In a paper published by Banerjee et al in JAMA Network Open, researchers reported that genetic testing is cost-effective and beneficial for newly diagnosed patients with metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), a type of soft-tissue sarcoma that develops in specialized nerve cells in the...
Each year in the United States, about five million adults with cancer are admitted to hospitals. Given our aging population, this trend will increase, putting added stress on the oncology community, which is already dealing with an impending workforce shortage. Although physician extenders, such...
Monika K. Krzyzanowska, MD, MPH, of the Princess Margaret University Health Network, discusses study findings on remote proactive telephone-based toxicity management for patients with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy. Although the telehealth program was associated with fewer grade 3 toxicities...
Lisa A. Carey, MD, of the University of North Carolina, discusses phase III results from two IMpassion trials, 130 and 131, which explored, respectively, atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel vs placebo plus nab-paclitaxel in previously untreated locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast...
MK-4830—a novel, first-in-class human IgG4 monoclonal antibody targeting the myeloid-specific anti–immunoglobulin-like transcript 4 (ILT4) receptor—administered either as a single agent or in combination with pembrolizumab was well tolerated and showed activity in heavily pretreated patients with...
Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis is a minimally invasive genomic assessment tool utilizing targeted next-generation sequencing of peripheral blood. At the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020, Zengin et al reported genomic results from a large cohort of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma...
Alexander M. Eggermont, MD, PhD, of the Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology, discusses final results of the phase III EORTC 1325-MG/Keynote 054 trial, which confirmed a sustained recurrence-free survival benefit of pembrolizumab vs placebo in patients with resected high-risk stage III...
Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, discusses results from the phase III ASCENT trial, which showed the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy improved progression-free and overall survival more than standard single-agent chemotherapy in patients...
Upon hospital admission for cancer, many patients already demonstrated a high prevalence of malnutrition per Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria, which was associated with the risk of developing a nosocomial infection, according to findings presented by Nuñez Abad et al at...
Pralsetinib (also known as BLU-667) showed activity in patients with advanced RET mutation–positive medullary thyroid cancer, including high rates of durable response, disease control, and 18-month progression-free survival. These findings were presented by Hu et al at the ESMO Virtual Congress...
This week on The ASCO Post Podcast, we're discussing three reports on genitourinary cancers presented at the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020. We’ll hear directly from the researchers about first-line treatment for metastatic renal cell carcinoma, as well as the long-term results of a doublet therapy for ...
In response to studies showing that between 30% and 60% of patients with blood cancer are at risk of death if infected with COVID-19 compared with patients who are cancer-free, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) has announced its launch of the first clinical trial dedicated solely to this...
A gift of $126 million to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine will accelerate advances in finding cures for cancer and expand innovative treatment options. The donation is the single largest in the University of Miami’s 95-year...
Before Judith Kaur, MD, the self-proclaimed “Mother of the YIA” became Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation’s first grant recipient more than 35 years ago, she was a wife, a teacher, and then a stay-at-home mom. Going to medical school and becoming a research pioneer was just a daydream. “When I...
Incidence rates for pancreatic cancer were 6-fold to 10-fold higher among participants in a study who had recent-onset diabetes and weight loss.1 This led the study authors to write: “The coexistence of these symptoms should be recognized by clinicians given that both the relative and absolute...
Flexibilities in reimbursement that have allowed the expanded use of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic should continue and be made available to more providers and patients, according to a recent statement from ASCO. ASCO Interim Position Statement: Telemedicine in Cancer Care also calls for ...
A large cohort study with close to 160,000 men and women reported that “recent-onset diabetes accompanied by weight loss was associated with a substantial increase in risk for pancreatic cancer and may represent a high-risk group in the general population for whom early detection strategies would...
In 2019, ASCO launched an Asia-Pacific Regional Council, a group of distinguished oncology leaders from countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The Council’s purpose is to advise ASCO on the needs of members in the region and facilitate and encourage member involvement in ASCO’s global activities....
MorphoSys and Incyte have announced that tafasitamab-cxix, a humanized Fc-modified cytolytic CD19-targeting monoclonal antibody, has been included in the latest National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines® (NCCN Guidelines®) in Oncology for B-Cell Lymphomas. Specifically,...
Are you looking to provide trusted education materials to your patients and their caregivers for October cancer awareness month? Cancer.Net, ASCO’s patient information website, and ASCO Answers patient education materials have everything you need to stock your practice and inform your patients....
Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation has joined forces with the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) to grant a 2020 Career Development Award (CDA) to a physician-scientist in Israel. The CDA supports early-career clinical and translational investigators during their first few years of faculty...
Cancer in My Community is a Cancer.Net Blog series that shows the global impact of cancer and how providers work to care for people with cancer in their region. Why I Care for People With Cancer When you tell someone that you are a pediatric oncologist and treat children with cancer, the first...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has announced the availability of multiple non–English-language versions of the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology® (NCCN Guidelines®) for numerous high-incidence cancer types. These treatment recommendations can be accessed for free at...
Cleveland Clinic has appointed Patrick J. Byrne, MD, MBA, as Chair of the Head & Neck Institute. Dr. Byrne joins Cleveland Clinic from The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he served as Director of the Division of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the Department of Otolaryngology/Head...
