As an increasing number of patients look to the internet for cancer information, researchers from the University of Alabama found that the websites of many National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers lack sufficient information to help patients with breast cancer understand all their...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Borgquist et al found that use of cholesterol-lowering medication during adjuvant endocrine therapy was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer recurrence in hormone receptor–positive women in the BIG 1-98 trial. Study Details ...
In 1978, Charles A. “Mickey” LeMaistre, MD, was named President of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. During his 18-year tenure, MD Anderson became a world leader in outpatient care for cancer patients and the nation’s largest ambulatory treatment and surgery programs in cancers....
People with rare cancers now have the option of joining a national clinical trial testing leading-edge immunotherapies for a wide variety of tumor types. It’s the first federally funded immunotherapy trial devoted to rare cancers. Despite their name, rare cancers make up more than 20% of cancers...
Stephen K. Carter, MD, a renowned oncologist who held a variety of executive positions in the pharmaceutical industry and played a major role in the research and development of many widely used cancer and AIDS drugs, died on November 14, 2016, after a long battle against multiple systems atrophy....
My breast cancer diagnosis in 1993, at age 34, came at the happiest moment in my life. I had gotten married just 10 months earlier and was looking forward to the future and children. But instead of celebrating my first wedding anniversary with my husband over a romantic dinner, we were at a cancer ...
In a phase I study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Charles M. Rudin, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues found that rovalpituzumab tesirine, a first-in-class antibody-drug conjugate directed against delta-like protein 3 (DLL3), produced responses in patients with...
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine used heart muscle cells made from stem cells to rank commonly used chemotherapy drugs based on their likelihood of causing lasting heart damage in patients. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors can be an effective treatment for many types of cancers, ...
Scientists at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a noninvasive technique to detect the presence of prostate cancer cells in patients' urine. The pilot study, led by Mathew L. Thakur, PhD, Director, Laboratories of Radiopharmaceutical Research and Molecular ...
In the phase III RESORCE trial reported in The Lancet, Jordi Bruix, MD, Head of the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer Group, University of Barcelona, and colleagues found that regorafenib (Stivarga) improved overall survival vs placebo in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who had progressed on...
In the phase III AURA3 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Tony S. Mok, MD, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and colleagues, osimertinib (Tagrisso) significantly improved progression-free survival vs platinum/pemetrexed (Alimta) among patients with epidermal growth...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present this special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the world. For the convenience of the reader, each issue will focus on one country from one of the six regions...
One of the most prestigious awards in the field of medicine will be presented to University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine faculty members and University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers Yuan Chang, MD, and Patrick S. Moore, MD. The duo, whose Chang-Moore Laboratory at the...
Three outstanding individuals have been honored with the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor Award. The Medal of Honor is awarded to those who have made the most valuable contributions and impact in saving more lives from cancer through basic research, clinical research, and cancer control....
The optimal treatment strategy for low-grade glioma has yet to be established, and practice patterns vary in regard to the timing of treatment, as well as the chosen treatment modality. It was against this backdrop, at a time when the benefits of radiation and chemotherapy remained uncertain but ...
“Estimates suggest that by the year 2020, there will be over 500,000 adult survivors of childhood cancer in the United States,” Daniel A. Mulrooney, MD, MS, of the Division of Cancer Survivorship, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, reported at the 10th Oncofertility Conference in...
Nearly 60% of colorectal cancer cases are diagnosed in patients ≥ 65 years, with a median age at diagnosis of 68 years,1 but this population makes up only 34% of clinical trial participants.2 In addition, the older adults enrolled on clinical trials are traditionally the most-fit older adults....
According to the National Cancer Institute, uterine sarcomas are rare gynecologic malignancies comprising between 2% and 5% of all uterine malignancies. Leiomyosarcomas, which arise from myometrial muscle, account for 30% of all uterine sarcomas. These aggressive, rare cancers are characterized by...
Earlier this year, ASCO submitted comments to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in response to a Request for Information on data-sharing and management (NOT-OD-17-015). In the comment letter, ASCO expressed support for the NIH’s efforts to develop a framework and strategies for data-sharing ...
Despite advances in treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the 5% to 10% of patients who develop Richter transformation continue to have poor outcomes. For these patients, median progression-free survival is approximately 6 months, and median overall survival is about 8 months. Phase II...
On February 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the existing indication for lenalidomide (Revlimid) 10 mg capsules to include use for patients with multiple myeloma as maintenance therapy following autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant. The expanded indication makes...
Innovation in precision medicine has introduced an amalgam of testing options, of which hereditary cancer panels—multigene tests—are a major component. Additionally, the importance of inherited cancer genomics was further bolstered by former President Barack Obama’s Precision...
Patients with advanced malignant soft-tissue sarcoma of the extremities have typically faced amputation of the afflicted limb as the only treatment option. However, a technique that limits the application of chemotherapy to the cancerous region can preserve limbs in a high percentage of these...
A revised tumor classification based on 70,967 evaluable patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 6,189 patients with small cell lung cancer is now available to lung cancer specialists around the world in the form of the 8th edition of the tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM)...
The two main classes of immune checkpoint inhibitors used to treat non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have essentially the same efficacy and toxicity profiles, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of 23 trials with a total of 5,899 patients.1 Results showed that about one-fifth of...
