In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sabnis et al analyzed characteristics of genomically targeted single-patient use requests for investigational agents for the treatment of pediatric cancers. These requests were made from pediatric cancer programs over a 5-year period. As...
The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2021 celebrates the gains made in cancer research since the National Cancer Act was signed into law on December 23, 1971. The report also recognizes the negative impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on cancer research and patient care, the disproportionate toll both...
On October 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with chemotherapy, with or without bevacizumab, for patients with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer whose tumors express PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] ≥ 1), as...
On October 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) in combination with endocrine therapy (tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor) for the adjuvant treatment of adult patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative, node-positive early breast cancer...
In the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved five treatment options for patients with breast cancer, which are summarized herein. Abemaciclib Combination On October 12, 2021, the FDA approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) with endocrine therapy (tamoxifen or an aromatase...
Yuan Yuan, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at City of Hope, Duarte, California, weighed in on the KEYNOTE-355 findings. “The study presented by Dr. Rugo on KEYNOTE-355 reconfirms the utility of adding immune checkpoint inhibitors to chemotherapy as front-line treatment for metastatic triple-negative ...
Pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy improved progression-free survival vs chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment of advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to the results of KEYNOTE-355.1 Progression-free survival was significantly improved with pembrolizumab plus...
The latest analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial demonstrated significant improvements in clinical outcomes with pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy vs chemotherapy alone as a neoadjuvant/adjuvant treatment of triple-negative breast cancer.1 This is the first large, randomized, phase III trial to ...
Recent clinical trials have been encouraging for the neoadjuvant or adjuvant use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in triple-negative breast cancer, but is this approach ready for the clinic? This question was addressed at the 38th Miami Breast Cancer Conference, held virtually this year, by Adam M....
With three new HER2-targeted therapies approved over the past year or two alone, the treatment landscape for patients with metastatic breast cancer has become increasingly crowded. In the third-line setting and beyond, there are now at least eight HER2-targeted agents approved by the U.S. Food and...
Adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib for 1 year extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline (inherited) mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented at the...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued several regulatory decisions for novel treatments for patients with cancer. Priority Review for Relatlimab and Nivolumab Fixed-Dose Combination in Unresectable or Metastatic Melanoma The FDA accepted for Priority Review the...
On October 7, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted recognition to a partial listing of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Oncology Knowledge Base (OncoKB) as the first tumor mutation database to be included in the Public Human Genetic Variant Databases. The FDA recognized a...
Maintenance durvalumab, the standard-of-care treatment for patients with unresectable stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), remains significantly underutilized, according to data presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2021 World Conference on Lung...
Several recent investigations have led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of novel antiandrogens to treat nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Yet, this work has not addressed the treatment of nonmetastatic hormone-sensitive biochemically recurrent prostate...
On October 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved brexucabtagene autoleucel (Tecartus), a CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, for adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). ZUMA-3 Efficacy was evaluated ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval of a new indication for cetuximab (Erbitux) in combination with encorafenib (Braftovi) for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and a BRAF V600E mutation, as detected by an FDA-approved test, after prior...
Researchers have discovered that grouping EGFR mutations by structure and function provides an accurate framework to match patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to the right drugs. The findings, published by Robichaux et al in Nature, identify four subgroups of mutations and introduce a...
On August 25, 2021, ivosidenib was approved for adults with previously treated, locally advanced or metastatic cholangiocarcinoma with an IDH1 mutation, as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test.1 The FDA simultaneously approved the Oncomine Dx Target Test as a...
On August 17, 2021, dostarlimab-gxly, aPD-1 blocking monoclonal antibody, was granted accelerated approval for adults with mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) recurrent or advanced solid tumors, as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test, who have had disease progression...
As ASCO Annual Meeting attendees know by now, clinicians don’t have to be at McCormick Place to hear practice-changing findings and forward-looking advances in the field of oncology. Interesting content was no exception at the 2021 conference, so in addition to covering the biggest news from the...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has amended the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to allow for the use of a single booster dose to be administered at least 6 months after completion of the primary series in individuals aged 65 years and older;...
On September 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved ruxolitinib (Jakafi), a JAK inhibitor, for the treatment of chronic graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) after failure of one or two lines of systemic therapy in adult and pediatric patients aged 12 years and older. REACH3 Efficacy was...
On September 20, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to tisotumab vedotin-tftv (Tivdak), a tissue factor–directed antibody and microtubule inhibitor conjugate, for adult patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who experienced disease progression on ...
On September 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients aged 12 years and older with locally advanced or metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer that has progressed following prior vascular endothelial growth...
