On April 24, 2014, as part of its implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act signed by the President in 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a new rule that would extend the agency’s tobacco authority to cover additional tobacco products. Products ...
A majority of cancer patients experience some level of fatigue during the course of their treatment, and approximately 30% contend with persistent fatigue for years after treatment. Fatigue is among the most common and distressing long-term effects of cancer treatment and significantly affects...
At the 19th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), lymphoma expert and NCCN Panel Chair on Lymphoma, Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, fielded questions from oncologists. The ASCO Post was there to capture his recommendations for a common clinical scenario—treating the...
Fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitors are an emerging area of interest in cancer therapeutics. Studies presented at the 2014 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego provided early encouraging data for two investigational pan-FGFR inhibitors for the...
Formal discussant of the AG-221 study presented at the 2014 American Association for Cancer Research meeting, John C. Byrd, MD, of The Ohio State University, Columbus, said, “Congratulations to Dr. Stein for bringing this drug forth.” He continued, “Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is challenging to...
Although the data are preliminary, experts were impressed with responses to a novel IDH2 inhibitor called AG-221 in patients with hematologic malignancies. In the first clinical trial of AG-221, there were three complete remissions, two complete remissions with incomplete platelet count recovery...
Patients with early-stage breast cancer who underwent sentinel lymph node dissection experienced lymphedema with increasing incidence over time, according to a presentation at the 2014 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) Cancer Symposium in Phoenix.1 In women who took part in the American College of ...
Contralateral prophylactic mastectomy improved breast cancer patients’ odds of overall survival by 23% compared with single mastectomy alone, according to a retrospective analysis of nearly 170,000 patients in a U.S. database, but surgical breast cancer specialists warned that the data needed to be ...
At the 19th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), held recently in Hollywood, Florida, NCCN Panel members presented updates for several tumor types, briefly summarized here. For a more complete description of all updates, visit www.nccn.org. Breast Cancer Guidelines ...
On assuming the Presidency of ASCO a year ago, I recognized that one of our greatest challenges as a professional society is helping the American public understand the value of cancer research, especially now, when scientific advances are accelerating but resources are contracting. This is partly...
Dr. Janet L. Rowley’s groundbreaking research in the translocation of genetic material bucked scientific convention and heralded a new understanding that cancer is indeed a genetic disease. Her research was largely responsible for the discoveries that led to the development of the targeted cancer...
On April 9, 1964, seven physicians—Jane Cooke Wright, MD, FASCO; Arnoldus Goudsmit, MD, PhD; Fred J. Ansfield, MD, FASCO; Harry F. Bisel, MD, FASCO; Herman H. Freckman, MD, FASCO; Robert W. Talley, MD, FASCO; and William Wilson, MD, FASCO—met for lunch at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. They...
David A. Karnofsky, MD, dedicated himself to the pursuit of scientific excellence and the investigation of more effective therapies for cancer for nearly 30 years, from the time he was a young resident at the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research of Harvard University, until...
The island nation of Curaçao is nestled in the southern Caribbean Sea off the Venezuelan coast. Curaçao was first settled by the Arawaks, an Amerindian people that inhabited the island for hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans. Amid one wave of settlers from Portugal and Spain that...
Barbara L. McAneny, MD, grew up on the outskirts of Alton, a small city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois. It is an area rich in history, famous as the site of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas’s last debate and for its role preceding and during the American Civil War. “We...
Nationally regarded radiation oncologist and lymphoma expert Richard Hoppe, MD, was reared in Seaford, a small town hugging the South Shore of Long Island, New York. “I grew up in the early part of Long Island’s suburban sprawl, and my childhood was a fairly typical experience for that time,”...
World-renowned breast cancer researcher, Nancy E. Davidson, MD, was born in Denver, Colorado, the daughter of two geologists. “My mother was a geologist beginning in the 1940s, a time when women really didn’t pursue that kind of career. So, I was reared in a very scientifically oriented...
The road leading to a career in medicine is often a stepwise journey of multiple decision points and influences. However, sometimes the decision to become a doctor is hardwired from birth. Such was the case with 2014-2015 ASCO President Peter P. Yu, MD. Since his days in nursery school, Dr. Yu...
Minority patients with lung cancer who receive treatment in practices affiliated with provider-based research networks “have greater hospice enrollment than those treated in academic and community practices,” concluded Dolly C. Penn, MD, MSCR, and colleagues at the University of North Carolina...
I’ve been plagued with various ailments all my life. Physically and emotionally abused by my stepfather as a child, over the years I’ve developed severe psychological issues including depression and anxiety disorder. I am also in constant physical pain from cervical degenerative disc disease,...
The Clinical Trials and Translational Research Advisory Committee (CTAC) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) met for the 22nd time on March 12, 2014, in their ongoing effort to improve efficiency and effectiveness of cancer clinical trials. A significant portion of the meeting addressed lagging...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved palonosetron hydrochloride (Aloxi) injection for the prevention of acute nausea and vomiting associated with initial and repeat courses of emetogenic cancer chemotherapy, including highly emetogenic cancer chemotherapy, in children aged 1...
