Multiple myeloma subtypes are driven by a variety of genetic abnormalities. Given the genetic diversity of the disease, identification of oncogenic mechanisms common to all subtypes is highly desirable. In a study reported in Cancer Cell, Lamy and colleagues found that that all multiple myeloma...
Despite today’s challenging economy, health care is one field that offers vast career opportunities. Oncology, with the impending workforce shortage, is especially eager for bright young doctors to join its ranks. But the rising costs of medical school can be a deterrent, leading the best and...
A new guideline for molecular testing to select lung cancer patients for treatment with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) tyrosine kinase inhibitors has been jointly developed by the College of American Pathologists, International Association for the Study ...
“My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid, called DNA for short.… In other words we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life,” wrote Francis Crick,...
Conquering cancer has been the goal of Bert Vogelstein, MD, since he was a teenager in Baltimore. For more than 3 decades, Dr. Vogelstein, Co-Director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Johns Hopkins Medical...
A new clinical trial is testing whether targeting treatments to a genetic anomaly can lead to better treatments for castration-resistant metastatic prostate cancer. The trial, led by investigators at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, is being conducted at 11 sites throughout...
“I’ve been living with melanoma for 7 years.” That’s a statement that, at the outset of her diagnosis, Joanne Maricle would have found surprising. Yet Joanne, who is featured in a video that is part of a new Patient and Advocate Video Series on ASCO’s CancerProgress.Net website, is able to lay...
Most relapses following treatment for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma are detected by abnormalities on physical exam, lab tests, and symptoms—not by routine imaging, according to a study presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting.1 In fact, in a prospective study assessing post-treatment outcomes of...
“From bench to bedside” is a phrase that captures the essence of modern oncology: Researchers at the bench seek to solve the biologic puzzles of cancer that can translate into the development of therapeutics delivered at the bedside. Owen N. Witte, MD, has spent most of his career as a basic bench...
Clara D. Bloomfield, MD, grew up in a steadfastly academic environment that spurned typical children’s entertainment such as comic books or television. Born in New York City during World War II, she moved to Washington, DC, with her family while her father, an expert on labor and industrial...
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer in children, and the incidence of the disease varies by ethnicity. Available evidence indicates an inherited predisposition to ALL, but the genetic basis of ALL susceptibility in diverse ancestry has not been examined in detail. Xu and...
Available data suggest that DNA methylation in blood is a potential epigenetic marker of cancer risk, but this has not been evaluated on a genome-wide scale in prospective studies of breast cancer. Xu and colleagues measured DNA methylation at 27,578 CpG sites (ie, DNA regions where cytosine and...
Clinical resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment has been observed in lung cancer. The antidiabetic drug metformin has shown significant inhibitory and proapoptotic effects in several cancer models alone and in combination with chemotherapeutic...
The oncogenic microRNAs miR-21and miR-31 negatively regulate tumor-suppressor genes. Toiyama and colleagues conducted a series of studies to assess their potential as serum biomarkers in colorectal cancer. Screening in medium from two colorectal cancer cell lines and serum analysis in 12 patients...
In studies to identify circulating microRNA levels that could distinguish low-stage pancreatic cancer from healthy and disease controls, Li and colleagues, measured 735 microRNAs in pancreatic cancer case and control sera and selected 18 microRNA candidates for validation in an independent set of...
The diagnostic test for ALK rearrangement in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) for crizotinib (Xalkori) treatment currently uses biopsy or fine-needle aspiration. Pailler and colleagues assessed whether ALK rearrangement could be detected using circulating tumor cells. They analyzed circulating...
Radium-223 dichloride (Xofigo) is an alpha particle–emitting radiotherapeutic drug that mimics calcium and localizes to areas of high bone turnover, providing targeted therapy for skeletal metastasis. The drug was recently approved for treatment of patients with castration-resistant prostate...
BRAF V600E mutations are associated with poor prognosis in colorectal cancer. A study by Coffee and colleagues examined PI3K/mTOR signaling in BRAF V600E colorectal cancer cell lines after BRAF inhibition as well as cell viability and apoptosis after combined BRAF and PI3K/mTOR inhibition. Western ...
Investigators from Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto and the University of California, Los Angeles, have submitted an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for CFI-400945, a novel drug candidate targeting the enzyme PLK4, which plays a crucial role in cell division. The news was...
More than 98% of adult survivors of childhood cancer in a large clinically evaluated cohort had a chronic health condition, including a substantial number of previously undiagnosed problems that are more likely to occur in an older population. “These findings underscore the importance of ongoing...
Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, with 20 centers throughout the state, and St. Anthony Hospital have completed an agreement to provide comprehensive inpatient and outpatient cancer services to patients on the St. Anthony Hospital campus in Lakewood, Colorado. Expanded radiation therapy...
Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, California, recently named Christine R. Carico the 2013 recipient of the Medical Center’s Pauletta and Denzel Washington Family Gifted Scholars Program in Neuroscience award. Ms. Carico will spend the next year researching brain disorders like the one that took the life ...
Obinutuzumab is a glycoengineered type II antibody that differs from type I anti-CD20 antibodies by being associated with actin reorganization and adhesion followed by direct cell death.1 Obinutuzumab has been glycoengineered by reduction in fucose content of the Fc region, which increases its...
