ASCO has published an adaptation of the 2015 Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) clinical practice guideline on adjuvant chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer.1 There were several areas of controversy that the guideline attempts to address. Should Anthracyclines Be Standard of Care? The guideline...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Neelima Denduluri, MD, and colleagues, ASCO has adapted a Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) clinical practice guideline on selection of optimal adjuvant chemotherapy for HER2-negative and adjuvant targeted therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer.1 The...
According to Susan M. O’Brien, MD, an expert in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), novel agents and new data on patient subsets have led to a new upfront treatment algorithm for this malignancy. Speaking at the 2016 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference in Koloa, Hawaii, Dr. O’Brien...
In patients with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the antibody-drug conjugate inotuzumab ozogamicin produced significantly more complete remissions and was a better bridge to transplant than treatment by physician’s choice, according to the final results of a phase III trial...
The chemotherapy drug etoposide may have adverse effects on the developing ovaries of female fetuses, according to a preclinical study of mouse cells published by Stefansdottir et al in BMC Cancer. Norah Spears, DPhil, the corresponding study author and Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the...
A study published by Henderson et al in PLOS ONE has shown that a combined assessment of multiple types of protein biomarkers in the blood offers an important advancement for detecting early breast cancer. The study, conducted by Provista Diagnostics, compared the ability of serum...
Immune response measured in tumor biopsies during the course of early treatment predicts which melanoma patients will benefit from specific immune checkpoint blockade drugs, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Chen et al reported their findings in...
Prostate cancer and lung cancer have been the number 1 and 2 cancers among men. Stomach cancer, the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, has been on a steady decline among Koreans and Japanese. Black men had the highest overall rates of cancer. Thyroid cancer has been on the rise, and...
In an international, single-arm phase IIIB trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Saad et al found benefit with the addition of abiraterone (Zytiga) or enzalutamide (Xtandi) to radium-223 (Xofigo) in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. This early-access program was...
For patients with the most common type of noninvasive breast cancer, routine testing for estrogen and progesterone receptors in tissue taken at the first needle biopsy is both unnecessary and wasteful, according to results of a study led by Johns Hopkins pathologists. The results for people with...
A Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team has identified an additional mechanism for resistance to targeted treatment for BRAF-mutant melanoma. Their findings, published by Shen et al in Nature Medicine, report that inactivating mutations in two genes responsible for regulating key...
In a phase III noninferiority trial (NRG Oncology RTOG 0415) reported by Lee et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, W. Robert Lee, MD, MS, Med, of Duke University Medical Center, and colleagues found that hypofractionated radiotherapy was not inferior to conventional hypofractionated...
Men with testicular cancer who were uninsured or on Medicaid had a higher risk of death from what is normally a curable disease than insured patients, a new study found. The findings, published by Markt et al in Cancer, add to growing evidence that differences in health insurance status can affect...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Chapuis et al, concurrent use of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) antigen-4 (CTLA-4) blockade with ipilimumab (Yervoy) and adoptively transferred antigen-specific CTLs produced enduring responses in patients with stage IV melanoma. Cassian Yee, ...
In a phase I/II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Massard et al found that the anti–PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) antibody durvalumab was active in patients with previously treated advanced urothelial bladder cancer. Objective response appeared to be confined to patients...
Patients with previously treated advanced renal cell carcinoma receiving nivolumab (Opdivo) in the phase III CheckMate 025 trial had improved health-related quality of life compared with those receiving everolimus (Afinitor), as reported by David Cella, PhD, of Northwestern University, Chicago, et...
More than 60,000 blood and marrow transplants are performed each year worldwide, and the number of long-term survivors is increasing rapidly. But with success has come a host of new issues for patients, providers, and researchers. “Back when transplants were new, the 1-year mortality rate was high, ...
In an updated recommendation statement, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) continues to strongly recommend screening for colorectal cancer for asymptomatic adults aged 50 through 75; but rather than emphasize specific screening strategies, it notes there are multiple screening...
Photonics—the science of light—may not be associated with cancer in most people’s minds. But photonic technologies are: CT (computed tomography) scans and digital x-rays, for instance, are in everyday use, and next-generation oncology applications are in development. As the White House’s National...
At the 2015 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium in Boston, Vicki Jackson, MD, MPH, Chief in the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Co-Director of the Harvard Center for Palliative Care, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School,...
Juno Therapeutics, Inc., announced on July 12, 2016, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has removed the clinical hold on the phase II clinical trial of JCAR015 (known as the ROCKET trial; clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT02535364) in adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell...
American cancer centers promoting their services dramatically increased their advertising spending from 2005 to 2014, with the bulk of the spending by for-profit organizations, according to the results of a study published by Vater et al in JAMA Internal Medicine.1 Small Percentage Responsible for...
The facts are well known: Although clinical trials are regarded as the gold standard to investigate whether a new treatment is safe and effective in patients—and have resulted in advances in cancer cures and increases in cancer survivorship—only 3% to 5% of patients enroll in these studies.1 The...
Recent years have seen the publication of a considerable amount of scientific literature questioning the effectiveness of mammography screening in decreasing breast cancer mortality.1-4 This article explores how the Israeli experience has demonstrated the efficacy of organized national...
There was a time when transplantation across human leukocyte antigen (HLA) barriers was fraught with so much difficulty that many thought it was impossible and we should stop trying. However, most patients do not have an HLA-matched sibling donor, and death was therefore certain if they had a...
