While many patients with cancer can benefit from palliative care to ease symptoms from the disease or its treatment, for children with cancer, especially critically ill children, palliative care can provide an additional layer of medical and emotional support for both young patients and their...
FOR DAYS BEFORE HURRICANE HARVEY was expected to move toward Houston, Texas, on Sunday, August 27, 2017, after pummeling other cities in Texas and Louisiana, the leadership team at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson) in Houston strategized on how to ensure the...
AT THE START OF 2018, seven senior employees assumed new roles at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Five of these program leaders were promoted or reappointed, and two have newly joined the Institute from other centers around the United States. Meet the Appointees Charles...
Oncology occupational therapist Mackenzi Pergolotti, PhD, OTR/L, was born in Buffalo, New York. “I lived there until I was 6,” she shared. “Then my family moved around the state a bit, finally settling in the small town of Bath, situated near the Finger Lakes—a beautiful area in central New ...
Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, has been elected to serve as the President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2019. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2018. Additionally, five members were...
The oncology community mourns the sudden passing of Jimmie C. Holland, MD, who died on December 24, 2017, at the age of 89. Dr. Holland’s achievements over her 40-year career are legend. They include the founding of the subspecialty of psycho-oncology, the establishment of a full-time Psychiatry...
Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, has been elected to serve as the President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2019. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2018. Additionally, five members were...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Bostjan Seruga, MD, PhD, is a medical oncology consultant at the Insitute of Oncology Ljubljana and Associate Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has published on barriers in global cancer research. The ASCO Post spoke with him recently about his career path, cancer care in...
THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH’S All of Us Research Program and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) have teamed up to raise awareness about the program, a landmark effort to advance precision medicine. Through this 3-year pilot program, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine has...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jeanne Carter, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, ASCO has issued a clinical practice guideline adaptation of the Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) guideline on interventions to address sexual problems in people with cancer....
Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, has been elected to serve as the President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2019. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2018. Additionally, five...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO is committed to supporting the research and career development of young researchers through its Grants & Awards Program. In October 2017, Conquer Cancer hosted its third Scientific and Career Development Retreat at ASCO Headquarters in Alexandria,...
Cancer care in Sub-Saharan Africa, as in other low-resource settings, can be a challenge: The right medications and equipment may be in short supply, maintaining equipment can be a problem, basic chemotherapy drugs may be unaffordable, and patients may not see doctors until the cancer is advanced....
As low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer has moved from clinical trials to clinical practice, management issues are growing more urgent for screening centers around the country: for instance, how to support referrals from and to other providers; how to ensure the quality of...
A new study suggests that an American Cancer Society (ACS) program has been effective in promoting improvements in colorectal cancer screening rates in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). The study data, published by Riehman et al in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, shows the...
Donald Coffey, PhD, a distinguished Johns Hopkins Professor and prostate cancer expert, who was the former Director of the Brady Urological Research Laboratory and Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, died on November 9, 2017, at the age of 85. In his more than 50 years at...
“WE’VE GOT A CHALLENGING TIME right now, trying to relieve pain during the time of an opioid epidemic,” Judith A. Paice, RN, PhD, acknowledged at the 2017 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago.1 She cited a recent study reporting that up to 40% of cancer survivors are living with pain, and...
AT THE 2017 ASCO ANNUAL MEETING, the leaders of the newly formed Value in Cancer Care Consortium (vi3c; vi3c.org) met to discuss the group’s plan to study how to improve the affordability of cancer drugs and make them more accessible to patients. The goal of the Value in Cancer Care Consortium is...
It had been an uneventful Sunday morning, and I was writing my final note for the day, hopeful to make a stealth exit and perhaps join my family at church. But as I closed the chart and looked up, I saw Ruthie, my oncology fellow, approaching with a grim expression. “I just left the room of a...
Bloodless stem cell transplantation, performed without the transfusion of allogeneic blood or blood products, has numerous clinical advantages, especially among populations of patients who prefer, for religious or other reasons, no blood methods of medical and surgical treatment. Patricia A. Ford, ...
ON OCTOBER 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), a cell-based gene therapy, to treat adult patients with certain types of large B-cell lymphoma who have not responded to or who have relapsed after at least two other kinds of treatment....
As computer-based physician support systems for decision-making in cancer management continue to evolve, “we will come to embrace this as something that liberates us to spend more time on the human aspects of cancer care,” Andrew D. Seidman, MD, told participants at the 2017 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer ...
Although a majority of major cancer centers may test for minimal residual disease (MRD), a recent survey conducted by researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, suggests most oncologists remain uncertain about what to do with the results. At the National Comprehensive Cancer Network®...
Donald Coffey, PhD, a distinguished Johns Hopkins professor and prostate cancer expert, who was the former Director of the Brady Urological Research Laboratory and Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, died on November 9 at the age of 85. Long Career at Johns Hopkins In his...
NORWALK HOSPITAL and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) announced a new cancer care collaboration that will integrate MSK medical and radiation oncologists and care practices with the existing cancer program at the C. Anthony and Jean Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital. For...
