World Cancer Day 2023 is now only 1 month away! Led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and organized annually on February 4, World Cancer Day is a global initiative to improve awareness and knowledge of cancer risks and better prevent, detect, and treat the disease. World Cancer...
Research conducted by UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of Cincinnati showed that direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) are more effective—and more cost-effective—than low–molecular-weight heparin for treating cancer-associated thrombosis. A study published by Gulati et al in...
ASCO and the European Cancer Organisation (ECO) are pleased to announce a new collaboration, formalized with a recently signed memorandum of understanding, that will advance their shared aims on cancer control. The two organizations will continue to work together to support the ECO-ASCO Special...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center recently announced that Eyal Gottlieb, PhD, has been named the institution’s Vice President for Research. In this role, Dr. Gottlieb will oversee laboratory science departments leading innovative discovery and translational research across a variety ...
For this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Laurie Glimcher, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). She is also Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Principal...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In the concluding half of this two-part installment, which began in our November 25 issue, Drs. Syed Ali Abutalib and Mrinal M. Patnaik continue to explore the current...
Diarrhea in patients with cancer is a well-known phenomenon with clear guidelines for prevention and management. However, it remains a condition with poorly explored consequences and a lack of sufficient and fast-acting treatments. In a webinar presented by members of the Multinational Association...
After a 4-year in-person hiatus because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the World Cancer Congress, hosted by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), held its first hybrid in-person and virtual meeting in October in Geneva. The conference brought together more than 2,000 attendees from...
The cancer prevention and survival research organization World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) International recently launched the Global Cancer Update Programme, a new and updated version of the organization’s flagship research program, which was previously known as the Continuous Update Project. This ...
As the population of women at increased risk for breast cancer grows, with an estimated 140,000 high-risk lesions diagnosed each year, “the landscape for surgical excision of high-risk lesions continues to evolve,” Melissa Pilewskie, MD, reported at the 2022 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in...
“Risk-reducing bilateral mastectomy allows a woman with a high-penetrance breast cancer-causing mutation to avoid an encounter with the experience of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment,” Seema A. Khan, MD, MPH, stated at the 2022 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium.1 For these women, by avoiding...
Several studies presented during the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition uncovered significant disparities in medical care and health outcomes among patients of different racial backgrounds, nationalities, and socioeconomic status across a range of blood...
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world, and nowhere more so than in the health-care arena. Significant changes happened almost overnight in the delivery of medical care to focus on the safety and convenience of patients, staff, and providers. Although pilot efforts to integrate telemedicine...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced a formal agreement to establish a new international collaboration concentrated on reducing the global burden of women’s cancers. The agreement builds on years of collaboration between the...
“I was in bed in the surgical wing of Duke University Hospital when the doctor popped his head in and smiled apologetically before flicking on the fluorescent lights. It was 4:00 AM, the end of my second night in the hospital, but nobody sleeps in the conventional sense,” writes Kate Bowler in the...
Gladys Magaly Rodriguez, MD, was born in Piedras Negras, Mexico, a city situated along the banks of the Rio Grande. At age 6, her family immigrated to Eagle Pass, Texas, a border town of some 30,000 people that is predominantly Latinx and Spanish speaking. “Even though I lived and attended school...
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, signed into law on August 16, 2022, contains several important provisions regarding health care and drug pricing.1 In this article, I provide an overview of the legislation’s implications for oncology care, focusing on its provisions concerning drug price...
Sean Khozin, MD, MPH, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discusses the “external validity deficits” of randomized clinical trials, which still involve only about 5% of adults with cancer, who may differ in important ways from real-world populations. Dr. Khozin describes the reasons for...
The use of stem cell transplantation for acute myeloid leukemia increased by about 55% worldwide from 2009 to 2016, according to new findings presented by Niederweiser et al at the 64th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition (Abstract 3638). Although the largest...
Julie Côté, MD, of CHU de Québec–Université Laval, discusses findings from the Canadian Myeloma Research Group database, which showed that integrating bortezomib and lenalidomide into the autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) sequence produces a median overall survival rate ≥ 10 years in most...
Andrew Matthews, MD, of the Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, discusses findings from a large, multicenter study that showed superior outcomes with 7 + 3 chemotherapy (cytarabine continuously for 7 days, along with short infusions of an anthracycline on each of the first 3 days)...
Editor’s Note: ASCO was deeply saddened by the news that Dr. Jeff Ward passed away on November 3, 2022. In an interview with Dr. Ward this past summer, published in ASCO Connection (August 30, 2022), ASCO recognized Dr. Ward’s commitment to exceptional patient care and public advocacy. An...
Breast cancer specialist Brittany L. Bychkovsky, MD, MSc, grew up primarily in Kansas; however, given that her father was a pilot, her childhood was not wholly centered in the Sunflower State. “When I was 12 years old, my mom, who was a schoolteacher, was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. Her ...