In an analysis of the observational database of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nilanjan Ghosh, MD, PhD, of Levine Cancer Institute, Carolinas Healthcare System, Charlotte, North Carolina, and colleagues found that...
The global economic crisis beginning in 2008 was associated with substantial public health effects, especially with respect to mental health.1–3 Nevertheless, there is also evidence of a paradoxical association between recessions and reduced all-cause mortality, in part because of reductions in...
The global economic crisis has been associated with increased unemployment and reduced public-sector expenditure on health care. In a study reported in The Lancet, Mahiben Maruthappu, MA, of Imperial College London, and colleagues found that the global economic crisis beginning in 2008 was...
Women Who Conquer Cancer is a group dedicated to advancing cancer research by supporting young women researchers early in their careers through Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Young Investigator Awards (YIAs). These 1-year grants give promising researchers the boost they need to get started on...
In 1995, Daniel F. Hayes, MD, FASCO, gathered with several other oncologists at a conference center in San Francisco to begin writing the first-ever ASCO guidelines on cancer treatment. He and his colleagues felt like pioneers scouting uncharted frontier. “I’ll never forget, that first hour or so, ...
Integrated care, a focus on prevention and screening, and acknowledgment of comorbidities on the impact of treatment all play a critical role in the cancer survivorship of older patients, according to Martine Extermann, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida....
A cutting-edge method of extracting big data from positron-emission tomography (PET) images can provide additional information to quantify lung tumors caused by a genetic mutation. This information could help guide the most effective treatment, suggest findings of a study of nearly 350 patients...
As reported by Rugo et al and Park et al in The New England Journal of Medicine, the adaptive randomization phase II I-SPY 2 trial has shown that the addition of veliparib/carboplatin and the addition of neratinib to standard neoadjuvant therapy have met criteria predictive of success in a phase...
Formal discussant W. Robert Lee, MD, of Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, placed himself firmly in the camp supporting hypofractionation as a new standard of care. “We now have three large noninferiority trials with different eligibility criteria and different regimens....
Where were you on July 20, 1969? I certainly remember where I was—sitting in a mess hall at summer camp watching a grainy black-and-white TV as Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I recall the sense of jubilation and accomplishment that all American citizens...
The dismal accrual rates in cancer clinical trials are well known: Just 3% to 5% of adults with cancer enroll in clinical trials.1 The reasons patients are reluctant to participate in clinical trials are equally well known: fear of reduced quality of life, concern about receiving a placebo, and...
At the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, studies presented at the Plenary Session gave attendees new treatment strategies to employ back home. But in the emerging push to contain the cost of new cancer treatments, do the four interventions fit within the new “value framework” for oncology? Deborah Schrag, ...
Not only is breast cancer more than one disease, but a single breast cancer tumor can vary within itself, a finding that University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers discovered has the potential to lead to very different patient treatment plans depending on the tumor sample and...
Researchers at University Hospitals Case Medical Center have discovered that a rare genetic mutation is associated with susceptibility to familial Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer. The findings were published by Fecteau et al in JAMA Oncology. Amitabh Chak, MD, of University Hospitals...
A University of Colorado Cancer Center study compared outcomes of leukemia patients receiving bone marrow transplants from 2009 to 2014, finding that 3 years post transplant, the incidence of severe chronic graft-vs-host disease was significantly higher in patients who had received transplants from ...
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has concluded that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of visual skin examination by a clinician to screen for skin cancer in asymptomatic adults. The report was published in JAMA. This is an “I...
Just 6 months after President Barack Obama announced the establishment of a National Cancer Moonshot Initiative to accelerate the pace of research discoveries, improve patient access and care, and encourage data-sharing, dozens of new initiatives to accomplish those and other goals were rolled out...
When I was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) at the age of 2 in 1974, not much was known about the cancer or the side effects of its treatment. Too young to understand what was happening to me, the burden fell to my parents and older sibling to protect and care for me. For more than...
In a phase I/Ib study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Davids et al found that ipilimumab (Yervoy; at a dose of 10 mg/kg) produced responses, including complete responses, in patients with relapsed hematologic cancer after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT)....
ASCO recently released a clinical practice guideline update on ovarian suppression as part of the extant guideline on adjuvant endocrine therapy in hormone receptor–positive breast cancer, and the recommendations were summarized in the June 10, 2016, issue of The ASCO Post. Also in this issue,...
Few patients with advanced cancer and a short life expectancy have an accurate understanding of their illness, according to a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Andrew S. Epstein, MD, of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues. The study involved 178...
In a long-term follow-up of a European trial reported by Isabelle Demeestere, MD, PhD, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist treatment during chemotherapy in young women with lymphoma was...
A mindfulness-based stress-reduction program for breast cancer survivors was associated with psychological and physical symptom benefits during and at 6 weeks after intervention, according to a randomized trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Cecile A. Lengacher, RN, PhD, of the...
The U.S. health-care system is a $3 trillion behemoth of dizzying complexity. Government oversight, ever-changing regulations, mountains of paperwork, electronic health records, initiative after initiative, and so forth, all of which has reshaped the delivery of care, for the good and bad. But...
A therapeutic modality of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture has been extensively investigated in Western medical settings. Its clinical use is increasingly common for the management of pain and other conditions. In the oncology setting, research demonstrates that acupuncture can...