In the treatment of HER2-positive early breast cancer, patients who receive dual HER2-targeted therapy in both the neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings are less likely to experience recurrence than those who received dual therapy only as neoadjuvant treatment, according to a pooled analysis of...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Schmid et al1 found that the addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in stage II or III triple-negative breast cancer significantly improved the pathologic...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, of Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, analyses in the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial have shown that the addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and the use of adjuvant...
In early triple-negative breast cancer, the presence of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor cells after neoadjuvant chemotherapy may enable risk stratification of patients for disease recurrence and may predict outcomes, according to a preplanned correlative analysis of the phase II ...
Studies of second-generation bispecific antibodies were among the highlights of the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition. The bispecific T-cell engager blinatumomab was the first such agent to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in...
In the single-institution phase II PROLUNG trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Oscar Arrieta, MD, and Christian Rolfo, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that the addition of pembrolizumab to docetaxel improved objective response rates and progression-free survival in immunotherapy-naive patients with...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Isabelle Ray‑Coquard, MD, PhD, of the Centre Leon Berard, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Groupe d’Investigateurs Nationaux pour l’Etude des Cancers Ovariens (GINECO), Paris, and colleagues, the phase III PAOLA-1 trial has shown a...
For breast imaging, contrast-enhanced mammography, which uses the anatomic imaging of a mammogram in addition to imaging neovascularity, can offer the overall screening capability of standard mammography and the sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at a fraction of the cost of MRI,...
Can patients with breast cancer who achieve an “exceptional response” to neoadjuvant therapy safely forgo surgery? That is a question being seriously explored in multinational trials. “We’ve known for a long time that we can eliminate disease in many patients if they have chemosensitive tumors....
Omid Hamid, MD, Chief of Research/Immuno-Oncology, The Angeles Clinic & Research Institute, and Co-Director of the Cutaneous Malignancy Program at Cedars-Sinai Cancer Center, Los Angeles, commented on these two studies for The ASCO Post. According to Dr. Hamid, the findings for the tumor...
Several novel strategies for the treatment of patients with stage III or IV melanoma showed promise in studies presented at the 2020 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.1,2 Vaccine for High-Risk Patients After Resection A tumor lysate, particle-loaded, dendritic cell (TLPLDC) vaccine was...
Based on multiple phase III prospective trials, there is evidence that both PARP inhibitors and antiangiogenic therapies such as bevacizumab provide benefit when utilized in a maintenance strategy in the first-line treatment of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (GOG 218, ICON7, SOLO-1, PRIMA,...
Kimlin T. Ashing, PhD, of City of Hope National Medical Center, discusses analyses that showed neighborhoods with lower-income and minority populations had a greater number of tobacco and vape shops, increased use of electronic nicotine delivery systems, and lower-priced tobacco products. This...
In a special report published by Malcovati et al in the journal Blood, an international working group of experts in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) has proposed the recognition of a distinct subtype of MDS based on the presence of a nonheritable genetic mutation that causes the disease. The...
In an expansion of a Children’s Oncology Group trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mody et al found that the combination of irinotecan, temozolomide, the anti–disialoganglioside GD2 antibody dinutuximab, and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (I/T/DIN/GM-CSF) showed...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ladas et al found that increased dietary intake of antioxidants was associated with reduced risk for bacterial infection and grade ≥ 3 mucositis during induction therapy in pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Study...
Alexandra Leary, MD, PhD, of the Gustave Roussy Institute of Oncology, Paris, underscored the controversy surrounding the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in advanced ovarian cancer, suggesting the discord may be “more cultural and emotional than scientific” to some degree. “Some countries, such as ...
The use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for advanced ovarian cancer may not have the negative impact on survival feared by many gynecologic oncologists. In fact, according to a pair of studies that were to have been presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2020 Annual Meeting on Women’s...
In a clinical trial in patients with recurrent uterine serous carcinoma, one-third of study participants responded to treatment with the Wee1 inhibitor adavosertib, according to data presented by Liu et al at a virtual session of the Society for Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s...
In a phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Kim et al found that nivolumab showed antitumor activity in patients with advanced refractory biliary tract cancer. As noted by the investigators, there currently is no established second-line systemic treatment for biliary tract cancer. Study Details...
Patients with cancer who were infected with COVID-19 were much more likely to die from the disease than those without cancer, according to research from physician-researchers at Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Their findings were published by Mehta et al in Cancer...
In the single-arm phase III OLYMPUS trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Kleinmann et al found that primary chemoablation of low-grade upper tract urothelial carcinoma using a mitomycin-containing reverse thermal gel (UGN-101) resulted in disease eradication in more than half of patients. As...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Getz et al found that use of dexrazoxane was associated with preservation of cardiac function in pediatric patients receiving front-line treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and resulted in no adverse effects on treatment outcomes. As...
As reported in The Lancet by Brunt et al, 5-year findings from the phase III FAST-Forward trial indicated that adjuvant radiotherapy with 26 Gy in 5 fractions over 1 week was noninferior to 40 Gy in 15 fractions over 3 weeks in preventing local tumor relapse in women with early-stage breast ...
The addition of the checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to two targeted therapies (the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib and the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib) as initial therapy improved outcomes compared with the two targeted therapies plus placebo in patients with newly diagnosed BRAF V600E/K–mutant advanced ...
