The search for biomarkers to identify patients who are likely to respond to immunotherapy continues. According to biomarker tissue and blood analysis of patients enrolled in the phase III MYSTIC trial, high tumor mutational burden in both tissue and blood identified patients with non–small cell...
The 24th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) was held this past March in Orlando, Florida. Updates to a number of Clinical Practice Guidelines (NCCN Guidelines®) were reported, including three relevant to the field of genitourinary oncology: kidney cancer,...
THE COMBINATION of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab has demonstrated antitumor activity in patients with advanced urothelial cancer, including patients receiving later-line treatment. Results of a phase Ib/II trial showed an objective response rate of 25% and a median progression-free survival of 5.4...
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan is active in patients previously treated with chemotherapy or checkpoint inhibitor therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer. These results from a phase I/II basket study of this agent were presented at the 2019...
A phase III Egyptian trial presented by Mohamad S. Zaghloul, MD, et al at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium focused on the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced bladder cancer treated with postoperative radiotherapy.1 Researchers compared postoperative...
May 14, 2019: Avelumab (Bavencio) plus axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). April 19, 2019: Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). April 12,...
Adding enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to the results of the ...
Efrat Dotan, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Hematology/Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, commented on this study. “This abstract presents the interim analysis of a phase II study evaluating the use of maintenance therapy with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase PARP inhibitor...
The CARMENA trial presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, published simultaneously in The New England Journal of Medicine,1,2 and reported in this supplement to The ASCO Post, evaluated the role of nephrectomy in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Formal discussant of the trial,...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis in the phase III LATITUDE trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of abiraterone acetate plus prednisone to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in newly diagnosed,...
In a trial with a modified primary endpoint due to slow accrual reported in JAMA Oncology,1 Axel Bex, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that deferred cytoreductive nephrectomy after sunitinib did not improve the 28-week progression-free rate vs immediate nephrectomy followed by sunitinib in patients...
Cabozantinib, a kinase inhibitor, is approved in metastatic renal cell carcinoma on the basis of studies in clear cell histology. Its activity in non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma is poorly defined. In a retrospective cohort study, Nieves Martinez Chanzá, MD, and colleagues reported that...
The poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib holds promise as maintenance therapy for advanced, platinum-sensitive, BRCA- or PALB2-mutated pancreatic cancer, according to an interim analysis of an ongoing phase II clinical trial presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American...
The TIVO-3 trial was conducted to confirm progression-free survival results from the TIVO-1 trial, which found an improvement in median progression-free survival in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated with tivozanib vs sorafenib. Findings from TIVO-3 were presented by Rini et al...
IN A RETROSPECTIVE analysis of median overall survival from the phase III METEOR trial,1 Ignacio Duran, MD, PhD, and colleagues sought to determine whether early tumor shrinkage following therapy with cabozantinib or everolimus could be an early indicator of prognosis for patients with...
The recently released ASCO Clinical Practice Provisional Clinical Opinion on Evaluating Susceptibility to Pancreatic Cancer highlights the importance of emerging data indicating a relatively high rate of germline mutations in pancreatic cancer.1 Recent studies have demonstrated that up to 1 in 10...
THE FRONT-LINE systemic treatment landscape for metastatic renal cell carcinoma has undergone tremendous movement over the past several years. A better understanding of the current management paradigm for therapy-naive patients warrants a reflection of historic landmark clinical trials that have...
TWO RECENTLY reported phase III trials have shown the benefits of combination therapy vs sunitinib in the first-line treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma. As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Brian I. Rini, MD, of Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and colleagues,...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®), covering eight tumor types. NCCN Guidelines are now published for more than 70 tumor types and topics. Some of the key updates for 2019 were presented...
“Older and frail adults with cancer are the types of patients we deal with every day,” said Armin Shahrokni, MD, a geriatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “The GO2 study is important, and I suspect it will be practice-changing,” he predicted. Older and frail...
A large randomized trial has found that frail and elderly patients with advanced gastroesophageal cancer may be safely and successfully treated with dose-reduced chemotherapy. In the GO2 phase III trial, low doses of oxaliplatin/capecitabine performed similarly to intermediate and high doses of the ...
THE FORMAL DISCUSSANT of the KEYNOTE-427 trial, Tracy Rose, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told listeners: “I think pembrolizumab should now be considered an option for non–clear cell kidney cancer. Response rates, however, remain inferior to those seen in clear cell...
IMMUNOTHERAPY WITH the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab may prove to be an effective option for patients with advanced non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma, according to results in cohort B of the KEYNOTE-427 trial, presented at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.1 Kidney cancers with a...
The past year has seen groundbreaking advances in the treatment of genitourinary (GU) cancers, which in some cases are resulting in altering the standard of care for patients with renal cell carcinoma, prostate cancer, and urothelial carcinoma. Some of the biggest changes that have occurred are for ...
This past year, I have traveled thousands of miles across the United States meeting with ASCO members and their patients, focusing on members who care for patients in particularly challenging settings. While I am not surprised by the extraordinary work our members are doing in every region of the...
