“There is progress whether ye are going forward or backward! The thing is to move.” —Edgar Cayce To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are a few abstracts selected from the meeting...
The holistic benefits derived from exercise in preventing and ameliorating chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are well documented. However, less is known about the salutary effects exercise may have across the cancer setting, especially during treatment....
Today, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published a final recommendation statement on screening for lung cancer in people who do not have signs or symptoms. Based on the evidence, the USPSTF recommends yearly screening using a low-dose computed tomography (CT) scan for people aged...
A major new collaborative effort, the Global Breast Cancer Initiative, was introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the objective of reducing global breast cancer mortality by 2.5% per year until 2040, thereby averting an estimated 2.5 million deaths. In recognition of International ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Rafal Dziadziuszko, MD, and colleagues, an updated integrated analysis of three phase I or II trials of entrectinib in patients with advanced ROS1-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) indicated that treatment continues to be associated with...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Philip M. Poortmans, PhD, Department of Radiation Oncology of the Iridium Netwerk and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, and colleagues, 15-year outcomes of the phase III EORTC 22922/10925 trial show continued reduction in...
In an analysis of early safety outcomes in a Chinese phase III trial (RELARC) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Xu et al found similar surgical complication rates with complete mesocolic excision vs D2 dissection in patients undergoing laparoscopic colectomy for right-sided colon cancer. The...
Invited discussant John C. Krauss, MD, Medical Oncology Director of the Multidisciplinary Colorectal Cancer Clinic, Rogel Cancer Center of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said he was impressed by the “rapidity with which the NRG-GI002 trial accrued,” which was about 10 months.1 “Equally...
New guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the procurement of radiotherapy equipment could improve access to this life-saving cancer treatment option across the world. The new technical guidance aims to ensure that the selection of...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Choi et al found that risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy in women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 pathogenic variants was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer within 5 years after surgery, with evidence of longer-term risk reduction among those with BRCA1...
When the COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person medical checkups last year, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center offered video visits for the first time for long-term follow-up appointments for childhood cancer survivors. Due to the pandemic, virtual visits were adopted...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track designation to a novel immunotherapy for the treatment of ovarian cancer as well as Breakthrough Therapy designation to treatments for HRAS-mutant head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and previously treated thyroid cancer....
A new report from Italy published by Toss et al in ESMO Open noted an increase in diagnoses of node-positive and stage III breast cancer after a 2-month interruption in breast cancer screening due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings support recommendations for a quick restoration of breast...
A study by Salerno et al published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention investigating the association of a cancer diagnosis and poor ambulatory function of survivors and subsequent mortality has found that cancer survivors with poor ambulatory function had a two to three times...
In a study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Zhao et al found that 5-year adherence to adjuvant hormonal therapy was low among commercially insured women with breast cancer in the United States. The retrospective observational study used data from the IBM MarketScan Research Databases to identify...
Final analysis of a collaborative intergroup study confirmed the efficacy of adjuvant treatment with imatinib in patients with localized gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) in terms of prolonged relapse-free survival. In the high-risk subgroup, there was a trend toward a better long-term imatinib ...
In a Canadian population-based cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Raphael et al found that survivors of testicular cancer were more likely to use mental health services in both the short and long term following treatment compared with the general population. Study Details...
“Cancer Alley,” located in Louisiana along the lower Mississippi River, serves as an industrial hub, with nearly 150 oil refineries, plastics plants, and chemical facilities. The ever-widening corridor of petrochemical plants has not only polluted the surrounding water and air, but also subjected...
On March 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted regular approval to lorlatinib (Lorbrena) for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive, as detected by an FDA-approved test. The FDA also approved the...
In a new study published by Merritt et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, researchers demonstrated that sex hormones and insulin growth factors may be associated with recurrence risk in patients with endometrial cancer. The findings suggest endocrine-targeted therapies and an...
Regular mammography screening substantially reduces the risk of dying from breast cancer, according to a large study of over half a million women published by Stephen W. Duffy, MSc, and colleagues in the journal Radiology. Researchers said women who skipped even one scheduled mammography screening...
As reported in a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine by Elise A. Chong, MD, and colleagues, long-term follow-up of a single-center trial of tisagenlecleucel showed maintained responses in a high proportion of patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma ...
Patients with lymphoma hospitalized for severe COVID-19 infection were at higher risk for prolonged hospital stay and death if they were treated with B-cell–depleting therapies (eg, rituximab, obinutuzumab) within the previous 12 months. The risk of persistent COVID-19 infection was also higher in...
Although guidelines exist for the use of several clinical prediction models based on logistic regression to help estimate the risk of lung cancer before treatment decision-making, they almost all focus on solitary pulmonary nodules, and have not shown accuracy in predicting malignancy in multiple...
In 2020, ASCO established the Steering Group on Cancer Care Delivery and Research in a Post-Pandemic Environment to evaluate the changes made in oncology care delivery, clinical research, and regulatory oversight in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to make recommendations on how to...
At the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Motzer et al presented the clinical results of the CLEAR trial, adding a novel regimen, lenvatinib plus pembrolizu-mab, to the growing armamentarium of first-line treatments for patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The...
