumab in metastatic disease,...
Margaret A. Tempero, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the most effective ways to use the regimens available to treat patients with pancreatic cancer (FOLFIRINOX [fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin] and...
Guru P. Sonpavde, MD, Director of the Bladder Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, said the therapeutic landscape of urothelial cancer has been altered by PD-L1 inhibitors and antibody-drug conjugates. “The rationale for Cohort 3 was based on high response rates seen with a...
The combination of the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy and the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab yielded antitumor activity as second-line therapy in patients with platinum-refractory, checkpoint inhibitor–naive, metastatic urothelial cancer, according to the results of...
A novel screening platform flagged more than 95% of stage I pancreatic cancers, in addition to other early-stage malignancies, according to a pilot study published by Hinestrosa et al in Nature Communications Medicine. If validated by future studies, the approach may offer a new way to detect the...
Using the nation’s largest COVID-19 data resource, a research team found that the COVID-19 vaccine offered protection for most patients with cancer. However, patients with certain types of cancer—especially those with hematologic malignancies—had a higher and widely varied risk of breakthrough...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Qin et al found that gains in body weight and body fat were common in a prospective cohort of Black breast cancer survivors. The researchers also identified factors associated with these changes. As stated by the investigators, “Unfavorable...
New research published by Lowry et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found the rate of mammography participation by breast cancer survivors has been steadily declining since 2009, particularly among younger survivors. The researchers reviewed a nationwide commercial...
Gary Walker, MD, MPH, MS, a head and neck radiation oncologist at Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, Arizona, expressed concern about the disparities identified in the adoption of advanced radiation therapy techniques for patients with head and neck cancer. “Despite widespread availability of...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III IMmotion151 trial has shown no significant difference for the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sunitinib in patients ...
Advanced radiotherapy techniques may reduce the risk of severe and debilitating toxicity associated with radiation, but not all patients have equal access to these modalities, according to data presented at the 2022 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium.1 Retrospective analysis of the...
In this edition of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Antônio Drauzio Varella, MD, a Brazilian oncologist, educator, scientist, and medical science popularizer in the press and television, as well as a best-selling author. Antônio Drauzio Varella, MD, was born in 1943 in ...
Young women with nonmetastatic breast cancer have similar survival rates whether they are treated with mastectomy or lumpectomy, despite tumors that are typically more aggressive and discovered at a later stage compared to their older counterparts. These findings were from a recent study examining...
Positive lymph node status may not be a reliable indicator of the need for adjuvant chemotherapy, and sentinel node biopsy may be unnecessary in older women with certain low-risk cancers, according to a new study presented by Nicholson et al at the American Society of Breast Surgeons 23rd Annual...
The 1-year local COVID-19 restrictions negatively impacted breast cancer stage at presentation, time to treatment, and time to surgery at an urban safety-net hospital, increasing the vulnerability of an already high-risk population. These findings were from a recent study presented by Kapp et al at ...
In a Dutch retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, de Jong et al found that higher levels of stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) were associated with “excellent prognosis” in young women with node-negative triple-negative breast cancer who did not receive...
In the phase III TAPPAS trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Jones et al found that the addition of carotuximab to pazopanib did not improve progression-free survival in patients with advanced angiosarcoma. Carotuximab is an IgG1 antibody that binds endoglin, which is highly expressed on proliferating...
COVID-19 may have caught the world off guard in 2020, but in the 2 years since the pandemic began, several effective monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs have emerged to protect the most vulnerable patients. The ASCO Post spoke with Gunjan L. Shah, MD, a hematologic oncologist at Memorial...
On April 5, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to alpelisib (Vijoice) for adult and pediatric patients aged 2 years and older with severe manifestations of PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum (PROS) who require systemic therapy. PROS encompasses a group of rare...
In the phase II ARCS-M trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Hedy L. Kindler, MD, FASCO, and colleagues found that the antimesothelin antibody–tubulin inhibitor conjugate anetumab ravtansine did not improve progression-free survival vs vinorelbine as second-line treatment for patients with...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Maron et al, a retrospective study found that use of EGFR inhibitor therapy was associated with benefit in patients with unresectable or metastatic EGFR-amplified gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma. As stated by the investigators, “Subset analyses...
In a long-term follow-up of a Chinese phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wang et al found that the combination of anti–B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) and anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells produced durable responses and favorable survival outcomes in...
“Prior to these two studies, smaller studies showed a lack of response to PARP [poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase] inhibitors in previously treated patients with urothelial cancer, both as monotherapy and in combinations,” said formal discussant of the BAYOU and ATLANTIS trials, Sandy Srinivas, MD,...
Two studies presented at the 2022 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium explored the role of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors in urothelial cancer: ATLANTIS and BAYOU.1,2 Results suggest that PARP inhibitors may be useful in certain genetic subgroups and perhaps in combination with...
Julio M. Pow-Sang, MD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses the treatment landscape for localized prostate cancer and its heterogeneity, the critical importance of stratifying risk to determining treatment options, and the continued improvement of therapy in the field.
Alexander T. Pearson, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, commended the artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented, ultrasound-based platform for screening and staging of thyroid cancer. “In this study, Dr. Chan and colleagues processed high-resolution ultrasound...
An artificial intelligence (AI) ultrasound platform that incorporates multiple methods of machine learning can accurately predict thyroid malignancy as well as pathologic and genomic outcomes, according to data presented at the 2022 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium.1 Findings from...
Tumor budding is an emerging prognostic biomarker in colon cancer and currently influences decision-making in patients with pT1 and stage II colon cancer. In stage III colon cancer, its prognostic impact has been limited to small and retrospective cohorts. In a post hoc analysis of the IDEA-France...