For the challenging population of patients with multiple myeloma who have become refractory to essentially all current treatments, new approaches are much needed. Early clinical trials data suggest bispecific antibodies may help meet this need, as suggested by studies presented at the 2021 ASCO...
In a French phase II trial (PANOPTIMOX-PRODIGE) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dahan et al found that 4 months of FOLFIRINOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, oxaliplatin) followed by leucovorin/fluorouracil maintenance was associated with favorable outcomes vs 6 months of...
On March 22, 2021, pembrolizumab was approved for use in combination with platinum- and fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy for patients with metastatic or locally advanced esophageal or gastroesophageal junction (tumors with epicenter 1 to 5 cm above the gastroesophageal junction) carcinoma who...
Prostate cancer experts have often stated it is important to add a bone-protecting agent for patients on treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Recent evidence in support of this recommendation comes from a study presented during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, confirming a...
Invited study discussant Jaishri O. Blakeley, MD, Director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Neurofibromatosis Center, Baltimore, changed the title of her talk to “Finding Needles in Haystacks,” “because this is what we do with CNS [central nervous system] tumors,” she told listeners. “ALK...
Targeting mutations appears to be bearing fruit in the treatment of some difficult-to-treat tumors. For instance, in one study of adult-onset neuroblastoma, targeting ALK mutations in ALK-positive tumors demonstrated activity, even in patients who had not responded to their first ALK inhibitor. Of...
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” —Leonardo da Vinci To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on treatments under study ...
Fixed-duration ibrutinib and venetoclax as a first-line treatment yielded superior outcomes compared with chlorambucil plus obinutuzumab in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), based on the primary analysis of the phase III GLOW trial presented during the European Hematology...
In a retrospective study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Gafita et al developed nomograms for predicting overall survival and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) progression-free survival outcomes in men receiving lutetium-177–PSMA (LuPSMA) treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate...
In advanced ovarian cancer, the duration of maintenance bevacizumab should remain 15 months, according to the European multicenter phase III ENGOT/GCIG trial. These results were presented during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Jacobus Pfisterer, MD, PhD, of the AGO Study Group and Gynecologic...
In the phase III REACH3 trial, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Robert Zeiser, MD, and colleagues found that ruxolitinib produced a significantly higher overall response rate vs investigator-selected control treatments in patients with glucocorticoid-refractory or -dependent chronic ...
Trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki demonstrated clinically meaningful benefit across specific subgroups of patients with HER2-positive and HER2-low advanced gastric cancer, according to findings from a post hoc exploratory biomarker analysis presented by Kohei Shitara, MD, and colleagues at the ESMO World ...
Five-year outcomes in the APACT trial uphold the overall survival benefit with nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine in the adjuvant treatment of patients with resected pancreatic cancer, according to Margaret A. Tempero, MD, Director of the University of California San Francisco Pancreas Center, who...
Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, has been named Executive Director of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. An internationally renowned thoracic oncologist and physician-scientist, Dr. Ramalingam has served as Winship’s Deputy Director since 2016. He began his new post on July 1. Dr. Ramalingam...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, John Mascarenhas, MD, and colleagues found that treatment with the telomerase inhibitor imetelstat at a dose of 9.4 mg/kg produced clinical benefit in patients with relapsed or refractory myelofibrosis after Janus-associated kinase...
ASCO has approved new recommendations for the appropriate dosing of systemic anticancer agents in adults with obesity and cancer.1 The guideline update was based on evidence collected from a systematic review of the literature published between November 1, 2010, and March 27, 2020, regarding dosing ...
Sarah Cannon, the Cancer Institute of HCA Healthcare, announced that Navneet Majhail, MD, MS, FASTCT, has been named Deputy Physician-in-Chief of Blood Cancers for the Sarah Cannon Transplant and Cellular Therapy Network (formerly the Sarah Cannon Blood Cancer Network). In his role, Dr. Majhail...
In patients with triple-negative breast cancer who have residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant capecitabine remains the standard of care. In the multicenter randomized noninferiority EA1131 trial, which included primarily basal tumors, noninferiority of adjuvant platinum over...
The novel, selective BCL2 inhibitor lisaftoclax (APG-2575) has shown activity in the treatment of relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in a phase I study reported at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Preliminary data suggest that lisaftoclax stands out for its favorable safety...
Invited discussant Jacqueline C. Barrientos, MD, MS, of Northwell Health Cancer Institute, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell in Great Neck, New York, noted that, although both ibrutinib and venetoclax have shown superior results to chemotherapy, each drug is associated with toxicity....
The first overall survival analysis of the WGS-ADAPT HER2+/HR– study, which evaluated neoadjuvant therapy in patients with hormone receptor–negative, HER2-positive disease, showed that treatment with pertuzumab and trastuzumab plus paclitaxel—or with the chemotherapy-free regimen of...
In a study reported in TheNew England Journal of Medicine, Leila Dorling, PhD, of the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, Departments of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues in the international Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC),...
In the phase Ib/II CARTITUDE-1 trial reported in The Lancet, Jesus G. Berdeja, MD, and colleagues found that ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with two B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeting single-domain antibodies, produced a high rate of...
A team of investigators in Japan used a personalized assay for circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) levels in plasma to monitor molecular residual disease following surgery in patients with resectable colorectal cancer. Their subgroup analysis found statistically significant associations between ctDNA...
For patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, molecular imaging may improve staging and clinical management of the disease, according to research published by Röhrich et al in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. In a retrospective study of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas, the...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Osama E. Rahma, MD, and colleagues, initial results of the phase II NRG-GI002 trial showed no improvement in mean neoadjuvant rectal score with the addition of pembrolizumab to chemoradiotherapy in total neoadjuvant therapy for patients with locally advanced rectal...
In a prospective analysis from the phase III Lymphoma Study Association AHL2011 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Demeestere et al found that patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma receiving a positron-emission tomography (PET)-adapted regimen had a reduced risk of gonadal...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Desai et al found that the addition of the myeloid progenitor cell product romyelocel-L to granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) reduced the incidence of infection and antimicrobial use vs G-CSF alone during induction...
In a Chinese phase II/III trial (ORIENT-32) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Ren et al found that the combination of the PD-1 inhibitor sintilimab and the bevacizumab biosimilar IBI305 prolonged progression-free and overall survival vs sorafenib in previously untreated unresectable or metastatic...
In an interim analysis of a Chinese phase III trial (CAPTAIN-1st) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Yang et al found that the addition of camrelizumab to gemcitabine and cisplatin significantly prolonged progression-free survival in the first-line treatment of recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal ...
In a Swedish phase II trial (PREDIX HER2) reported in JAMA Oncology, Hatschek et al found no difference in pathologic complete response rate with neoadjuvant trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) vs a standard regimen of trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and docetaxel (DTP) in patients with HER2-positive breast...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Oliver Sartor, MD, and colleagues, the phase III VISION trial has shown prolonged progression-free and overall survival with lutetium-177–PSMA-617 (Lu-177–PSMA-617) radioligand therapy plus standard care vs standard care alone in previously...
Patients with colorectal cancer and unresectable liver metastases and KRAS wild-type disease experienced better responses to hepatic arterial infusion pump chemotherapy than did patients with KRAS mutations, a retrospective cohort study found. At a median follow-up of 14.6 months, “KRAS-positive...
Cynthia M. Yoshida, MD, is one of six winners of a national award recognizing health-care providers and institutions for their work to increase colorectal cancer screening rates. Dr. Yoshida, a gastroenterologist and medical leader of the University of Virginia (UVA) Cancer Center’s Colorectal...
Adding the antibody-drug conjugate naratuximab emtansine to rituximab resulted in favorable overall survival and complete response rates for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), with a manageable safety profile. These findings from a phase II study were...
In a primary analysis of the phase III GLOW study, a once-daily, all-oral, fixed-duration dose of ibrutinib and venetoclax for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) resulted in superior progression-free survival than treatment with chlorambucil and obinutuzumab. Arnon...
In a Dutch phase III trial (ARTDECO) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hulshof et al found that increasing the dose of radiation therapy in a definitive chemoradiation regimen did not improve local progression-free survival in patients with inoperable, locally advanced esophageal...
In a prospective cross-sectional study reported in JCO Global Oncology, Gupta et al found that women with ovarian cancer in India had a high prevalence of pathogenic or likely pathogenic BRCA variants. As stated by the investigators: “There are deficient data on prevalence of germline mutations in...
A new first-line standard of care may be emerging for recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma, based on the findings of the global phase III JUPITER-02 trial presented at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by investigators from China.1 In the study, toripalimab, an anti–PD-1 monoclonal antibody, ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Ingrid A. Mayer, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ECOG-ACRIN EA1131 trial investigated the use of adjuvant platinum vs capecitabine in patients with basal subtype triple-negative breast cancer and residual...
In a single-institution phase I/II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Courtney D. DiNardo, MD, and colleagues found that the combination of venetoclax with FLAG-IDA (fludarabine, cytarabine, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, and idarubicin) in induction and consolidation...
As reported in The Lancet by Paul Baas, MD, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, and colleagues, a prespecified interim analysis in the phase III CheckMate 743 trial has shown improved overall survival with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs platinum-based chemotherapy in unresectable...
The Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance has announced the winners of the 2021 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research, awarded annually to cancer research scientists and physician-scientists based in the greater New York City area. The prize, totaling $3.6...
Clinical trial data show that adjuvant imatinib improves recurrence-free survival as well as overall survival, when administered for at least 3 years, among patients who undergo a macroscopically complete resection of a primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc,...
The pace of clinical research in metastatic renal cell carcinoma is faster than ever. Over the past 5 years, we have seen data from six phase III clinical trials evaluating combination strategies with checkpoint inhibitors. The era began with data from CheckMate 214, evaluating nivolumab with...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III KEYNOTE-361 trial has shown no significant improvement in progression-free or overall survival with first-line pembrolizumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy vs chemotherapy alone in patients with advanced...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Immunotherapy and Precision Oncology, Xu et al found that the use of a Web-based lesion selection tool (LST) developed by the research team improved consistency in lesion selection for sequential biopsy. In addition, the tool improved the...
In the longest follow-up results from a clinical trial of combination immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma, investigators report that nearly half the patients who received the drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab were alive at a median of 6.5 years after treatment. These long-term results from the...
The term “head and neck surgery” had little meaning until the 1940s, when it was used by groundbreaking surgeon Hayes Martin, MD, in one of his publications. Dr. Martin was then Chief of Head and Neck Services at Memorial Hospital, later renamed Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), where...
Doctors and scientists across America at National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers and other organizations recently issued a joint statement urging the nation’s health-care systems, physicians, parents, children, and young adults to get human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination back on ...