A team of researchers and patient advocates have addressed the challenges related to traveling after receiving radiation therapy involving Lu-177 dotatate in a study published by Kendi et al in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Due to the residual radiation activity of Lu-177 dotatate, some patients ...
In the phase II monarcHER trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Sara M. Tolaney, MD, and colleagues found that the combination of abemaciclib, fulvestrant, and trastuzumab prolonged progression-free survival vs trastuzumab plus standard-of-care chemotherapy in patients with previously treated...
In a Japanese phase Ib/dose-expansion trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fukuoka et al found that the combination of regorafenib and nivolumab showed activity in patients with previously treated gastric cancer and colorectal cancer with microsatellite stable/mismatch...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Johann de Bono, MB, ChB, PhD, and colleagues found that olaparib significantly improved progression-free survival vs hormonal therapy in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who had alterations in the...
Christopher D'Avella, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses the impact of his institution’s oncologic urgent care center, designed to triage patients and prevent hospital admissions. Patients who presented to the direct referral unit had lower health-care expenses vs those who went to the...
An artificial intelligence (AI) model for automated classification of colorectal polyps could benefit cancer screening programs by improving efficiency, reproducibility, and accuracy, as well as reducing access barriers to pathology services. In a new study published by Wei et al in JAMA Network...
In a pooled analysis reported in the journal Bone Marrow Transplantation, Costa et al found that autologous followed by reduced-intensity conditioning allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (auto-allo) was associated with longer overall survival compared with tandem autologous...
An article by Waterhouse et al in JCO Oncology Practice presented results of a recent ASCO survey of clinical programs exploring the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of oncology clinical trials. Results highlighted the numerous issues faced by the programs, steps that are...
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is perhaps the biggest challenge health-care systems have ever had to face. As part of a series of interviews The ASCO Post is conducting with oncologists, we talked with Charles G. Drake, MD, PhD, about the impact of COVID-19 on his practice and on the conduct...
Before the dawn of the modern antibiotic era and amid the chaos of World War II, future Professor of Radiology and Founding Dean of two American medical colleges, Dr. George T. Harrell,* penned what could now be argued was far too bold a statement. As the opening lines of his nonrandomized study...
On May 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved daratumumab and hyaluronidase-fihj (Darzalex Faspro) for adult patients with newly diagnosed, relapsed, or refractory multiple myeloma. This new product allows for subcutaneous dosing of daratumumab. Daratumumab and hyaluronidase-fihj...
Black patients with stage I to III melanoma are likely to experience a longer delay from diagnosis to surgery than non-Hispanic white patients, according to a study published by Tripathi et al in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. “We already knew that black patients with melanoma...
In a phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vaz-Luis et al found that the use of a prespecified algorithm enabled the avoidance of routine peg-filgrastim prophylaxis during the paclitaxel portion of neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment with dose-dense...
The I-SPY2 trial found that the combination of the checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab, the PARP inhibitor olaparib, and the taxane paclitaxel followed by doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide as neoadjuvant therapy improved pathologic complete responses vs paclitaxel followed by doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide...
A special report published by Oudkerk et al in the journal Radiology outlined strategies for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of thromboembolic complications in patients with COVID-19. Based on recent reports that demonstrated a strong association between elevated D-dimer levels and poor...
A risk-prediction model that combined genetic and clinical factors with circulating biomarkers may help to identify people at a significantly higher-than-normal risk of developing pancreatic cancer, according to results of a study published by Peter Kraft, PhD, and colleagues in Cancer...
First results from the TERAVOLT (Thoracic cancERs international coVid 19 cOLlaboraTion) registry for thoracic cancers—presented by Marina C. Garassino, MD, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting in the COVID-19 and Cancer Session—indicate a high mortality rate ...
In a multi-institutional Chinese study reported at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting in the COVID-19 and Cancer Session and in Cancer Discovery, Dai et al found that the risk of severe events as a result of COVID-19 infection was higher in patients with...
In a phase II NRG Oncology trial (NRG GY003) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dmitriy Zamarin, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that the addition of ipilimumab to nivolumab improved objective response rate and progression-free survival in women with persistent or recurrent epithelial...
On April 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to a new dosing regimen for pembrolizumab (Keytruda)—400 mg every 6 weeks—across all currently approved adult indications, in addition to the current 200 mg every 3 weeks dosing regimen. The approval was based on...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had a very busy 10 or so days, so this week, we’ll go over five recent oncology and hematology approvals the Agency issued, in bladder cancer, breast cancer, bile duct cancer, and leukemia.
A randomized clinical trial offers evidence that a combination of two targeted melanoma drugs, when given continuously, improves progression-free survival when compared with intermittent treatment, according to study results presented by Algazi et al at the American Association for Cancer Research...
A group of clinicians from New York City sought to determine if patients with cancer and COVID-19 in the United States have a poor prognosis. In an article published as a pre-proof in Annals of Oncology, Miyashita et al analyzed the electronic medical records from the Mount Sinai Health System, and ...
“Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.” ―Hippocrates The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that occasionally quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Abutalib and Connors...
The TRACERx study investigated phylogenetic tracking and minimal residual disease (MRD) detection using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) profiling following resection in patients with stage I to III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Investigators found that ctDNA is an adjuvant biomarker capable of...