Increasing experience with immunotherapy for lung cancer in both the lab and the clinic is helping to refine treatment approaches and point the way forward, according to Naiyer Rizvi, MD, Director of both Thoracic Oncology and Immunotherapeutics at Columbia University Medical Center in New York....
Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of this year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, highlighting newer therapeutics in high-grade, aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs), including newly diagnosed as well as relapsed or refractory...
Treating patients with head and neck cancer with hyperfractionated twice-daily radiation therapy combined with chemotherapy may potentially reduce mortality, according to new research presented by Claire Petit, PhD, and colleagues at the 2017 European Cancer Congress (ECCO).1 The study included...
“The progression-free and overall survival curves of CheckMate 057 suggest the presence of two patient populations with respect to nivolumab (Opdivo): a relatively sensitive one and a less sensitive, possibly even resistant, one, according to invited discussant Paul Mitchell, MD, Associate...
Prognostic factors and tumor expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) predict early mortality among patients with previously treated nonsquamous advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who receive nivolumab instead of docetaxel. But these features are not reliable for excluding...
Vincent J. Picozzi, MD, a pancreatic cancer specialist at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, commented on the findings by Chan et al presented at the 2017 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. Dr. Picozzi first acknowledged that there is a strong biologic rationale for evaluating cabozantinib...
For hepatocellular carcinoma patients awaiting a liver transplant, locoregional treatment as a “bridge” is a standard strategy for reducing tumor progression. The most common approach is transarterial chemoembolization, but a study from a large-volume liver transplant center questions whether it...
The immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab (also known as MEDI4736) is active and achieves durable responses in patients with heavily pretreated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that does not have any epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) or anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)...
A wide range of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) see a survival advantage from second- or third-line atezolizumab (Tecentriq) as compared with docetaxel, according to new data from the OAK trial.1 The main results of the randomized phase III trial, previously reported,...
When used as first-line therapy for advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), pembrolizumab (Keytruda) yields better health-related quality of life than platinum-based chemotherapy, suggest new data from the randomized phase III KEYNOTE-024 trial.1 After 15 weeks of treatment, changes in scores...
“There are several possible ways to move first-line immunotherapy for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) forward, according to invited discussant Edward B. Garon, MD, Director of Thoracic Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We could expand...
In 2016, the KEYNOTE-024 trial set the bar for first-line immunotherapy in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Trial results showed that pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an antibody to programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1), reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 50% and the risk of death by...
In 1959, my 5-year-old cousin, Kim, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). As an 8-year-old, I didn’t really understand what was happening to him, except that he had to go to the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Indiana, for treatment. The haunting vision of his looking...
“Immunotherapy for lung cancer is a paradigm shift. I would never have thought when I started my career taking care of lung cancer patients in the mid 1990s that we’d now be substituting chemotherapy with an antibody immunotherapy in 2017. It’s incredible,” commented Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Chief...
Lung cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States, with an estimated 224,390 new cases and 158,080 deaths from the disease in 2016.1 Despite improving survival rates in recent decades, only about 18% of patients are...
Frank Sinicrope, MD, Professor of Medicine and Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, told The ASCO Post that anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) agents “have already changed the landscape” of metastatic colorectal cancer. “We are currently treating microsatellite...
With 6 additional months of follow-up since the initial presentation of results, in the phase II CheckMate 142 trial, 74% of heavily pretreated patients with metastatic colorectal microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) cancers are alive after single-agent treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo).1...
After an infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), the virus persists in the body throughout a person's lifetime, usually without causing any symptoms. About one-third of infected teenagers and young adults nevertheless develop infectious mononucleosis, which usually wears off after a few weeks. ...
Researchers at Mount Sinai Health System have discovered a way to predict whether patients with blood cancer who received a bone marrow transplant will develop graft-vs-host disease, according to a study published by Hartwell et al in JCI (The Journal of Clinical...
Two investigational agents, the aurora A kinase inhibitor alisertib and a virus derived from HSV-1 (HSV1716), have shown antitumor efficacy in early clinical trials as monotherapies. A new study published by Currier et al in Oncotarget, however, demonstrates that the combined usage...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Dréno et al found that two long-term intermittent vismodegib (Erivedge) dosing regimens provided a similar reduction in the number of clinically significant basal cell carcinomas among patients with multiple lesions. Study Details In the ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Goodman et al described a management practice for low-risk neutropenic fever in cancer patients that has reduced in-patient stay with intravenous antibiotic use at Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. Study Details In the study,...
In a population-based study reported in a research letter in JAMA, Kurian et al found that genetic testing and genetic counseling are suboptimal among women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Study Details The study involved 2,451 women aged 20 through 79 years diagnosed with stage 0 to II...
Analysis of free-floating cancer DNA from blood samples has yielded leads for new prostate cancer treatment targets. Using a commercially available “liquid biopsy” test in patients with advanced prostate cancer, researchers found a number of genetic changes in cell-free, circulating...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Antonia Sepulveda, MD, PhD, of Columbia University, and colleagues, a joint guideline on the use of molecular biomarkers for evaluation of colorectal cancer has been developed by an expert panel from the American Society for Clinical Pathology...