� On September 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to mobocertinib (Exkivity) for adults with locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations (as detected by an FDA-approved test) whose disease has...
In recent months, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two treatment options for patients with endometrial cancer, which are summarized herein. Dostarlimab-gxly for dMMR Endometrial Cancer On April 22, 2021, the FDA granted accelerated approval to dostarlimab-gxly (Jemperli) for adult...
Although the incidence of cervical cancer has decreased 1.03% a year over the past 17 years in the United States, likely due to screening or vaccination, other human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers are increasing in both men and women, according to a study by Cheng-I Liao, MD, currently of...
The past year has been a remarkable and noteworthy time with much exciting progress made in gynecologic cancers, despite the underlying presence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several key studies were presented in 2020–2021 that detailed the results of novel therapies for our patients with cervical,...
The KRAS-specific inhibitor sotorasib achieved responses in patients with KRAS G12C–mutated non–small lung cancer (NSCLC) who had experienced disease progression on platinum-based chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or both treatments. The objective response rate was 37.1%, and responses extended to all...
Atezolizumab given after chemotherapy to patients with resected stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) significantly improved disease-free survival compared with best supportive care alone in patients whose tumors expressed PD-L1.1 These results of the global phase III IMpower010 trial ...
Adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib for 1 year extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline (inherited) mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented at the...
Lutetium-177–PSMA-617 (LuPSMA)—an investigational radiolabeled small molecule—significantly improved radiographic progression-free survival and overall survival when added to the standard of care compared with the standard of care alone for men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer...
On September 15, zanubrutinib (Brukinsa), a small-molecule inhibitor of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK), received accelerated approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory marginal zone lymphoma who have received at least...
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, ...
Maintenance durvalumab—the recommended maintenance treatment for patients with unresectable stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following chemoradiation—remains significantly underutilized, according to research presented by Liu et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung...
In a validation study with data presented at the American Urological Association’s 2021 Annual Meeting, clinician-researchers reported that a new test (miR Sentinel PCC4 Test) may be able to detect and risk-classify prostate cancer at the molecular level with predictive accuracy based on a single...
Despite great strides in prostate cancer treatment over the past several years, racial disparities in care persist, according to new data presented during the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA). Three studies highlighting this topic were presented during a virtual...
On May 21, 2021, amivantamab-vmjw, a bispecific antibody directed against EGFR and MET receptors, was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adults with locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations, as detected by a U.S. Food and...
On May 5, 2021, pembrolizumab was granted accelerated approval for use in combination with trastuzumab and fluoropyrimidine- and platinum-containing chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive gastric or gastroesophageal...
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute announced that The Rossy Foundation has committed $10 million to establish the David Liposarcoma Research Initiative. The 5-year initiative will conduct groundbreaking research into liposarcoma at Dana-Farber and external collaborating partner institutions, with the aim ...
I read with great interest the results from the phase II ZUMA-12 study of axicabtagene ciloleucel, presented during the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1 But the results raised several questions for me. Axicabtagene ciloleucel, an autologous anti-CD19...
On August 31, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved zanubrutinib (Brukinsa), a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor, for adult patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia. ASPEN Trial Zanubrutinib was investigated in ASPEN (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03053440), a randomized,...
On August 31, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised the label for the anti–PD-1 therapy pembrolizumab for its indication in first-line advanced urothelial carcinoma. The FDA converted the indication from an accelerated approval to a full approval. In addition, as part of the label...
Advances in molecular imaging are having a big impact on prostate cancer management and outcomes, according to Ashesh B. Jani, MD, the James C. Kennedy Professor in Prostate Cancer, Department of Radiation Oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta. Dr. Jani described his ...
Today, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) announced significant updates to the NCCN: Cancer and COVID-19 Vaccination guidance. This is the fourth version of NCCN’s COVID-19 vaccination guide and incorporates the latest data plus recent approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug...
Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, announced that it has made the decision to voluntarily withdraw the U.S. accelerated approval for atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in combination with nab-paclitaxel for the treatment of adults with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast...
This week, we’ll be reviewing two recent FDA approvals in the oncology space, for patients with mismatch repair–deficient, or dMMR, recurrent or advanced solid tumors, and for adult patients with cancers associated with von Hippel-Lindau disease.
On August 25, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ivosidenib (Tibsovo), a small-molecule inhibitor of isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1), for adult patients with previously treated locally advanced or metastatic cholangiocarcinoma with an IDH1 mutation as detected by an FDA-approved ...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to an agent for the prevention of acute graft-vs-host disease; Breakthrough Therapy designation to an anti–PD-1 monoclonal antibody for the treatment of metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma; and Fast Track designation to a ...