For more than 3 decades, Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, has dedicated his medical career to researching the development of chemotherapies for breast cancer, including ado-trastuzumab emtansine, everolimus, and gemcitabine. In addition, he is credited with changing the standard of...
Irene Ghobrial, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, who has conducted seminal trials in smoldering myeloma, commented on the phase III E3A06 study. Asked by The ASCO Post whether E3A06 settles the issue of treating smoldering disease, Dr. Ghobrial responded,...
In patients with intermediate- to high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma, treatment with single-agent lenalidomide, vs observation, led to a 72% reduction in the risk of disease progression at 3 years.1 Results of the phase III E3A06 study were presented at a press briefing in advance of the 2019...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the American Urological Association (AUA) recently announced updates to their joint clinical guideline on adjuvant and salvage radiotherapy after prostatectomy in patients with and without evidence of prostate cancer recurrence to include new...
According to a study published by Kacew et al in the European Journal of Cancer, copy number alterations in the chromosome 3q arm may be linked to immunotherapy response in patients with cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. In fact, this and other genetic markers may prove to be useful...
In a multi-institutional international analysis reported in JAMA Surgery, Merath et al found that a textbook outcome was achieved in a minority of patients undergoing curative-intent resection of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. Study Details The study involved data on 687 patients from 15 major...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Hong et al found that the establishment of a cancer urgent care clinic slowed the increasing rate of visits to regional emergency departments among adults newly diagnosed with cancer. Study Details The study involved data on 33,316...
A large study of postmenopausal women indicated that quitting cigarette smoking was associated with significantly reduced risk of bladder cancer. The most significant reduction in risk occurred in the first 10 years after quitting, with a modest but continued decline in later years. These results...
On May 16, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved dalteparin sodium (Fragmin) to reduce the recurrence of symptomatic venous thromboembolism (VTE) in pediatric patients 1 month of age and older. This is the first FDA-approved therapy to treat VTE in pediatric patients....
A phase I/IB study evaluating the activity of entrectinib in children and adolescents with recurrent or refractory solid tumors, including central nervous system (CNS) tumors, has found that the agent produced responses in children with tumors harboring target aberrations...
Excluding skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women in the United States. In 2019, the American Cancer Society estimates that about 268,600 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in women, and about 41,760 women will die from their disease. ...
A phase III randomized trial (E3A06) by Lonial et al testing the effect of single-agent lenalidomide vs observation in patients with intermediate- or high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma has found that lenalidomide significantly reduces the risk of smoldering multiple myeloma progressing to active ...
On May 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved avelumab (Bavencio) in combination with axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). This is the first FDA approval for an anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)...
Foundational research recently published by Schrock et al in Annals of Oncology may help patients with microsatellite instability (MSI)-high metastatic colorectal cancer decide whether to choose immunotherapy or chemotherapy as their first treatment option. “Immunotherapy is the new,...
Elderly survivors of breast cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma face risk of brain metastasis later in life, and may require extra surveillance in the years following initial cancer treatment, according to results of a study published by Ascha et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, &...
A team of researchers have identified 34 genes that are associated with an increased risk for developing the earliest stages of ovarian cancer. The findings, published by Gusev et al in Nature Genetics, may help identify women who are at highest risk of developing ovarian cancer and pave the way...
In a two-institution study reported in JAMA Oncology, Fakhry et al found that persistent detection of tumor-type human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA after primary treatment for oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas was associated with poorer outcomes. Study Details The prospective study...
In a German/Swiss phase III trial (SenSzi [GBG80]) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kuemmel et al found that preoperative lymphoscintigraphy was not associated with an increased number of histologically detected sentinel lymph nodes with sentinel lymph node biopsy in women with early...
Although arterial-phase hyperenhancement is a key feature of untreated or recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma, standard response assessment such as modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (mRECIST) should be used with caution, particularly in the early phases after stereotactic body...
In a single-center phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nie et al found a higher complete response rate with the addition of low-dose decitabine to the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor camrelizumab in anti–PD-1 treatment–naive patients with...
On May 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ramucirumab (Cyramza) as a single agent for hepatocellular carcinoma in patients who have an alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level ≥ 400 ng/mL and have been previously treated with sorafenib. REACH-2 Trial Approval was based on the...
IMMUNOTHERAPY IS changing the way that cancer is being treated, but the understanding of the side effects of these treatments is still a developing field. The ASCO Answers “Side Effects of Immunotherapy” fact sheet helps patients learn about which side effects may arise from treatment with...
ACREDITAR ONCOLOGY has become the 3rd practice in Brazil to receive Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) certification through the QOPI Certification Program, LLC, and the 10th practice internationally to receive this accreditation. The practice, located in Brasília’s Federal District,...
NOT EVERY ONCOLOGIST grows up dreaming of becoming a doctor. In the Your Stories podcast episode “The Forest Ranger in a White Coat,” once-reluctant physician Stuart Spigel, MD, shares how becoming a patient changed his approach to practicing medicine with his son and fellow oncologist David...
ASCO HAS KICKED OFF its Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 advocacy campaign in support of increased funding for federal cancer research. ASCO is urging Congress to provide $41.6 billion to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—a $2.5 billion increase from FY 2019— and $6.5 billion to the National Cancer...