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine recently announced approval by the agency’s governing Board, the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, of $40 million in funding for researchers at 10 institutions as part of its Early Translational IV Research awards. Among the institutions...
The MTOR serine/threonine kinase pathway is implicated in regulation of neuroendocrine tumor growth. In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Qian and colleagues investigated the potential prognostic significance of MTOR pathway component expression in patients with neuroendocrine...
Antiangiogenic therapy reduces tumor vascular permeability and delays tumor progression but may ultimately promote an aggressive treatment-resistant phenotype. In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Piao and colleagues attempted to identify factors responsible for glioblastoma resistance...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Gammaitoni and colleagues investigated the tumor-killing activity of cytokine-induced killer cells against autologous metastatic melanoma and putative cancer stem cells. The investigators developed a preclinical autologous model using same...
There have been three “game-changers” in the treatment of melanoma, Mark R. Albertini, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, contended at the Best of ASCO Chicago meeting. The first, he explained, was the recognition of different genetic driver...
It was 1:00 AM, and my beeping pager awakened me. When you’re a surgical oncologist, you know that a page from your chief resident at this hour of the morning usually means someone may need to go to the operating room. And, yes, it was the chief resident about a patient in crisis. Except in this...
Cost of Care and Federal Funding How can ASCO address the high cost of cancer care and diminishing federal resources for basic and translational research? We need to work with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, private insurers, and health-care systems to encourage evidence-based...
Cost of Care and Federal Funding How can ASCO address the high cost of cancer care and diminishing federal resources for basic and translational research? In answer to the first part of this question, the rising cost of cancer care has certainly become a focus of national conversation given the...
We are just 7 months into the $1 trillion in automatic federal budget spending cuts known as sequestration, and the impact on scientists in all areas of research is already so great, some say its full effects may be irreversible. The ASCO Post recently interviewed ASCO President Clifford A. Hudis, ...
Common Name: Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) Brand Names: Omegaven, Max-EPA The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about...
It has been found that focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibition sensitizes ovarian cancer to the effects of taxanes. In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kang and colleagues evaluated the response of taxane-resistant and taxane-sensitive ovarian cancer models to a...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Zhang and colleagues used integrated metabolomics and transcriptomics to investigate gene-metabolic networks and identify metabolic pathways that are perturbed in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. A global metabolite profiling analysis was performed ...
The role of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in glioblastoma has not been fully defined. In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Rutledge and colleagues assessed the association between tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and molecular alterations, histologies, and survival in glioblastoma. In...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) Grants and Awards Program has been instrumental in helping launch the careers of hundreds of aspiring cancer researchers around the world over the past 30 years. Since the first grant provided in 1984, Conquer Cancer Foundation–funded scientists have become some...
A new report recently released and supported by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) details the crippling effects of sequestration on programs that rely on discretionary federal funding, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In “Faces of Austerity: How Budget Cuts Have Made Us...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Moschetta and colleagues characterized the involvement of the cMet oncogene in drug resistance and the activity of a novel selective inhibitor of cMET/phospho-cMET (SU11274) in multiple myeloma cells sensitive (RPMI-8226 and MM.1S) and resistant (R5...
Max S. Wicha, MD, has announced he will step down as Director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center where he has served for the past 27 years. Dr. Wicha founded University of Michigan’s Cancer Center in 1986 and shepherded it to its first National Cancer Institute Cancer Center ...
“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” —Winston S. Churchill The remarkable medical career of Peter Jacobs, MD, in large part, traces the oncologic history of South Africa. During the decades of political and social unrest that engulfed his native land, Dr. Jacobs...
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...
Many of the advances that have bettered mankind are attributed to those who were driven by a primary passion. Geoffrey P. Herzig, MD, lived the better part of his life with a primary passion: conducting research to increase the cure rate of leukemia and lymphoma patients. His friend and colleague,...
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” —John Wayne Donald L. Morton, MD, transformed the management of melanoma and breast cancer by...
In a study reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kyrø and colleagues found that high levels of plasma alkylresorcinols, biomarkers of dietary whole-grain wheat and rye intake, were associated with reduced risk of distal colon cancer. The study involved prediagnostic plasma samples...
Loss of 18q22.3 is a prognostic marker in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Giovannetti and colleagues assessed the role of 18q22.3-encoded CYB5A in pancreatic cancer prognosis and autophagy modulation. In the study, both resected ...
In a study reported in Science, Viaud and colleagues showed that the antitumor activity of cyclophosphamide is dependent on the effect of this agent on gut microflora. In mouse studies, the investigators found that cyclophosphamide altered the composition of microbiota in the small intestine,...
Gut microflora affect local and systemic inflammatory responses, and inflammation is involved in both pathogenesis and treatment of cancers, but it is unclear whether gut microflora affect inflammation in the sterile tumor microenvironment. In a study reported in Science, Iida and colleagues...
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and College of American Pathologists (CAP) recently convened an Update Committee to conduct a systematic literature review and update recommendations for optimal HER2 testing. In particular, the Committee identified criteria and areas requiring...
The Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) is changing the landscape of treatment in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. New research with the drug in lymphoma, presented at the 2013 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, indicates it may be of benefit in...