The American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS), the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Radiology (ACR) have released new joint ...
Aspirin may be associated with a reduction in the risk of developing several cancers of the digestive tract. The largest and most comprehensive analysis to date of the link between aspirin and digestive tract cancers, published by Bosetti et al in Annals of Oncology, found reductions in the risk of ...
The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has dramatically disrupted societal life within a very short time. Patients with cancer in particular can be affected by delays in routine medical care in addition to experiencing heightened anxiety and stress associated with the threat...
On April 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mitomycin (Jelmyto) for adult patients with low-grade upper tract urothelial cancer. OLYMPUS Trial Efficacy determination was based on OLYMPUS, an ongoing, single-arm, multicenter trial enrolling 71 patients with treatment-naive or...
A recently published article by Schatz et al offers new clarity around the use of prescription opioids in pain management for people with a diagnosis or history of cancer and chronic pain. The joint publication, which appeared in both JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and...
Apar Kishor Ganti, MD, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, discusses his study findings, which show that alectinib was associated with longer treatment persistence and comparable adherence to other ALK inhibitors (Abstract HSR20-084).
Karen Wonders, PhD, of Wright State University, discusses the safety and efficacy of exercise during cancer treatment in minimizing toxicities and addressing the short- and long-term effects of cancer therapy. Dr. Wonders suggests that exercise becomes a standard of care for patients with cancer...
Patients with localized colon cancer may benefit from a short course of neoadjuvant immunotherapy, according to findings from the exploratory phase II NICHE study published by Myriam Chalabi, MD, and colleagues in Nature Medicine. Study Results Forty patients with two colon cancer subtypes—either ...
ASCO has released a set of recommendations to support the oncology community as health-care institutions across the United States face potentially difficult decisions around the allocation of scarce health-care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some geographic areas, the ongoing crisis is...
William J. Gradishar, MD, of Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, discusses the “4R Model” (Right Information, Care, Patient, and Time) which has proved to be a promising method for patient self-management. Patient care sequence plans markedly improved several...
Elizabeth Reed, MD, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, talks about how she and her team sought to help rural oncology providers recognize and address the physical, psychosocial, and decision-making needs of young women with breast cancer by...
Over the past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to an immunotherapeutic agent for solid tumors with a high tumor mutational burden and to a combination treatment for the first-line treatment of metastatic or recurrent non–small cell lung cancer. The agency...
On April 10, ASCO launched the ASCO Survey on COVID-19 in Oncology Registry (ASCO Registry) to help the entire cancer community learn about the pattern of symptoms and severity of COVID-19 among patients with cancer, as well as how COVID-19 infections impact the delivery of cancer care and patient...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s® (NCCN®) Best Practices Committee has published a preprint article in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network detailing their recommendations for keeping patients with cancer, as well as their caregivers and health-care staff, as safe...
On April 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved selumetinib (Koselugo) for pediatric patients aged 2 years and older with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) who have symptomatic inoperable plexiform neurofibromas. Selumetinib, a kinase inhibitor, is the first therapy approved for...
Cancer and its treatment can cause infertility in both men and women. Educate your patients about this potential side effect by giving them the ASCO Answers fact sheet Your Fertility and Cancer Treatment. This fact sheet covers: An overview of what the terms fertility and infertility mean What...
Monthly giving is an efficient and effective way to help conquer cancer all year long. Monthly gifts to Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®, are processed automatically, which helps reduce costs and allows your donation to have the greatest possible impact in funding the research advancing...
Cancer.Net, ASCO’s patient information website, reports a current survival rate for stage I testicular cancer at 99%, but in 1974, men faced an overall survival rate of 5%. Surgery was the only viable treatment option, and if it failed, the prognosis was fatal. Lawrence Einhorn, MD, FASCO, was a...
In a letter to Representatives Terri Sewell (AL), Adrian Smith (NE), Tony Cárdenas (CA), and John Shimkus (IL), the Association for Clinical Oncology conveyed its support for legislation the lawmakers introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill—H.R. 5741, or the Strengthening...
Starting January 1, 2021, there will be significant changes to the office and outpatient Evaluation and Management services Current Procedural Terminology codes (99202–99215) for both new and established patients. Practices, physicians, and staff must prepare in advance for these changes to ensure...
At the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, R. Kate Kelley, MD, contributes to research focused on improving outcomes for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. The trial: This was a phase III study that included 707 patients who received sorafenib and had disease...
It was a great honor for the Russian Society of Clinical Oncology (RUSSCO) to collaborate on the ASCO IPCW, and for me to be a co-organizer of the event from the Russian side. RUSSCO is a professional cancer society with the mission to advance cancer treatment and cures. The organization...
ASCO, in collaboration with international oncology societies, hosts International Palliative Care Workshops (IPCWs) designed to teach participants practical skills in patient communication and the management of cancer symptoms and pain. The IPCWs are led by ASCO member volunteers and local experts...
I have been a radiologic technologist for 47 years, so after going to the bathroom one Sunday morning in October 2018 and finding my urine had suddenly turned dark, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t in any pain and did not have a urinary tract infection, which would explain the discoloration of...
