Susan G. Komen recently welcomed 16 leaders in breast cancer research and advocacy who will serve as Komen Scholars—an international advisory group that helps to guide Komen’s research and scientific programs, education and advocacy work, and public health efforts in the United States and abroad....
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network has announced Lynn Matrisian, PhD, MBA, as inaugural Chief Research Officer for the organization. Dr. Matrisian was promoted from Vice President of Scientific and Medical Affairs, where she has served since 2011. “To meet our aggressive goal to double survival...
ASCO launched a new and improved website in early April, with a focus on improving the user experience. The Society’s redesigned online home makes it easier than ever for members and visitors to find the oncology-related information and resources they trust and value. The site’s redesign is the...
The ASCO Annual Meeting, which will be held June 3–7, 2016, in Chicago, brings together more than 30,000 oncology professionals from around the world to learn about and discuss the latest therapies, treatment modalities, research, and controversies in the field. Attendees are able to personalize...
Not all men with prostate cancer benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy after radical prostatectomy; however, African American men and men with a higher tumor stage may, according to a new U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study (Abstract PI LBA 06) featured at the 111th Annual Scientific...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO is collaborating with Gateway for Cancer Research (Gateway) to fund a 2016 and 2017 Young Investigator Award through the Conquer Cancer Foundation Grants and Awards program. “Conquer Cancer Foundation is grateful for the generous support from Gateway and...
As our understanding of the complexities of breast cancer expands, so does our treatment armamentarium—and along with it the range of factors that must be included in our treatment decisions. Gone is the simple algorithm of adjuvant chemotherapy for almost every patient with a ≥ 2-cm tumor, except...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Lyndsay N. Harris, MD, and colleagues,1 ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers in addition to estrogen receptor/progesterone receptor and HER2 status to guide decisions on adjuvant systemic therapy in women with...
It was over 2 decades ago that my colleagues and I reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that a first-generation oral antiandrogen, flutamide, when added to a luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist, improved survival by nearly 6 months compared to an LHRH agonist alone in...
In the randomized phase II TERRAIN trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Neal D. Shore, MD, of Carolina Urologic Research Center, Myrtle Beach, and colleagues found that use of the androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) more than doubled median progression-free survival vs bicalutamide...
At the 2016 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer, The ASCO Post sat down with the SGO’s outgoing President, Robert L. Coleman, MD, and discussed the revolutionary potential of blood biomarkers, why enhanced recovery after surgery protocols is a significant...
The BMT Tandem Meetings are the combined annual meetings of the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research and the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Held recently in Honolulu, Hawaii, this year’s BMT Tandem Meetings drew 3,000 attendees from 35 countries,...
Invited discussant Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, called MINDACT “a heroic effort” whose results show that combining stage, pathology, and...
The primary analysis of the MINDACT trial confirms the value of genomic profiling for patients with early breast cancer with zero to three positive lymph nodes, according to MINDACT investigators and breast cancer specialists who heard the results at the 2016 American Association of Cancer Research ...
John Farrow, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran, had not been able to sleep for days. A week ago, his primary care doctor at his local outpatient Veterans Administration (VA) clinic told him that his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood level was rapidly increasing, and his prostate was abnormal on...
A study providing new information about neuropathic pain afflicting some 90% of cancer patients who have had nerve damage caused by tumors, surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation indicates gene therapy as a possible treatment. The study in rats showed transfer of a gene known as KCC2 into the spinal...
As reported by Vasen et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, surveillance for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in high-risk individuals appears to be of benefit in individuals at risk due to CDKN2A mutation, with the advantage being less clear among individuals at risk due to familial clustering ...
Researchers have identified a gene that may help to predict survival outcomes in patients with cancer of the mouth and tongue. Patients whose tumors express a gene called spectrin are 4.6 times more likely to die at any given time, according to a study by researchers at Loyola Medicine and Loyola...
Loss of appetite during illness is a common and potentially debilitating phenomenon. In cancer patients especially, it can even shorten lifespan. Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered how an immune system molecule controls a brain circuit and reduces appetite. Their...
Black residents of highly segregated neighborhoods were less likely to receive surgery for early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) than their peers in less-segregated neighborhoods, according to a study published by Johnson et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention....
New research presented at the ESTRO 35 Conference on April 30 (Abstract OC-0052) has shown women aged younger than 45 years with early-stage breast cancer that had not spread to the lymph nodes and who opted for breast-conserving therapy with radiation therapy had a 13% higher risk of developing a...
A large study of testicular cancer patients showed that radiation therapy was more effective than chemotherapy for patients with stage IIa disease (where one or more regional lymph nodes contain cancer cells, but they are less than 2 cm in diameter). These findings, presented at the ESTRO 35...
Researchers have found that treating patients who have early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is associated with a small but increased risk of death from causes other than cancer, according to findings presented at the European Society...
Long-term use of the cholesterol-lowering drugs statins does not appear to decrease a patient’s risk of colorectal cancer, suggests a new, large case-control study from Penn Medicine published by Mamtani et al in PLOS Medicine. The observational analysis of over 100,000 patients’...
Although laparoscopic radical cystectomy and robotic-assisted radical cystectomy continue to grow in popularity and are successful in the treatment of bladder cancer, they are still considered experimental approaches. Using data collected by the Section of Uro-Technology of the European Association ...