The Corporation of Brown University has approved the establishment of the Cancer Center at Brown. The center takes a broad-spectrum approach to research, from working to understand how cancer develops, grows, and metastasizes, to developing new therapeutics for patients in a personalized way that...
Delays and cancellation of cancer treatments and other safety measures undertaken to minimize the risk of exposure to COVID-19 have generated a huge backlog in oncology care and research. The threat of delayed diagnoses looms while oncology professionals face burnout, according to new studies...
In september, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released new data from the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). The results, published by Wang et al in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), showed 1.8 ...
“Older adults form the majority of patients with cancer.” For more than 3 decades now, almost every article, presentation, or discussion related to cancer and aging started with this statement. As I entered the field of geriatric oncology, I thought that by simply stating this fact, everyone would...
Neratinib is an oral pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for two indications. The first is as adjuvant treatment of early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer following adjuvant trastuzumab therapy. The second is in combination with...
The first half of 2016 was arguably the most exciting of my life. My wife, Jaione, and I had decided to leave the United Kingdom and move with our two children, Andrew, then 14, and Alba, then 10, to Denver, where I was taking on a leadership role in corporate affairs for a brewery company. By the...
Born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1919, Ezra M. Greenspan, MD, did not stray far from his birthplace, spending most of his 5-decade medical career in New York. After graduating from New York University School of Medicine in 1942, he was accepted into the house training program at Mount Sinai Hospital...
In September 2020, Eric P. Winer, MD, was honored with the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award, presented by the Office for Diversity, Inclusion & Community Partnership at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Winer is Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Director of the...
Researchers at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute have secured a 1-year, $630,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to help support the Institute’s clinical trials, which target underserved populations in Detroit and in the rural areas that Karmanos serves. The NCI P30 Cancer...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Botswana. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
A researcher at the Indiana University (IU) Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center has been awarded a 5-year, $5.7 million National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant to evaluate long-term health outcomes for patients with cancer who receive platinum-based chemotherapies. An internationally...
The text and photograph here are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, The Antiseptic Era 1876–1900 by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photograph appears courtesy of Stanley B. Burns, MD, and The Burns...
Leading cancer scientists working with the New York Genome Center (NYGC) announced that grants are being awarded to fund six projects that address the role of ethnicity in several major cancer types, taking advantage of the diversity of patients being treated at health-care institutions throughout...
City of Hope is investigating an innovative treatment for patients with cancer and COVID-19 by repurposing leflunomide, an anti-inflammatory drug for rheumatoid arthritis that is inexpensive and has few serious side effects, in a new clinical trial. Patients treated for cancer in the past 2 years...
Christopher Anker, MD, a radiation oncologist at The University of Vermont Medical Center and Associate Professor at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, Burlington, told The ASCO Post that although the benefit to overall survival disappeared with time likely due to a power ...
George J. Chang, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS, of the Department of Surgical Oncology at The University of MD Anderson Cancer Center, told The ASCO Post that although adjuvant therapy in stage II disease has been shown to improve outcomes in patients with certain high-risk features, “the benefits are...
In a demonstration of global collaboration, clinician-scientists have pooled data from 121 hospitals in 8 countries to find that inexpensive, widely available steroids may improve the odds that very sick patients with COVID-19 will survive the illness. The findings were made through the Randomized...
Advocates for patients with cancer and medical professionals in more than 20 countries planned activities for World Gynecologic Oncology Day (World GO Day). A project of the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) and the European Network of Gynaecological Cancer Advocacy Groups...
“Good morning! I’m Dr. Saksena. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I wave my introduction as I enter the room. Two women sit beside each other. One of them wears a mask that reads “lipstick optional,” and the other dons a surgical mask. This is a new visit for breast cancer, but I haven’t yet deciphered ...
Erica L. Mayer, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses an initial analysis of phase III findings from the PALLAS trial, which suggested the benefits observed in the metastatic setting with palbociclib plus endocrine therapy did not translate into the earlier adjuvant setting for...
Findings from two meta-analyses designed to summarize quality-of-life data on patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for cancer were presented at the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020 (Abstract 1568O). These meta-analyses found that patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors had...
A review of the 2019 Drug Trials Snapshots Report1 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that although female participation in clinical trials grew to 72% from 56% in the FDA’s 2018 Drug Trials Snapshots Report,2 ethnic minority participation in clinical trials actually declined...
Among patients with stage III colon cancer, patients aged 70 or older were less tolerant of adjuvant oxaliplatin/flouropyrimidine therapy, in addition to having poorer relapse-free interval rates on the regimen, according to findings from a large subgroup analysis of the phase III TOSCA trial...
Nivolumab monotherapy showed high response and disease control rates in patients with pathogenic exonuclease domain POLE (edPOLE)-mutated, mismatch repair (MMR)-proficient advanced tumors containing confirmed pathogenic mutations, according to findings presented by Benoit J.C. Rousseau, MD, PhD, of ...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has released the 10th edition of its annual Cancer Progress Report. The report highlights how cancer research, largely supported by federal investments in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), is...
The challenge in treating patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer is how to render tumors resectable and how to achieve the negative surgical margins that enhance long-term survival odds. Fortunately, neoadjuvant chemotherapy is helping to achieve these important goals, according to...