Results from three studies published recently in European Urology indicate that the 17-gene Oncotype DX Genomic Prostate Score is a significant predictor of disease aggressiveness at the time of diagnosis before intervention with radiation or surgery.1 The test provides precise and individualized...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 ASCO has endorsed the recently published Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) and American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) consensus guideline on margins for breast-conserving surgery with whole-breast irradiation in stage I and II invasive...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On April 29, 2014, ceritinib (Zykadia) was granted accelerated...
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins has announced it will use a $65 million gift toward the construction of a new patient care building that will be named for the late Albert P. “Skip” Viragh, Jr. Mr. Viragh, a Maryland mutual fund investment leader and philanthropist,...
The Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG) continues to provide valuable clinically relevant and practice-influencing information garnered from individual patient-level data from numerous randomized trials in breast cancer. The large numbers of patients and long-term follow-up...
In an increasing spirit of cooperation, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and several pharmaceutical companies are bringing to fruition the newest in a series of ways to expedite drug development and review. Breakthrough therapy is the designation instituted in 2012 by the FDA Safety and...
It’s the dawn of a new era in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), largely due to the development of agents targeting the BCR signaling pathway, according to John C. Byrd, MD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus. At the 19th Annual Conference of the...
Attendees at this year’s annual conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) not only got up to date on the Guidelines but left with a better understanding of how children deal with a parent’s cancer, and how oncology providers can best help. Panelists for the NCCN roundtable...
Great progress is being made in the battle against cancer, but a renewed commitment of federal support for medical research is needed to speed its eradication, according to leaders of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), commenting in connection with a recent Senate hearing on “The...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On April 28, 2014, an oral suspension of mercaptopurine (Purixan) ...
In men with prostate cancer and a prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-only recurrence after curative surgery or radiation, delaying androgen deprivation therapy for at least 2 years or until clinical progression (ie, new symptoms, metastasis by imaging techniques or short PSA doubling time) did not...
Recently, I participated in ASCO’s Congressional news briefing in Washington, DC, following the release of its report, The State of Cancer Care in America: 2014. During my presentation I talked about the workforce shortage of approximately 1,500 medical oncologists that is predicted by 2025. A...
In a 2010 interview, Eddie Reed, MD, a pioneer in the molecular pharmacology of DNA-damaging anticancer agents and the clinical development of paclitaxel for ovarian cancer, was asked what lay ahead. Before answering, Dr. Reed first acknowledged the esteemed mentors who gave him their most precious ...
Colorectal cancer screening is cost-effective and “should be considered well beyond age 75 years” for individuals not previously screened, according to a computer simulation study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The researchers noted that while the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force...
The problematic rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s website, HealthCare.gov, made good political theater, but while much of the heated discussion centered on the plan’s need to enroll “young invincibles,” America’s cancer care system and the older patients it serves were also affected by parts of...
Data from the National Cancer Data Bank (2010–2011) suggest that 30% of patients with colorectal cancer who are eligible for adjuvant chemotherapy fail to receive it, but their odds increase by 30% when surgery is performed by laparoscopy, rather than laparotomy.1 “In this large national database...
New screening modalities and the customization of the screening population could soon change the way that screening for colorectal cancer is done. At Digestive Disease Week 2014, the largest gathering of gastrointestinal disease specialists in the world, researchers presented data suggesting that...
Improved relapse-free survival following treatment with adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) appears to be associated with a heightened state of immunologic function, according to genomic analysis that resulted in a 14-gene profile predictive of outcomes in the landmark NCCTG (Alliance) N9831 trial.1...
The good news for younger women with hormone receptor–negative early breast cancer is that adding goserelin (Zoladex), a luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist, to chemotherapy can prevent sudden menopause, better preserve ovarian function and fertility, and lead to successful...
An all-oral combination of the investigational agents olaparib and cediranib nearly doubled progression-free survival in platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer in a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored randomized phase II trial reported at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 The toxicity...
Separate studies in early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) found that the addition of consolidation chemotherapy to concurrent chemoradiotherapy did not improve survival and that adjuvant erlotinib (Tarceva) did not improve survival. There was a suggestion of benefit for adjuvant erlotinib...
Ibrutinib (Imbruvica) significantly improved progression-free survival, overall survival, and response when compared with ofatumumab (Arzerra) as second-line treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) in the phase III RESONATE study. The study results were...
This study provides key insights into the longstanding and vexing debate about optimal systemic therapy for these young women. We wonder about the role of tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors, chemotherapy, and ancillary therapies like bisphosphonates,” said Nancy E. Davidson, MD, Director of the...
Public awareness of head and neck cancer is limited, with the lack of awareness including the term head and neck cancer and common symptoms and risk factors, such as tobacco use and human papillomavirus (HPV), according to results of a cross-sectional online survey reported in JAMA...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On April 23, 2014, the anti–interleukin (IL)-6 monoclonal antibody...
Several times during his lecture at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, Stuart M. Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, the recipient of the B.J. Kennedy Award for Scientific Excellence in Geriatric Oncology, emphasized, “Physician education is the key” to continued advances in geriatric oncology. He specified that ...
Despite advances in cancer screening and in more effective therapies to treat the disease, which have led to improved outcomes and increased survival rates for millions of people with cancer, not every American is reaping the benefits of these advances. Disparities in health-care access, quality of ...
A study by investigators at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has indicated that people who are highly addicted to nicotine, ie, those who smoke their first cigarette within 5 minutes after awakening, are at higher risk of developing lung cancer than those who wait for 1 hour or more to smoke....