“The summons came in the middle of the night. He was awake at the first harsh jangle of the telephone…. Always a light sleeper, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Francis Alexander attributed the trait to his father, an old-fashioned family practitioner whose response to every late-night distress call was...
Over the past decade, a prolific number of cancer memoirs have been published, and some have been award-winning bestsellers. When entering a crowded genre, it is best to have something that sets your story apart. Judith Dwyer Fugate did just that with a memoir about a rare tumor that has rarely if...
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers have received a $13 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find new ways to overcome melanoma resistance to some of the most promising targeted therapies and immunotherapies. There have been significant advancements in...
Disturbance of the gut microbial metabolism is thought to be the root cause of human diseases. Bacteria, viruses, and fungi affect their human hosts in numerous ways. There is evidence to support the theory that microbes, through their genetic makeup, gene products, and metabolites, play a role in...
The invited discussant of LEAP-004, Bartosz Chmielowski, MD, PhD, Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California Los Angeles Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, commented: “The response rate of 21% was quite impressive for this patient population. Patients previously treated with an...
Checkpoint inhibitors can be lifesaving for many patients with advanced melanoma, but those who experience disease progression currently have few treatment options. The combination of a tyrosine kinase inhibitor and an anti–PD-1 agent may offer some hope in this setting, according to a study of...
Salah-Eddin Al-Batran, MD, Director of the Institute of Clinical Cancer Research and Director of GI Oncology at Krankenhaus Nordwest-University Cancer Center, Frankfurt, Germany, commented on KEYNOTE-590 at a press briefing. Dr. Al-Batran noted that the prognosis for advanced esophageal cancer is...
As first-line therapy for advanced esophageal cancer, pembrolizumab added to chemotherapy improved overall survival in the KEYNOTE-590 population. Not only did patients with high PD-L1 expression benefit, the value of checkpoint inhibition was observed for the whole population, the trial’s...
“Imagine that it’s 5 years from now, and we are in a situation where the cost of cancer care has flattened, and costs are even going down,” said Clifford Goodman, PhD, a Senior Vice President at the Lewin Group, turning to a panel of oncology and policy experts at his side. “What policies got us...
Isabelle Tabah-Fisch, MD, a medical oncologist in Paris who contributed greatly to drug development, died August 28, 2020, at age 64. An announcement about Dr. Tabah-Fisch’s death was made by GamaMabs, where she served as Chief Medical Officer until her retirement in March 2020. Under her...
Susan G. Komen is recognizing two widely respected and innovative breast cancer researchers—Donald McDonnell, PhD, and Laura Esserman, MD, MBA—as this year’s recipients of their highest scientific honor, the Brinker Awards. Established by Komen in 1992, the awards recognize advances in the...
Radiation oncologists have expressed serious concerns about a new private insurance coverage policy that could undermine patient-centered care for two of the most common cancers in the United States. Leaders of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) urge eviCore, a radiation oncology...
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has launched the Center for Salivary and Rare Head and Neck Cancers to treat patients with rare and occasionally aggressive cancers arising from the head and neck. The Center is among the first in the country specifically dedicated to the care and therapeutic research...
The expansion of telemedicine has been one of the most important developments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we discuss some of the legal and ethical dimensions of expanding telemedicine services in oncology practices. As Royce et al discussed in a recent JAMA Oncology article, Congress...
In part 1 of this three-part article, which was published in the October 10, 2020, issue of The ASCO Post, we chronicled the progress made in geriatric oncology up to the decade of the 1990s, which saw an explosion of research activity in the study of aging and cancer. In part 2, we review the...
James K. McCloskey II, MD, was named Division Chief of the Division of Leukemia at Hackensack Meridian John Theurer Cancer Center (JTCC), part of Hackensack University Medical Center. Dr. McCloskey previously served as Interim Chief for the Division of Leukemia and will continue in his role as...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Syed Ali Abutalib and L. Jeffrey Medeiros explore the updated World Health Organization (WHO) classification of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissue...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by David S. Hong, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues, a phase I trial (CodeBreak 100) has shown activity of the oral KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib in heavily pretreated patients with KRAS G12C–mutant...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by Jürgen Wolf, MD, of the Center for Integrated Oncology, University Hospital Cologne and University of Cologne, and colleagues, the phase II GEOMETRY mono-1 trial has shown durable responses with the selective MET inhibitor capmatinib in patients...
The National Minority Quality Forum announced that Anthony Fauci, MD, will receive its 2020 Bernard J. Tyson Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes health-care leaders who have helped to decrease health disparities and to build sustainable healthy communities. Dr. Fauci—who has served as...
Over the past decade, the field of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation has made great strides, evolving into a curative procedure for blood cancers that once were almost always fatal. However, chronic graft-vs-host disease, whose biologic etiology remains unclear, continues to be the...
Formal discussant of the PROfound trial, Henrik Grönberg, MD, of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, agreed that this was a practice-changing trial for select patients. “The patient population is representative, but the problem is the control group, which included patients who experienced disease ...
The PARP inhibitor olaparib reduced the risk of death by 31% compared with a second hormonal treatment (enzalutamide or abiraterone) in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer characterized by BRCA1, BRCA2, or ATM mutations, in the final analysis of the phase III PROfound trial...
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists who have made a decisive contribution to the treatment of blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world. Harvey J. Alter, MD; Michael Houghton,...
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020 presented several abstracts with good news for patients with lung cancer. Long-term follow-up of immunotherapies showed excellent survival, a promising new ALK inhibitor improved outcomes compared with the standard of care, the...
