Brentuximab vedotin plus doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (a regimen known as A+AVD) significantly reduced the risk of mortality vs standard treatment with doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (ABVD) in patients with previously untreated stage III or IV classical Hodgkin...
The invited discussant of PALOMA-2 was Claudine Isaacs, MD, Professor of Medicine and Oncology at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Dr. Isaacs examined the findings in context of the MONALEESA trials, which showed an overall survival benefit with...
The final overall survival analysis of the phase III PALOMA-2 trial has shown no significant benefit for palbociclib given with letrozole, vs letrozole and placebo, as a first-line treatment in hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.1 The results were reported at the 2022 ...
In some patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, downstaging of disease to within criteria that qualify the patient for a liver transplant leads to excellent 10-year posttransplant outcomes, according to new research published by Tabrizian et al in JAMA Surgery. The results validate current national ...
In a systematic review and network meta-analyses reported in The Lancet Oncology, Athanasiou et al described the comparative effectiveness of and risk of preterm birth with local excisional and ablative treatments for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and stage IA1 cervical cancer. Study Details...
In a phase Ib study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Naval Daver, MD, and colleagues found that the doublet of venetoclax plus gilteritinib produced a high modified composite complete response rate in patients with FLT3-mutated relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia. Dose...
ASCO has issued a new practice guideline update on the use of systemic therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer, just 4 years after the previous practice guideline update was released in 2018.1,2 This latest update reviews results from multiple clinical trials published between 2016 and 2021 that...
For some patients aged 55 or older with early-stage, low-risk breast cancer, endocrine therapy following breast-conserving surgery may be sufficient without the need for postoperative radiation therapy, according to the results of the prospective LUMINA trial, reported at the 2022 ASCO Annual...
It has been 14 years since a collaboration between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Pfizer identified a unique role for cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive human cell line models and demonstrated that these agents act...
A multitude of presentations were available to attendees at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting, including hundreds in the hematologic malignancies tracks. In addition to coverage in The ASCO Post of the major news stories at the meeting, here we offer summaries of additional studies of special interest...
Time-limited venetoclax-based regimens provide deeper and more durable remissions than chemoimmunotherapy combinations in patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), regardless of patients’ fitness, according to late-breaking data presented during the European Hematology...
In a U.S. retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, Perry et al found that a very small percentage of patients filled prescriptions for guideline-recommended venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis after undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer. As stated by the investigators, “VTE is...
Researchers have discovered that a protein associated with metabolism—and formerly recognized as a potential therapeutic target for ovarian cancer—may instead be associated with a better prognosis for patients with the malignancy. In a report published by Clemente et al in Cancer Research...
A new Survivor Views survey from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) showed that a majority of respondents (83%) who had applied to a copay assistance program and were accepted said the assistance enables them to get the medication they otherwise couldn’t afford. However,...
In the phase III EVEREST trial, adjuvant everolimus improved median recurrence-free survival in patients with resected renal cell carcinoma (RCC), but this finding failed to be statistically significant in the total study population of 1,499 patients, according to a prespecified boundary. However,...
Telling children about their mother’s risk of hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer does not adversely influence the offspring’s lifestyle or quality of life in the long term, according to a new study published by McDonnell et al in the journal Pediatrics. The study looked at the mutation status...
Assessing the thickness of melanoma is difficult—whether done by an experienced dermatologist or a well-trained machine-learning algorithm. A study published by Polesie et al in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology showed that an algorithm and a group of approximately...
In a single-institution phase Ib/II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Kim A. Reiss, MD, and colleagues found that maintenance treatment with niraparib/ipilimumab produced better 6-month progression-free survival rates than niraparib/nivolumab in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer without ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dunkel et al, the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) ARET0321 trial has shown high 1-year event-free survival rates with intensive multimodality therapy in patients with stage II, III, and IVa extraocular retinoblastoma. Study Details In the...
In a Danish nationwide cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Greiber et al found no apparent increased risk of mortality, overall somatic disease, or overall psychiatric disease among children exposed in utero to maternal cancer compared with to children without such exposure....
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Syed Ali Abutalib and L. Jeffrey Medeiros explore the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissue...
In countries with a high income, research in oncology is sponsored by funding agencies and industry, which has meaningfully improved survival outcomes of patients with cancer. In contrast, the African continent is disadvantaged in all aspects of human development, particularly in the fields of...
In a Canadian single-institution feasibility study reported in JACC: CardioOncology, Amy A. Kirkham, PhD, of the University of Toronto, and colleagues found that a time-restricted eating intervention reduced cardiovascular risk among older breast cancer survivors with risk factors for...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, of the Department of Breast Medical Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues, the protocol-specified final overall survival analysis of the phase III MONALEESA-2 trial has shown a significant...
Although aromatase inhibitors are effective in reducing estrogen levels and the risk of cancer recurrence in women diagnosed with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer, they can also cause myriad side effects, including genitourinary problems associated with menopause such as vaginal dryness,...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Mark A. Lewis, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Intermountain Healthcare, Murray, Utah, and Vice President of American Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Support. Dr. Lewis is also a social media...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mishra et al found that maintenance treatment with the first-in-class small-molecule p53 reactivator eprenetapopt plus azacitidine following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) was associated with “encouraging”...
