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Showing 7301 - 7350Michael S. Gordon, MD, Named Medical Director for Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials at Scottsdale Healthcare
Michael S. Gordon, MD, has been named the new Medical Director for the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials program at Scottsdale Healthcare in Phoenix. Dr. Gordon will oversee the center’s phase I clinical trials program. Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials at Scottsdale...
Phase III Trial Reports Focused Ultrasound Reduces Cancer Pain
A phase III clinical trial has shown that noninvasive magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound treatment that heats the cancer within the bone, relieves pain and improves function for most patients when other treatment options are limited. The results were published recently in the Journal of...
Getting It Right in the End: Individualization of Care for Patients With Rectal Cancer
Data from trials conducted mostly in the 1970s and 1980s established the paradigm that optimal treatment of rectal cancer requires a combination of radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and surgery.1 Virtually all of these trials, however, demonstrated that radiotherapy added only to the local control...
Beyond the Cystoscope: Thinkers and Technicians
I have spent my career working with urologists. Over a long period of time, I have concluded that they are fine and interesting people who work hard, live well, support interesting hobbies, generally take good care of their families, and are very enjoyable company at parties. The recent discussion...
Demanding More From Clinical Trials
“The function of the formal controlled clinical trial is to separate the relative handful of discoveries that prove to be true advances in therapy from a legion of false leads and unverifiable clinical impressions, and to delineate in a scientific way the extent of and the limitations that attend...
Cancer Chemotherapy Use During Pregnancy
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the FDA and its policies and procedures. In this installment, National Toxicology Program scientists Kembra L. Howdeshell, PhD, and Michael D. Shelby, PhD, discuss a recently completed monograph that reviews the published data on...
Volasertib Granted Orphan Drug Designation for Acute Myeloid Leukemia
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Orphan Drug Designation to volasertib for acute myeloid leukemia. Volasertib is currently being evaluated in a phase III clinical trial for the treatment of patients aged 65 or older, with previously untreated AML, who are ineligible for...
FDA Proposes to Extend Its Tobacco Authority to Additional Tobacco Products, Including E-Cigarettes
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 ...
ASCO Releases Adapted Guideline on Screening, Assessment, and Care of Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms in Adults With Cancer
Detection of depression is suboptimal, and its severity is underestimated in the general population, but it is known psychiatric disorders are more common in patients with cancer than in those with any other chronic illness. Although studies in cancer patients have yielded varying figures, it is...
The Affordable Care Act: NCCN Panelists Rate It ‘Average’
Oncologists and third-party payers are already experiencing changes as a result of the Affordable Care Act, which earned an “average” rating by a panel of providers, payers, and patients assembled at the 19th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) in Hollywood,...
Belinostat Moves Forward in Trials for Two Aggressive Cancers
In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted belinostat (Beleodaq), a targeted histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, priority review status based on a pivotal phase II trial in peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Just 1 month later, researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in...
Workshops Train Community Cancer Center Nurses and Administrators to Implement Clinical Trials
A series of new workshops are teaching nurses and administrators from community hospital cancer programs how to promote, run, and improve their institutions’ clinical trials. The training focuses on specific skills and tasks, offers postcourse support and aims for long-term, measurable outcomes,...
Promoting Health Behaviors Among Cancer Survivors
Promoting healthy behaviors among cancer survivors is associated with improved quality of life according to many studies. But how to translate that evidence into community practice remains a huge question, and the need for answers is growing. It’s not only the lack of consensus on how to help...
FDA Approves Ramucirumab for Stomach Cancer
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved ramucirumab (Cyramza) to treat patients with advanced or metastatic gastric cancer or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with disease progression on or after prior treatment with fluoropyrimidine- or platinum-containing chemotherapy....
NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology: 2014 Updates
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 ...
Reflecting on the Past Year and Looking Ahead to the Next
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...
ASCO Develops New Strategy to Increase Value in Cancer Care
Last January, ASCO held a leadership summit in Washington, DC, with representatives from the pharmaceutical industry, insurance payers, patient advocates, and physicians to address the skyrocketing costs of new drugs and technologies used in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Although costs are ...
ASCO Releases Guideline on Prevention and Management of Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy in Survivors of Adult Cancers
ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on prevention and treatment of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy in adult cancer patients, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 The guidelines resulted from the efforts of an expert panel, with representation from the fields of...
Jane Weeks, MD, MSc: August 12, 1952–September 10, 2013
On September 10, 2013, Jane Carrie Weeks, MD, MSc, a prominent researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Center, died of cancer in her Boston home. She was 61. At the time of her death, Dr. Weeks was Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard...
Geoffrey P. Herzig, MD: December 6, 1941–December 20, 2013
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,...
ASCO’s Visionary Founders
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...
Understanding the Relationship Between the Lab and the Clinic is Key to 2014 Karnofsky Memorial Award Honoree’s Success
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...
Enthusiasm and Vision Guide the Head of FDA’s Oncology Office
In 2005, Richard Pazdur, MD, was named the FDA’s Director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products. By any measure, being arbiter of the nation’s oncology drug pipeline is a daunting prospect, but Dr. Pazdur sees it as an opportunity to encourage his talented staff to work for the greater ...
Internationally Renowned Oncologist Blazes a Trail in Breast Cancer Genetics and Risk Assessment
Olufunmilayo Falusi Olopade, MD, FACP, the daughter of an Anglican pastor, was born in Nigeria. Dr. Olopade’s interest in oncology first surfaced while in medical school at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, where she helped care for patients with Burkitt’s lymphoma, which is common in...