ASCO has adapted a Clinical Care Ontario (CCO) clinical practice guideline on the selection of optimal adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer and adjuvant targeted therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer, as reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The adaptation was based on review by...
Patients who had cancer before receiving an organ transplant were more likely to die of any cause, die of cancer, or develop a new cancer than organ recipients who did not previously have cancer, a new study published by Acuna et al in the journal Transplantation has found. However, the increased...
A 5-year study published by Hannan et al in the European Journal of Cancer showed that stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to treat prostate cancer offers a higher cure rate than more traditional approaches, according to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center Harold C. Simmons...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Roemer et al identified PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) and PD-L2 genetic alterations in patients with classic Hodgkin lymphoma, finding that 9p24.1 amplification was common and associated with advanced-stage disease and poorer...
The cost and side effects associated with traditional cancer therapy are major concerns, and in part many patients are seeking natural remedies such as graviola, curcumin, and moringa, due to these concerns. Traditional cancer therapy is increasingly effective, and oncologists are achieving better...
As reported in Scientific Reports, Gaul and colleagues used high-performance mass spectrometry to interrogate the serum metabolome of patients with early-stage ovarian cancer and healthy controls. They were able to define a linear support vector machine model of 16 metabolites that identified...
As reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Skinner and colleagues used proteomic profiling to identify PTK2/FAK as a driver of radioresistance in human papillomavirus (HPV)-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Using proteomic and transcriptomic analysis of targetable markers, the...
Carfilzomib (Kyprolis) is active in B-cell neoplasms but exhibits heterogeneous activity in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) samples. As reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Lamothe and colleagues examined the mechanism by which carfilzomib induces CLL cell death. In studies using CLL patient...
Women who were diagnosed with breast cancer and had contralateral prophylactic mastectomy had only marginal improvement in psychosocial well-being, such as feeling confident and emotionally healthy, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 Those who also had breast...
Women diagnosed with breast cancer who chose contralateral prophylactic mastectomy reported improvement in psychosocial well-being and breast satisfaction, but “the magnitude of the effect may be too small to be clinically meaningful,” according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1...
Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently released the statement below: I am very pleased to announce the selection of Eric Dishman as Director of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program. Eric will lead NIH’s effort to build the PMI...
I’m used to having bumps and cysts pop up on my body, so when I felt a lump on the front of my throat, just below my Adam’s apple, I brushed it off. But when it was still there 6 months later, I became concerned and decided to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist. He performed a fine-needle...
For many, the word “radiation” conjures up images of mushroom clouds and the nightmarish nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. It also brings to mind those pesky dental x-rays and lifesaving cancer treatments. However, to most people, radiation is a mysterious invisible power to be feared and embraced...
Immunotherapy is on its way. A few agents have already been approved: ipilimumab (Yervoy) in 2011 for melanoma; nivolumab (Opdivo) in 2015 for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and then later that year for renal cell carcinoma; and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for NSCLC. In addition, many clinical...
The median age of patients at the first diagnosis of cancer in the United States is 65 years, and the majority of patients with cancer are older adults.1 As we have learned from previous articles in this series, older patients with cancer require more complex care. Older adults are more likely to...
Use of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines should be rapidly expanded to protect thousands of young people in the United States—and millions worldwide—from life-threatening cancers, ASCO said April 11 in a policy statement. Published by Bailey et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 the...
New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center has announced the appointment of physician-scientist Leena Gandhi, MD, PhD, as Director of Thoracic Medical Oncology at its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center. In this new role, Dr. Gandhi will be tasked with building a robust program in lung...
Reeder-Hayes et al found that adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) may be underused in older women with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer and reported their study results in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Adjuvant trastuzumab also was used less often in black women than in white women. Rates...
On April 4, 2016, The National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced a Blue Ribbon Panel of scientific experts, cancer leaders, and patient advocates that will inform the scientific direction and goals at NCI of Vice President Joe Biden’s National Cancer ...
Thierry Facon, MD, of Lille University Hospital in France, told The ASCO Post that he believes elotuzumab (Empliciti) works better with an immunomodulatory drug than with bortezomib (Velcade), at least according to the results of these two studies. “I think what’s most impressive is the ELOQUENT-2 ...
Monoclonal antibodies targeting the programmed cell death protein (PD-1) receptor look promising in multiple myeloma, according to early reports presented at the 2015 ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition. Early signs of activity in heavily pretreated patients may indicate that, as in solid tumors,...
Active surveillance has been increasingly adopted as a standard approach for men with Gleason score ≤ 6 localized prostate cancer, with major guidelines and consensus statements encouraging this approach,1 including a recently published guideline from Cancer Care Ontario (CCO),2 and endorsement of...
Dignitana Inc. recently announced that the DigniCap scalp cooling system, which was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2015 to effectively reduce the likelihood of chemotherapy-induced hair loss in women with breast cancer, is now available at 10 cancer treatment...
As reported by Ronald C. Chen, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has endorsed, with qualifications, the 2015 Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) guideline on active surveillance for management of localized prostate cancer....
The relationship between margin width and risk of recurrence after breast-conserving surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ depends on the use of radiation, according to a surgical oncologist who sought to determine the optimal margin width in these patients.1 “Positive margins are associated with an ...