In the French phase III LMS-04 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Pautier et al found that the addition of trabectedin to doxorubicin significantly prolonged progression-free survival as first-line treatment for patients with unresectable or metastatic leiomyosarcoma. Study Details In the...
Caregivers for patients with multiple myeloma may suffer from higher rates of anxiety and depression than patients themselves, according to a new study published by O’Donnell in Blood Advances. Although medical professionals have long acknowledged the toll a serious or terminal diagnosis can have...
Guest Editor’s Note: Despite the increasing use of complementary modalities that include mind-body therapies and natural products, significant disparities exist in integrative health care. Contributing factors include access to care and affordability. In this installment of The ASCO Post’s...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, and colleagues, findings in a phase II cohort of the multicohort KRYSTAL-1 phase I/II study indicate that the KRAS G12C inhibitor adagrasib showed activity in previously treated patients with unresectable or metastatic...
Although there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. residents insured through Medicaid since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law in March 2010, the ability of Medicaid-insured patients to access cancer care services has not been well understood. In a...
In an analysis that evaluated the outcomes of anticancer drug studies in the advanced disease setting with regard to patient quality of life (QOL), improved QOL outcomes were associated with improved overall survival but not with improved progression-free survival. Almost half of the studies that...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Constantine S. Tam, MBBS, PhD, and colleagues, an interim analysis in the phase III SEQUOIA trial has shown significantly improved progression-free survival with first-line zanubrutinib vs bendamustine/rituximab in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Sehgal et al, the phase II PILOT trial showed that the autologous, CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell product lisocabtagene maraleucel produced a high response rate in the second-line treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory large...
The effective treatment of patients with brain metastases is an unmet need because, until fairly recently, patients with brain metastases were excluded from clinical trials of systemic therapies. However, the emergence of molecular targeted therapies has allowed a new treatment approach in patients ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD, and colleagues, an analysis at 6 years of follow-up in the phase III ECHELON-1 trial has shown significantly improved overall survival with brentuximab vedotin plus doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (A+AVD) vs ...
In a single-institution retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, Alkhatib et al found a higher rate of response to immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment among patients with histologic high-grade vs low-grade recurrent or metastatic mucosal head and neck...
In a single-institution study reported in JAMA Oncology, Manali I. Patel, MD, MPH, MS, and colleagues found that the addition of a community health worker–led intervention to usual care resulted in reduced use of acute care, increased advance care planning documentation, increased use of palliative ...
Effective and safe treatments are needed for medulloblastoma—the most common type of cancerous brain tumor in children—especially for patients whose cancer has spread to the spinal cord. A recent phase I clinical trial has generated promising results for a new blocking antibody therapy that targets ...
In a single-institution retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Han et al found that patients with autoimmune diseases had similar outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy for solid tumors as those without autoimmune diseases, with occurrence vs no occurrence of...
In the Korean phase II Neo-PATH trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Ahn et al found that neoadjuvant treatment with atezolizumab, pertuzumab/trastuzumab, and docetaxel produced a pathologic complete response in 61% of patients with HER2-positive stage II/III breast cancer treated with the regimen....
On July 14, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved crizotinib (Xalkori) for adult and pediatric patients aged 1 year and older with unresectable, recurrent, or refractory inflammatory anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive myofibroblastic tumors. Two Trials The safety and...
Lutetium-177–labeled PSMA-617 (LuPSMA; lutetium Lu 177 vipivotide tetraxetan) achieved longer progression-free survival with fewer toxicities compared with cabazitaxel in patients with prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose disease...
On July 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, adjuvanted, for the prevention of COVID-19 caused by SARS–CoV-2 in individuals aged 18 years and older. “Authorizing an additional COVID-19 vaccine expands the...
A study that surveyed cancer screening data included in medical journals worldwide from January 2020 into December 2021 showed significant decreases in the number of screenings for breast, colorectal, and cervical cancers during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the study,...
On July 13, President Joe Biden announced his intent to appoint Mitchel Berger, MD; Carol Brown, MD; and Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD, to the President’s Cancer Panel. The three are distinguished members of the scientific, research, and public health communities appointed by the President to advise him...
In a pooled analysis of patients with follicular lymphoma treated in National Clinical Trials Network trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rutherford et al found evidence that bone marrow biopsies can be avoided in response assessment. The investigators stated, “Bone marrow biopsies ...
In an Australian phase I study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Carroll et al found that maintaining baseline immunosuppression in kidney transplant recipients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment for advanced solid tumors did not appear to increase the risk of irretrievable allograft...
“BCMA-targeting bispecific antibodies work, showing impressive single-agent activity in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma. This class of agents is likely to become an important component of future antimyeloma therapies, but we must learn how to optimally use them,” said Madhav V. Dhodapkar,...