A $12 million federal grant enabled City of Hope and collaborators to deploy a novel cloud-computing platform, making an immense amount of data from a historic 25-year study more accessible and user-friendly. The ongoing California Teachers Study, which began in 1995, has already given researchers...
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,...
When Narjust Duma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and a thoracic oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison, presented the findings from her study, “Evaluating Unconscious Bias During Speaker Introductions at an International Oncology Conference,” during the...
An abstract presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting titled “Evaluating Unconscious Bias During Speaker Introductions at an International Oncology Conference,” by Narjust Duma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Thoracic Oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in...
The Combined Annual Meetings of the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) and the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) were held in Orlando, Florida, from February 19–23, 2020. The scientific program addressed the most timely issues in ...
The ATS Foundation Research Program and the American Lung Association have awarded Donald Sullivan, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University, a $100,000 Foundation Partner grant. The grant will help support Dr. Sullivan’s research project, which he said will “answer important knowledge gaps...
The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health (SKCC) will establish the Philadelphia T-Cell Lymphoma/Leukemia Initiative to map and address knowledge gaps related to T-cell lymphoma and leukemia (TCLL), unmet patient needs, and barriers to progress in the existing TCLL care model. Pierluigi...
Each year, The ASCO Post asks Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, Chairman of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Taussig Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, to offer his picks for the most important research presented at 2019 San...
Francesca Gany, MD, MS, Chief of the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service, and Tim Ahles, PhD, Director of the Neurocognitive Research Laboratory, both of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), along with Gilda Barabino, PhD, and Karen Hubbard, PhD, of the City College of New York ...
Physician-scientist, Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, was encouraged by her parents to become a politically active, socially conscious citizen of the world. “As a young woman, my mother traveled from Africa on a scholarship to the United States, where she attended the University of Wisconsin. It was in the ...
Semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D, and its receptor, plexin B1) is broadly expressed in malignant tumors. Aside from other “normal functions” in tumors, SEMA4D influences the infiltration and distribution of leukocytes into the microenvironment, and its inhibition promotes functional immune infiltration....
A novel class of inhibitors may hold some promise for boosting responses to checkpoint inhibitors and for sensitizing poorly immunogenic tumors, such as pancreatic cancer, to immunotherapy. The drug targets semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D), a glycoprotein expressed on the cell membranes of many tumor types....
Discussant of the abstract on antibiotic exposure, Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCh, Assistant Professor of Oncology and Attending Physician at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Chu and colleagues have added to the recent literature examining concurrent use of...
Treatment with antibiotics prior to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy may confer poorer overall survival and an increased risk of colitis in patients with advanced melanoma, according to data presented at the 2020 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.1 The largest institutional...
On March 24, 2020, ASCO issued the following statement: ASCO’s primary concern is the health and safety of the global oncology community and the patients we serve. As public health safety measures related to COVID-19 extend, the ASCO Board has concluded that the Annual Meeting, scheduled for May 29 ...
Abstracts from posters that would have been presented at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) 2020 Annual Conference are now available online. Although NCCN officials were compelled to postpone the conference in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, in order to ...
ASCO has released a new guideline for clinicians and policymakers in resource-constrained settings on treating patients with late-stage colorectal cancer.1 “Around the world, there is a huge variation in resources, and what is available to clinicians may change week to week,” said Mary D....
Nancy E. Davidson, MD, of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and a member of The ASCO Post Editorial Board, talks about her experiences in one of the communities hardest hit by coronavirus and offers some practical advice on making changes in treatment and research. Recorded April 7, 2020.
Although patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer typically have limited responses to immunotherapy, a subset of patients with pretreatment evidence of active T-cell responses in their tumors experienced prolonged survival following treatment with ipilimumab in a phase II...
A new prognostic tool may help to predict time to first treatment for patients with early-stage, asymptomatic chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Researchers described what they hope will become a point-of-care resource to help improve clinical decision-making in a study published by Rossi et al in ...
On April 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved encorafenib (Braftovi) in combination with cetuximab (Erbitux) for the treatment of pretreated adult patients with metastatic colorectal cancer with a BRAF V600E mutation detected by an FDA-approved test. BEACON CRC Efficacy was...
William A. Wood, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Oversight Group Chair for the new COVID-19 registry, talks about why it was formed, how it can help patients and providers, and how it operates and could evolve in the future. Filmed April 3, 2020.
Attendees gathered at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco to hear the latest news about treating patients with cancers of the prostate, bladder, kidneys, and testicles. In addition to the comprehensive coverage of the meeting in The ASCO Post, here are some brief highlights...
Improving care for children with cancer worldwide could bring a triple return on investment and prevent millions of deaths, according to a new Commission report published by Atun et al in The Lancet Oncology. Without additional investment in childhood cancer care, new estimates produced for the...
A case study of one patient with multiple myeloma diagnosed with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, published by Zhang et al in Blood Advances examined the efficacy of the immunosuppressant tocilizumab as a treatment for this particular patient. The report also suggested that patients with hematologic...
The partners in the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator—a large-scale initiative launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard—awarded $20 million in initial grants to three institutions. The University of Washington, the University of Oxford, and La Jolla Institute...