In a large, randomized clinical trial, researchers evaluated the immunotherapy drug avelumab for patients with advanced urothelial cancer. The findings of the trial, called the JAVELIN Bladder 100 study, are “very exciting,” even “practice-changing,” said the trial’s co-leader, Petros Grivas, MD,...
Based on results from a phase I/II clinical trial, the antibody drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan was recently granted accelerated approval in the treatment of patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer, contingent on a larger study confirming its benefit. The confirmatory phase III...
An inspiring case series of fit patients aged 98 and older who recovered from hospitalization for COVID-19, published by Huang et al, reminds us that older age may not be a barrier to recovery.1 On behalf of the Cancer and Aging Research Group, we do not support “ageism” in the care of older...
The rate of obesity is rising dramatically in the United States and Europe, with more than 60% of women in the United States1,2 and 50% of women in Europe3 classified as overweight or obese based on their body mass index (BMI). Obesity is associated with an increased risk of hormone...
Lorlatinib significantly improved progression-free survival compared with crizotinib in the first-line treatment of patients with advanced ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to a planned interim analysis of the phase III CROWN trial presented at the European Society for...
Skin cancers are the most common malignancy in the United States and worldwide. Between 1994 and 2014, the diagnosis and treatment of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers in the United States increased by 77%.1 The cost of treating melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers to the health-care system...
On October 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the antiviral drug remdesivir (Veklury) for use in adult and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older and weighing at least 40 kg for the treatment of COVID-19 requiring hospitalization. Remdesivir should only be administered...
Cardinale B. Smith, MD, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses results of a pilot study suggesting dedicated lay staff members, who facilitated admissions and discharges for patients with cancer across care settings, could improve health-care utilization, quality, and the...
In the phase II ALIENOR trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Isabelle Ray-Coquard, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of bevacizumab to paclitaxel did not improve the 6-month progression-free rate among women with relapsed ovarian sex cord–stromal tumors. Study Details The study, performed in...
In an observational cohort study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Powell et al found that the use of whole-breast hypofractionated radiotherapy increased among patients with breast cancer with health insurance plans from one national health-care organization after the implementation of a virtual...
In 2020, health-care providers from all disciplines are facing challenges never before encountered in the modern era of medicine. Advanced practitioners (APs) are playing critical roles in developing protocols, managing health-care teams, and delivering hands-on patient care. JADPRO Live, the...
A new clinical guideline from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) provides guidance for physicians who use radiation therapy to treat patients with locally advanced rectal cancer. Recommendations outline indications and best practices for pelvic radiation treatments, as well as the...
The Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology (APSHO) presented the third annual Mary Pazdur Award for Excellence in Advanced Practice in Oncology to Christina Cone, DNP, APRN, ANP-BC, AOCNP®, of Duke Cancer Institute, at the JADPRO Live Virtual conference, an annual educational...
An electronic nudge to clinicians—triggered by an algorithm that used machine-learning methods to flag patients with cancer who would most benefit from a conversation around end-of-life goals—tripled the rate of those discussions, according to a new prospective, randomized study of nearly 15,000...
Delays in the treatment of breast cancer matter, but not as much “as we and our patients typically assume,” Richard J. Bleicher, MD, FACS, informed participants at the 22nd Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium.1 Some of these delays are unavoidable and others are tradeoffs that must be made to...
Neoadjuvant combination therapy with the anti–CTLA-4 therapy tremelimumab and the anti–PD-1 therapy durvalumab was well tolerated and showed early signs of activity in patients ineligible to receive cisplatin-based chemotherapy, all of whom had tumors with high-risk features that are associated...
In an analysis from the phase III ExteNET trial reported in Clinical Breast Cancer, Arlene Chan, MD, and colleagues found significant improvements in efficacy outcomes with the administration of neratinib vs placebo starting at 1 year or sooner after neoadjuvant/adjuvant trastuzumab-based therapy...
In a multi-institutional cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Eitz et al found that hypofractionated stereotactic radiotherapy (HSRT) to the resection cavity in patients with brain metastases appears to be associated with an “excellent risk-benefit profile.” As stated by the investigators, “For...
On June 20, 2020, ASCO approved the first joint Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS)/American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO)/ASCO guideline on the care of patients with metastatic carcinoma and myeloma of the femur.1 Guideline recommendations were based on a systematic review of clinical...
In a phase III noninferiority trial (RAVES) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Kneebone et al found that salvage radiotherapy did not meet noninferiority criteria for biochemical progression vs adjuvant radiotherapy, but was associated with nearly identical biochemical control rates and reduced...
The benefit of anti–PD-1 antibodies in the adjuvant treatment of patients with stage III or stage IV melanoma continues to be observed at around 4 years for both pembrolizumab and nivolumab, according to updates of pivotal trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual ...
Limited English-language proficiency may be a risk factor for receiving screening mammograms less often, according to new study results using national data. These findings, concerning women age 40 and older living in the United States, were presented at the American College of Surgeons Clinical...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD, and colleagues, the phase III TOURMALINE-MM4 trial has shown that postinduction maintenance with ixazomib prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma not undergoing...
On October 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted regular approval to venetoclax (Venclexta) in combination with azacitidine, decitabine, or low-dose cytarabine for newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in adults age 75 or older or who have comorbidities precluding intensive ...
Analysis of DNA copy number variants in the cells exfoliated in urine showed improved sensitivity and similar specificity in detecting urothelial carcinoma compared to urine cytology, according to results published by Zeng et al in Clinical Cancer Research. “Urine cytology, which is widely used to...