On February 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the third vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19. The EUA allows the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to be distributed in the United States for use in individuals 18 years of age and older. The FDA...
On February 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to melphalan flufenamide (Pepaxto) in combination with dexamethasone for adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four prior lines of therapy and whose disease is...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Powles et al, a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III EV-301 trial has shown improved overall survival with enfortumab vedotin-ejfv vs investigator choice of chemotherapy in patients with previously treated advanced urothelial...
As reported in The Lancet by Sezer et al, the phase III EMPOWER-Lung 1 trial has shown improved overall and progression-free survival with cemiplimab-rwlc vs platinum doublet chemotherapy among patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with PD-L1 expression on ≥ 50% of tumor cells...
Each year, following the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), The ASCO Post asks Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, to offer his picks of the most important and most clinically relevant research presented at this meeting. The following are summaries of studies that caught Dr. Abraham’s attention from ...
When advising the younger members of our medical community on career decisions, I always list “access to the best mentorship” as the most important priority. By the time we hit residency, we have all proven ourselves able to extract from a book or a journal the facts essential to the practice of...
At the 2021 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, the KEYNOTE-177 investigators updated their previously reported findings by showing further data relating to subsequent lines of therapy after disease progression. Their conclusion was that patients who received pembrolizumab initially still achieved...
In an updated analysis of the pivotal phase III KEYNOTE-177 trial in microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) metastatic colorectal cancer, the benefit of first-line pembrolizumab continued beyond disease progression on the subsequent line of treatment, despite a high crossover to immunotherapy for...
In a Chinese phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Liu et al found that endoscopic nasopharyngectomy was associated with improved overall survival vs intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in patients with resectable locally recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma who had received prior...
In the Australian phase II trial TheraP reported in The Lancet, Michael S. Hofman, FRACP, MBBS, and colleagues found that Lutetium-177–labeled PSMA-617 (LuPSMA) treatment was associated with a higher prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response rate and fewer severe adverse events vs cabazitaxel in...
Every year, significant amounts of drugs left over and unused from single-dose vials are discarded, but because of the way drugs are priced and paid for in the United States, the cost of the discarded amount cannot be recouped, according to a new congressionally mandated report from the National...
In the days and weeks leading up to President Biden’s inauguration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—under the prior administration—issued a number of rules and regulations that affect cancer care delivery. Many of those rules and regulations are now subject to review by the new...
A new article published in JCO Oncology Practice puts forth a framework to guide researchers, health-care leaders, advocates, community- and patient-focused service organizations, and policy leaders in their work to address and promote health equity in cancer care access and treatment outcomes.1...
In case you missed these while attending the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, below is a sampler of highlights that were not included in our first round of meeting coverage. Many of these reports are on early-phase clinical trials of agents that may raise...
Lucia Masarova, MD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, said the updated long-term data for momelotinib show “durable efficacy and exciting outcomes” in patients with myelofibrosis, regardless of prior exposure to...
Treatment with the novel JAK inhibitor momelotinib led to long-term overall survival and sustained transfusion independence in patients with intermediate- or high-risk myelofibrosis, according to updates from the SIMPLIFY-1 and SIMPLIFY-2 trials presented at the 2020 American Society of Hematology...
I had my first experience with cancer when I was just 3 or 4 years old and complained to my mother that my “tummy hurt.” I was diagnosed with Wilms tumor, the same cancer my 18-month-old brother died of before I was born. I remember being in the hospital for weeks at a time and being known by...
Among patients who survive a primary cancer, concern about recurrence, especially metastatic disease, is extremely common; however, information about future risk for subsequent primary cancers is seldom communicated to these patients, leading to missed opportunities to prevent or detect subsequent...
The risk of developing or dying of a new primary cancer, particularly those cancers associated with smoking and obesity, was greater among survivors of adult-onset cancers than the expected risk in the general population, according to an analysis of data from more than 1.5 million cancer...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-598 study, the addition of ipilimumab to pembrolizumab increased toxicity without boosting efficacy as first-line therapy for metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients with high expression of PD-L1. The findings were presented at the International...
An imposing painting of sailing ships graced the wall behind the desk in the office of Professor Gordon McVie, BSc (Hons), MBChB, MD, FRCP, FRCPEd, FRCPS (Glas), FMedSci, DSc. It was a gift from one of his patients with cancer, a long-term survivor who said the painting reminded her of him, walking ...
John Bartlett, MD, a visionary physician-scientist and pioneer in HIV/AIDS study and treatment who built the infectious diseases division at The Johns Hopkins, died on January 19, 2021, in New York. He was 83 years old. “Over his long and illustrious career, John Bartlett epitomized the best of...
Gert Brieger, MD, MPH, PhD, former Director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Institute of the History of Medicine, died on January 13, 2021, due to heart failure. He was 89. Dr. Brieger is credited with transforming the department from a research center with occasional students to ...
When Joseph V. Simone, MD, was 6 years old, he had his first experience with the death of a child. His 9-month-old brother became sick with the croup and was taken to the nearby children’s hospital, where he died a few days later, leaving Dr. Simone and his family devastated. Caring for sick...