Integrative oncology is an evolving evidence-based specialty providing whole-person care by combining conventional approved cancer treatments with integrative and complementary therapies that best serve the needs of patients based on their diagnosis, prognosis, treatment history, and individual...
A new study published by Lipitz-Snyderman et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that among patients presenting to the emergency department, those with cancer, especially those aged 75 years or older, are more likely to be admitted to the hospital—and...
ASCO Research Community Forum The ASCO Research Community Forum (RCF) Annual Meeting was held September 24–25, with the theme of Advancing Cancer Care Through Research Partnerships. The RCF Annual Meeting brings together ASCO leaders, regulatory experts, physician investigators, and research staff...
THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA), in partnership with international regulatory and law enforcement agencies, recently took action against more than 500 websites that illegally sell potentially dangerous, unapproved versions of prescription medicines, including opioids, antibiotics, and...
IT IS A SAD TRUTH that academic medicine, like many other professions, has a glass ceiling that hampers its ambitions. In medicine, this glass ceiling blocks women and minority faculty from reaching the highest ranks of leadership. Even if the root cause is not yet known, we want to eliminate...
Turning the Tide Against Cancer is an annual conference sponsored by the Personalized Medicine Coalition, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Feinstein Kean Healthcare, and CancerCare. Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), AACR Chief Executive Officer, introduced the proceedings for the 2017...
On October 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), a cell-based gene therapy, to treat adult patients with certain types of large B-cell lymphoma who have not responded to or who have relapsed after at least two other kinds of treatment....
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in partnership with international regulatory and law enforcement agencies, recently took action against more than 500 websites that illegally sell potentially dangerous, unapproved versions of prescription medicines, including opioids, antibiotics, and...
On September 27 and 28, more than 100 ASCO volunteers headed to Capitol Hill to participate in the 2nd Annual ASCO Advocacy Summit. During the Summit, advocates met with members of Congress and staff to educate them on critical issues affecting patients and providers and to encourage policymakers...
Nearly 100 oncology care providers from across the United States traveled to Capitol Hill on September 27 and 28 to participate in the second annual ASCO Advocacy Summit. Advocates met with Members of Congress and their staff to educate them on critical issues affecting patients with cancer ...
The statistics on physician suicide are stark: Physicians are more than twice as likely to take their own lives as nonphysicians, and more than 400 physicians commit suicide each year in the United States. Moreover, young physicians at the early part of their training are reported to be...
At the time this article was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dr. Danaher was practicing at Monash -University, -Melbourne, Australia; Drs. Brand and Mack, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston; Dr. Pickard, at the Imperial College -Healthcare NHS Trust, London; and Dr. Berry,...
Would you rather explain the benefits of three cycles of bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin to a hostile crowd of bored teenagers than talk to your program director, supervisor, or colleagues about feeling burned out? It is an understandable feeling. Professional burnout is a difficult concept to...
A NEW ARTICLE published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics (JCO CCI), “Automating QOPI Quality Measure NHL78a,” by Richard P. Mansour, MD, and Samip Master, MD, reports how the authors were able to use data from an electronic health record (EHR) and Microsoft SQL Server database management system...
STAYING UP-TO-DATE in the fast-paced world of oncology literature is a daunting task at best. To assist with that task, The ASCO Post has assembled an assortment of studies recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) and the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). Future installments...
When I was in high school, I spent summers working as a restaurant dishwasher, grocery store stock boy, and gardener in northwest Indiana. The idea of spending those weeks learning about science and medicine would not have been an option for me at that time. Yet it is precisely those students who...
ON AUGUST 30, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for pediatric and young adult patients up to 25 years with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that is refractory to initial treatment or in second or later relapse. Tisagenlecleucel ...
Nicholas G. Nickols, MD, PhD, an attending physician at the West Los Angeles Veteran Affairs Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, has been awarded the prestigious 2017 VALOR Young Investigator Award by the Prostate Cancer Foundation....
In a study reported by Walling et al in the Journal of Oncology Practice, the embedding of a palliative care nurse practitioner in an oncology clinic resulted in improved hospice referral, advance care planning documentation, and referral for psychosocial support. Study Details The study compared ...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued what it has called a “historic action,” making the first gene therapy available in the United States. The FDA approved tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for certain pediatric and young adult patients with a form of acute lymphoblastic...
This past fall, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle opened an all-encompassing 9,222-square foot outpatient cellular immunotherapy clinic, specifically designed to serve patients participating in the center’s novel immunotherapy clinical trials, which mainly focus on chimeric...
On August 3, the leadership of Kids v Cancer, an advocacy group promoting pediatric cancer research, issued the following statement: Today, the U.S. Senate passed the FDA Reauthorization Act and with it, the RACE for Children Act. Now, new cancer drugs will be developed not only for...
Dedicating one’s career and livelihood to the pursuit of treating and possibly curing cancer is, for many, a decision that stems from deeply personal and, often, tragic experience. For 2017–2018 ASCO President Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, the event that greatly influenced his decision was the...
This is the story, told through their own photographs, of a group of adolescent patients with cancer in their search for happiness. Their images relay their hopes and fears, their desire to be normal, and their urge to escape. These photographs are the outcome of a creative arts–based support...