In the March 25, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post, Steven H. Lin, MD, PhD, shared his thoughts on the role of positron-emission tomography (PET) in assessing response to induction chemotherapy in patients with resectable esophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer. He noted that complete pathologic...
An article that appeared in the April 10 issue of The ASCO Post (“Olaparib Maintenance Prolongs Progression-Free Survival in Ovarian Cancer”) suggests unwarranted conclusions from the phase III SOLO2 trial of olaparib (Lynparza) in patients with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer and...
End-of-life care in any patient with cancer is challenging for the patient, family, and physician. Issues faced at the end of life include pain, depression, loss of dignity, and hopelessness. In the geriatric patient, additional complexities are present in the form of comorbid conditions,...
In part 1 of the Heritage study, a phase III equivalence trial reported in JAMA, Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, and colleagues found that treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin) or a proposed trastuzumab biosimilar...
Development of pediatric cancer drugs has long lagged behind adult drug development for two major reasons: The process is more difficult, and childhood cancer is rarer by far than adult cancer. These and other phenomena in pediatric oncology were the subject of a workshop held by the Friends of...
The advent of successful monoclonal antibody therapy in the treatment of relapsed/refractory myeloma has dramatically improved the prognosis of patients for whom currently approved novel therapies have failed. In 2015, the approval of the combination of elotuzumab (Empliciti) with lenalidomide...
Long-term follow-up of treatment with ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in patients with previously untreated and treated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic leukemia (SLL) has shown high response rates that are durable. At 5 years, 89% of patients with treatment-naive and relapsed or...
Alexandra Levine, MD, MACP, is Professor in the Department of Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope, Duarte, California, and has been on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic from the beginning—before the disease even had a name. Dr. Levine spoke with The ASCO Post about ...
Although the prognosis of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) has improved with R-CHOP—the addition of rituximab (Rituxan) to the cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone chemotherapy regimen—one-third of patients still relapse after therapy, and patients with the ...
Eric Jonasch, MD, Professor in the Department of Genitourinary Cancer at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, commented on this phase II study. “This is an important study, since we have, for the first time, randomized, prospective data comparing the combination of a checkpoint antibody with an...
Read more in the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). Visit ASCOPubs.org/journal/jop Patients with stage I lung cancer are achieving excellent local tumor control, thanks to an evolution in radiotherapy and surgical approaches. Jeffrey A. Bogart, MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of...
Researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reported early results from a small study of their chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell product (JCAR014) in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) at the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition....
Formal discussant of the 111 trial, Prof. Noel Clarke, MBBS, FRCS, ChM, The Christie Hospital, Manchester, UK, had some concerns, but overall felt that the study could be practice-changing. “In this paper, single-cycle treatment is safe and effective, and two cycles of adjuvant BEP (bleomycin,...
The approach to treatment of high-risk, clinical stage I, nonseminomatous or combined germ cell tumors of the testis is not written in stone. Orchiectomy followed by surveillance or chemotherapy with two cycles of bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (BEP) is a favored approach by most experts. A...
Early-phase studies suggest that venetoclax (Venclexta) holds promise as a treatment for myeloma. At the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, investigators reported strong activity in heavily pretreated patients, especially those with the t(11;14)...
The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) has selected David M. Sabatini, MD, PhD, to receive its 5th annual Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences for discovery of the mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) cellular pathway as a key regulator of growth and metabolism in response to...
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common leukemia in adults. Each year, about 20,000 Americans will be diagnosed with AML, and roughly 10,000 people in this country will die of the disease. AML progresses quickly, and unless treatment begins soon and is effective , the prognosis is grim....
Scientific Name: Vaccinium macrocarpon Common Names: Mossberry, sassamanash, bounceberry Case Study M.C. is a 55-year-old woman with a history of stage I endometrial cancer, diagnosed and curatively treated 5 years ago. Since then, she has been having urinary tract infections from time to time....
Prostate cancer has lagged behind breast cancer in the identification of predictive and prognostic biomarkers, but the field is catching up. Researchers have identified a molecular signature that can distinguish aggressive prostate cancer that is androgen-indifferent and will have a better response ...
Not all cancer research will result in a positive outcome for patients, but all research does provide information that continues to advance the treatment of cancer care. Recent clinical trials, including one funded in part by the Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) of ASCO, show that most prostate...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) of ASCO recently announced the recipients of its 2017 International Innovation Grant. The 1-year grant of up to $20,000, given directly to each awardee’s nonprofit organization or government agency, funds research projects aimed at improving cancer care in low-...
A test that measures the levels of five chemicals in the breath has shown promising results for the detection of cancers of the esophagus and stomach, in a large patient trial presented by Markar et al at the 2017 European Cancer Congress (Abstract 6LBA).1 Together, stomach and esophageal cancers...
The onset of diabetes, or a rapid deterioration in existing diabetes that requires more aggressive treatment, could be a sign of early, hidden pancreatic cancer, according to research presented by Autier et al at the 2017 European Cancer Congress (Abstract 540).1 Study Design and Key Findings...
Invited discussant Jonathan Ledermann, MD, of UCL Cancer Institute, University College London, said the ARIEL2 results for rucaparib (Rubraca) add to the evidence base for PARP (poly ADP-ribose polymerase) inhibition in ovarian cancer established by olaparib (Lynparza). It’s been about 2 years...