Nationally Renowned Surgeon and Researcher, John E. Niederhuber, MD, Relishes the Challenges That Lie Ahead
John E. Niederhuber, MD, was born and grew up in Steubenville, Ohio, a steel mill town located along the Ohio River. Dr. Niederhuber had a childhood interest in engineering and chemistry, but it was the town’s general practitioner who made a lasting impact on his career path. “He was an old-style...
Barbara L. McAneny, MD, Is Dedicated to Designing a Better Health-Care System
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...
A Coast-to-Coast Road to an Illustrious Career in Radiation Oncology
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,”...
ASCO Past President and Breast Cancer Researcher Works to Unite the Oncology Community in the Fight Against Cancer
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...
An Early Calling to Medicine That Never Wavered: ASCO President Peter P. Yu, MD
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...
Remembering Selma Ruth Schimmel
My last conversation with Selma Schimmel was 2 months ago. She had been uncharacteristically out of touch for a few weeks, and I had a nagging feeling the severe pain in her psoas muscle caused by advancing ovarian cancer—which had plagued her for months and she described as in a “league of its...
Congress Celebrates 50 Years of ASCO: Special Order on House Floor Honors Society’s Mid-Century Anniversary
The U.S. House of Representatives recently held a Special Order in honor of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. During the event on the House floor, Members of Congress highlighted critical advancements in cancer care over the past 50 years and...
Speaking Up Against High Cancer Drug Prices
Physicians have a duty to speak up against high cancer drug prices,” Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, resolutely stated in an interview with The ASCO Post. “We should speak up because high drug prices are harming patients.” A leader in the effort to drive down the cost of drugs needed to treat patients...
Oncology Advanced Practitioners in the Midst of Growth, Change
The number of nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) in community cancer practices is growing, according to ASCO’s annual census of oncology practice, published in March 2014.1 As though to illustrate that finding, a new professional society—the Advanced Practitioner Society for...
Cancer Has Robbed Me of My Physical Beauty but Not My Inner Strength
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,...
FDA Approves Panitumumab Plus FOLFOX for Wild-Type KRAS Metastatic Colorectal Cancer
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved panitumumab (Vectibix) for use in combination with FOLFOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin) as first-line treatment in patients with wild-type KRAS (exon 2) metastatic colorectal cancer. This approval converts the accelerated...
Bringing Palliative Care Services to Local Community Clinical Practices and Health Facilities Throughout the World
In 2007, the Billings Clinic Cancer Center in Billings, Montana, became one of 15 community-based oncology centers nationwide to receive funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to expand programs for clinical trials, health-care disparities outreach, survivorship and palliative care,...
St. John's Wort
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 dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
Randomized Trials vs Meta-analyses: Which Is the Better Bet?
Two surgical oncology experts who squared off in a “Great Debate” at the 2014 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) Annual Cancer Symposium in Phoenix. Heidi Nelson, MD, Professor of Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, argued for the superiority of randomized controlled trials in...
University of Louisville Receives $5.5 Million Grant From Helmsley Charitable Trust to Support Innovative Cancer Research
Noting the significant progress in drug and vaccine development over the past 3 years, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, has provided a 3-year, $5.5 million grant to the James Graham Brown Cancer Center at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, to develop new treatments and...
Ongoing Clinical Trials Actively Recruiting Patients With Pancreatic Cancer
The information in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes details of actively recruiting clinical studies of patients with pancreatic cancer. All of the studies are listed on the National Institutes of Health website at ClinicalTrials.gov. The studies presented here are nonrandomized,...
ICD-10 Adoption Requirements Delayed for 1 Year
The legislation signed into law in early April creating another patch for the fundamentally flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for reimbursing physicians under Medicare also delays the adoption of International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10) coding system, which will...
Explore Cancer Care That Best Supports Patients and Families at the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium
Palliative care is essential to good cancer care, but it is a topic that can raise red flags because of the common misperception that it is reserved for those in the terminal stage of the disease. In truth, palliative care is highly necessary for all patients with cancer, and when it is integrated...
ASCO Takes Aim at the Link Between Obesity and Cancer
ASCO is stepping up its efforts to address the link between obesity and cancer—both as a leading cause of cancer and as a complicating factor for treatment. In recent years, research has demonstrated that a growing number of cancers are linked to obesity, and public health researchers predict that...
Demetrius H. Bagley, MD, Honored With AUA Lifetime Achievement Award
The American Urological Association (AUA) has presented Demetrius H. Bagley, MD, with its 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award for visionary leadership and education in ureteroscopy and minimally invasive surgical techniques for the upper urinary tract. Dr. Bagley is The Nathan Lewis Hatfield Professor ...
ASCO Guideline Update Extends Sentinel Node Biopsy Indications in Breast Cancer
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) published its first guideline for sentinel lymph node biopsy in 2005.1 Since that time, many new randomized and cohort studies have been published investigating the indications and outcomes of the procedure. The updated 2014 guideline, recently...
Unprecedented Release of Medicare Data Raises Concerns About Lack of Context: Statements From COA and ASTRO
In April, as part of the Obama administration’s work to make the U.S. health-care system more transparent, affordable, and accountable, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a vast amount of privacy-protected data on services and procedures provided to Medicare...
Patients Benefit From Faster FDA Drug Approval Process
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...
NCCN Roundtable: When a Parent Has Cancer
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...
Phase III Study of Talimogene Laherparepvec in Patients With Metastatic Melanoma: Overall Survival Analysis Reported
Amgen recently announced top-line results from the primary overall survival analysis of a phase III trial in melanoma, which evaluated the efficacy and safety of talimogene laherparepvec (also known as T-VEC) for the treatment of unresected stage IIIB, IIIC, or IV melanoma compared to treatment...
AACR Calls on Congress to Support Cancer Research Funding to Meet the Challenges of Our Aging Population
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...