Guest Editor’s Note: In October, the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) held its 2022 Annual International Conference in a hybrid format (virtual and in Scottsdale, Arizona). It was centered on the basic science, education and training, and implementation of integrative oncology in diverse...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Bolivia. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
The repercussions from the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, to overturn Roe v Wade, effectively ending a nearly 50-year federal constitutional right to an abortion and allowing instead states to determine abortion access, are starting to be felt in the cancer care community. The ...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Michael A. Caligiuri, MD, a physician-scientist who currently serves as President of the City of Hope National Medical Center and the Deana and Steve Campbell Physician-in-Chief...
In addition to, or instead of, receiving therapies that are the standard of care, patients with cancer sometimes request to receive complementary (therapies used in conjunction with standard cancer treatment) and alternative (nonstandard treatments used in place of standard cancer treatment)...
A new ASCO guideline on the management of advanced colorectal cancer summarizes the latest treatments supported by quality data that could expand oncologists’ armamentarium and potentially improve survival outcomes.1 “[Colorectal cancer] remains the second-leading class of cancer deaths among men ...
Discussant of the abstract on electronic symptom management, Therese M. Mulvey, MD, FASCO, Director of Breast Oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital North Shore Cancer Center, Boston, said the SIMPRO study showed that electronic patient-reported outcomes can be implemented into real-world...
Routine monitoring in the real world may help to identify patients with cancer who are experiencing challenging symptoms, without significantly disrupting clinical workload, according to data presented during the 2022 ASCO Quality Care Symposium.1,2 The analysis of nearly 40,000 patient-reported...
Remote interventions, particularly a mailed tailored DVD plus telephonic patient navigation, improved adherence to breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screenings among women living in rural counties in the United States, according to the results of a randomized controlled clinical trial...
According to a recent article published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, cancer care in the United States exceeded $208 billion in 2020 and is expected to surpass $240 billion by 2030.1 These estimates are driven largely by a growing and aging population. The expenditures...
The statistics are grim: Worldwide, pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer and the seventh leading cause of cancer mortality.1 In the United States, the malignancy has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers. It is currently the third leading cause of cancer-related death after...
More than 1.4 million patients were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2020 globally, but the molecular characteristics of the disease remain unexplored for the majority of patients around the world. In the final days of the Movember campaign, which every year in November aims to raise awareness of...
There is a 2-decades-long separation between the time I was diagnosed with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma in 1996 and my laryngectomy in 2016. The surgery was necessary because of the long-term damage to my larynx from the radiation therapy I received. In 1996, I had a low-grade sore throat...
JAMES TURKSON, PhD, Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, is uniquely positioned for a new role developed at Cedars-Sinai Cancer: Director for Diversity, Inclusion, and Strategy. “I have great confidence that Dr. Turkson will provide superb...
Myeloma expert Sarah A. Holstein, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Iowa City, a college town in eastern Iowa along the banks of the Iowa River. “The town itself is small, but it doubles in population when all the college students are present. Both my parents had a PhD in humanities, so I had no...
With longer-term follow-up, adjuvant treatment with osimertinib led to a 77% reduction in the risk of disease recurrence or death following complete resection vs placebo-treated patients with EGFR-mutated, stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Disease-free survival was improved...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Syed Ali Abutalib and Mrinal M. Patnaik explore the current treatment and prognosis of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. For each quiz question...
Marking World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (taking place November 18 to 24), the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) emphasized the danger that drug resistance poses to individuals who are particularly vulnerable to infection, such as people living with cancer. There has been substantial...
Colorectal cancer ranks third among cancer deaths in both men and women in the United States, with an estimated 150,000 new cases and 52,000 deaths anticipated in 2022.1 Colorectal cancer rates have declined by approximately 2% per year from 2014 to 2018 in people older than age 50, which is...
In response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion and returning the power to regulate reproductive health for women to the states, ASCO, the American Cancer Society Action...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jelinek et al provided evidence that a threshold of ≥ 2% circulating tumor plasma cells (CTCs) defines the presence of plasma cell leukemia (PCL)-like multiple myeloma. As stated by the investigators, “Primary PCL is the most aggressive...
Immune checkpoint inhibitors are safe and effective for people living with HIV who have metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to data presented by El Zarif et al at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 2022 Annual Meeting (Abstract 437). Findings from the first matched...
There I was, crying once again all the way from the hospital’s parking lot to my apartment, into the shower, and while trying to fall asleep. This had become the norm during my internal medicine residency. For years, I tried hard every day to be someone else to fit in. It started with off-hand...
HUTCHMED (China) Limited recently announced that the global phase III FRESCO-2 trial evaluating the investigational use of the anti–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) tyrosine kinase inhibitor fruquintinib met its primary endpoint of overall survival in patients with advanced, refractory...
After 4 years, a limited course of five cycles of tremelimumab added to durvalumab plus chemotherapy extended overall survival in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with chemotherapy alone, according to an updated exploratory analysis of the phase III POSEIDON...
For the first time in a multicenter randomized trial, T-cell therapy has been shown to improve outcomes in a solid tumor. In the phase III M14TIL trial, first-line or second-line treatment with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) led to a 50% reduction in disease progression or death from advanced ...
The MONARCH 3 study’s invited discussant, Meritxell Bellet Ezquerra, MD, PhD, a senior researcher at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, commented: “The second interim analysis for overall survival in MONARCH 31 indicates a positive trend, which was also observed for the subgroup...