Rucaparib (Rubraca) led to frequent durable remissions among patients with relapsed high-grade ovarian cancer with BRCA mutations, regardless of whether the mutations were germline or somatic, according to the results of the ARIEL2 trial presented at the 2017 Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual...
ASCO and the Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) proudly announce the winners of ASCO’s Special Awards, the Society’s highest honors, and the CCF Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award. The recipients of these awards include researchers, patient advocates, and global oncology leaders who have worked ...
On April 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who are not eligible for cisplatin chemotherapy. Atezolizumab was previously approved for people...
Avelumab (Bavencio) achieved durable responses in patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, according to longer-term follow-up of the phase II JAVELIN study, the largest study conducted to date in this relatively rare orphan cancer.1 Results were presented at the 2017 American Association for ...
“The status quo for HPV [human papillomavirus]-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma is not sufficient.… Our treatment is effective, but the toxicity associated with it is not tolerable.” And HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer “is a cancer of relatively younger patients,” said Nishant...
The combination of trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus lapatinib (Tykerb) achieved positive results in patients with heavily pretreated, HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer, according to the final results of the phase II HERACLES-A trial. This two-pronged, HER2-directed approach achieved clinical...
On April 11, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) released its first report examining the costs of treating cancer, specifically the out-of-pocket portion patients face. The report, released at the organization’s annual national policy forum, found U.S. cancer patients...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Martinelli et al found that blinatumomab (Blincyto) produced complete responses in patients with relapsed/refractory Philadelphia chromosome–positive (Ph+) B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) progressing after...
Overall cancer death rates continue to decrease in men, women, and children for all major racial and ethnic groups, according to the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975–2014, published by Jemal et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The report...
A French phase III trial (IFM 2009), reported by Attal et al in The New England Journal of Medicine, has shown that consolidation treatment with lenalidomide (Revlimid), bortezomib (Velcade), and dexamethasone (RVD) was associated with poorer progression-free survival vs high-dose chemotherapy and...
On March 13, the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor ribociclib (Kisqali) was approved for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor as initial endocrine-based therapy for the treatment of postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative advanced or metastatic breast ...
For more than 3 decades, Nancy E. Davidson, MD, has dedicated her clinical and research career to better understanding the molecular mechanisms driving the development of breast cancer and to the discovery of more effective therapies to treat the disease. The recipient of an ASCO Young...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Saro H. Armenian, DO, MPH, of City of Hope, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on prevention and monitoring of cardiac dysfunction in survivors of adult cancers.1 Recommendations were developed by an expert panel...
Overall survival in recurrent, metastatic cervical cancer was substantially extended with a Listeria-based immunotherapy approach that targets the human papillomavirus (HPV), investigators reported at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual Meeting.1 Of 50 evaluable patients, 19 were alive at...
Selected “healthy” patients with clinical T1 renal cell carcinoma may be safely treated with percutaneous cryoablation, according to a single-center study of experience at the Mayo Clinic.1 “In healthier patients, our experience shows that cryoablation achieved good short-term oncologic control...
Elderly patients with cancer are far less likely to be diagnosed with depression than patients in any other age group for two primary reasons: There is an overlap between cancer symptoms/treatment side effects and the diagnostic criteria for depression, and older adults are more likely to present...
Implementation science encompasses the study of methods to accelerate integration of evidence into practice and policy to improve health-care outcomes. At the 2017 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Sandra A. Mitchell, PhD, CRNP, of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National...
A study presented by Hildebrandt et al at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR; Abstract 990) revealed several findings about racial disparities in health-related quality of life among colorectal cancer patients. Hispanics and blacks had a higher burden of...
Final results of the phase III EORTC/LYSA/FIL H10 trial confirm the benefits of early positron-emission tomography (PET)-adapted treatment in patients with stage I or II Hodgkin lymphoma. The results were reported by André et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Study Details The...
Eloise Chapman-Davis, MD, a gynecologic oncologist at New York-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, commented on the SOLO2 trial results for The ASCO Post. “SOLO2 is the third randomized trial to evaluate the use of maintenance therapy in a selected subgroup of ovarian cancer patients with...
Among patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who were treated with the anti–programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq), those who responded to the treatment had a longer overall survival compared with those who did not respond, according to data...
Among patients with advanced melanoma, those who received both nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) had improved overall survival compared with those who received only ipilimumab, and appeared to have more favorable survival outcomes compared with those who received nivolumab, according to...
Treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) yielded durable responses in some patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with a 5-year survival rate of 16%, according to data from a phase I clinical trial presented by Brahmer et al at the American...
In a phase III trial reported by Ascierto et al in The Lancet Oncology, treatment with ipilimumab (Yervoy) at 10 mg/kg vs 3 mg/kg resulted in improved overall survival in patients with advanced unresectable or metastatic melanoma. As noted by the investigators, although options for first-line...
A combination of two HER2-targeted therapies, trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb), showed clinical benefit in patients with heavily pretreated HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer, according to final results from the phase II HERACLES clinical trial, presented by Siena et al at the ...
For a proportion of patients, including women with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer, gene-expression profiling has a substantial impact on treatment decision-making by determining which patients might—or might not—respond to particular treatment options. Gene-expression...