A recently updated ASCO guideline offers both new and revised guidance on the treatment of hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.1 “ASCO regularly updates its guidelines to make sure everything is current and valuable for oncologists and patients. About a year ago,...
On September 10, 2021, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) released the following statement: “I wanted to share an update about my health. In February of this year, doctors at Mayo Clinic found small white spots called calcifications during a routine mammogram. After this was discovered, I had a biopsy...
During the opening session of the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, Julio Frenk, MD, PhD, MPH, President of the University of Miami, gave a riveting presentation in which he described the devastating effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on patients with cancer as well as on fragile and fragmented...
Saad Z. Usmani, MBA, MD, of the Levine Cancer Institute, discusses new data on the CAR T-cell therapy ciltacabtagene autoleucel, a single infusion of which yielded early, deep, and durable responses in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma (Oral Abstract MM-119).
The OPTIMUM/MUKnine1 and FORTE2 updates were discussed at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Gordon Cook, MBChB, PhD, Clinical Director of the National Institute for Health Research In Vitro Diagnostics Cooperative and the Clinical Trials Unit in Hematology of the University of Leeds, United Kingdom....
Newly diagnosed patients with multiple myeloma deemed at high risk for disease progression may achieve sustained measurable residual disease (MRD) negativity with newer regimens and transplantation, and this may translate into longer progression-free survival. That’s the key take-away message from...
A novel combination of well-known drugs may prolong survival in patients with prostate cancer, according to late-breaking research presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021. The PEACE-1 and STAMPEDE studies found that the addition of abiraterone acetate plus...
Oncologists who treat patients with melanoma will need to become familiar with another immunotherapy approach. For refractory metastatic disease, adoptive cell therapy is on the horizon. “Adoptive cell therapy will offer additional hope for our patients with melanoma. We’ll likely be seeing this...
On August 13, 2021, belzutifan, a hypoxia-inducible factor inhibitor, was approved for treatment of adults with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease who require therapy for associated renal cell carcinoma, central nervous system (CNS) hemangioblastomas, or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors but do not...
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...
There is no doubt that subsets of patients with esophageal and gastric cancers benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. The complexity lies in identifying the appropriate histology, tumor location, expression of programmed cell death receptors and ligands, mechanism of checkpoint...
As reported in The Lancet by Yelena Y. Janjigian, MD, of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III CheckMate 649 trial has shown that the addition of first-line nivolumab to chemotherapy resulted in improved overall and...
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 first randomized study in patients with malignant pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma has found that sunitinib prolongs progression-free survival by more than 5 months. The late-breaking results of the FIRSTMAPPP trial were presented by Eric Baudin, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the European...
Antibody-drug conjugates are improving outcomes of patients with lymphoma, often those who have exhausted treatment options after chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Four available antibody-drug conjugates are in the clinic, with brentuximab vedotin moving into the front-line...
The integration of radiation therapy into chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy may improve outcomes for patients with relapsed or refractory lymphoma, according to Charles A. Enke, MD, Professor and the Bill Bures and Jerry Pabst Chair in Radiation Oncology at the Fred and Pamela Buffett...
In relapsed or refractory B-cell lymphomas, bispecific T-cell engager antibodies are finding a place in the treatment algorithm, said Christopher Flowers, MD, MS, FASCO, Professor and Chair of the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. At the...
By the time my non–small cell lung cancer was diagnosed in 2004, it had already reached stage IIIB, and I was told there was little that could be done for me. I was 56, a wife, the mother of 3 children, and at the peak of my career as president of Olympian Oil. Although my aunt, brother, and...
Although the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has identified adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer as a distinct patient population from children and older adults with the disease, research into the diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship specific to this patient population has not kept...
In a phase III European Myeloma Network trial (EMN02/HOVON95) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sonneveld et al found that consolidation with bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (VRD) vs no consolidation followed by maintenance lenalidomide was associated with significantly...
Invited discussant of the two studies, Elena Élez, MD, PhD, of the Colon Cancer Program, Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain, discussed the challenge of treating BRAF-mutant colorectal cancer and what the new data bring to that effort. Dr. Élez noted: “BRAF V600E–mutant metastatic ...
The phase II ANCHOR CRC study, the largest prospective study of BRAF inhibitor–based therapy as first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer, has met its primary endpoint, with 47.8% of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer responding to first-line treatment with encorafenib,...
In a phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Matthew S. Davids, MD, and colleagues found that first-line triple combination therapy with acalabrutinib, venetoclax, and obinutuzumab produced measurable residual disease (MRD)-negative complete remission in a substantial proportion of patients ...
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...
Benjamin Besse, MD, PhD, of the Institut Gustave Roussy, discusses final phase III findings from the Atalante-1 trial, which explored the question of whether the OSE2101 vaccine is more beneficial than standard treatment for patients with HLA-A2–positive non–small cell lung cancer after immune...
In the first randomized, controlled study to explore the efficacy and safety of relacorilant—a selective glucocorticoid receptor modulator—in combination with nab-paclitaxel compared to nab-paclitaxel alone, the combination improved progression-free survival and showed a favorable safety profile in ...
The randomized phase III controlled GETUG/AFU VESPER V05 trial was designed to compare the efficacy of two perioperative treatment regimens—gemcitabine/cisplatin or dose-dense methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, and cisplatin (dd-MVAC)—in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The...
As reported by Stephen J. Schuster, MD, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, long-term outcomes of the pivotal phase II JULIET trial showed overall and complete response rates of 53% and 39% in adult patients with relapsed or refractory aggressive B-cell lymphomas treated with the T-cell...
In the phase II SAFRON II study reported in JAMA Oncology, Shankar Siva, PhD, MBBS, FRANZCR, and colleagues found no significant differences in safety or efficacy between single-fraction vs multifraction stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) for the treatment of pulmonary oligometastases. ...
In an analysis from the I-SPY2 trial reported in JAMA Oncology, W. Fraser Symmans, MD, and colleagues found that increasing residual cancer burden after neoadjuvant treatment for high-risk breast cancer was associated with poorer event-free survival. Study Details In I-SPY2, investigational agents...
Gerhardt Attard, MD, PhD, of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, discusses findings that show 2 years of abiraterone acetate plus prednisolone-based treatment improves metastasis-free and overall survival in men with high-risk nonmetastatic prostate cancer. The data suggest this combination...
In a prospective evaluation of the role of comprehensive geriatric assessment in personalizing therapy for elderly patients with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), geriatric intervention changed therapeutic choices in about 1 out of 10 patients and played an important...
In the phase II DESTINY-Lung01 trial, presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021 (Abstract LBA45) and concurrently reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Bob T. Li, MD, PhD, MPH, and colleagues found that fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki produced durable...
In the phase Ib COSMIC-021 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sumanta K. Pal, MD, FASCO, and colleagues found that the combination of cabozantinib and atezolizumab produced durable responses in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Study Details One hundred and two...
In the Italian phase II RAMES trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Pinto et al found that the addition of ramucirumab to gemcitabine improved overall survival in the second-line treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma. As noted by the investigators, “There is a preclinical rationale for...
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 ...
In a French study reported in JAMA Network Open, Thierry et al found that tumor burden (assessed as plasma circulating tumor DNA [ctDNA]) was significantly higher among patients with newly diagnosed metastatic colorectal cancer screened for a clinical trial after vs before the first COVID-19...
In an analysis from a Blood or Marrow Transplant Survivor Study cohort reported in JAMA Oncology, Smita Bhatia, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that late mortality among patients undergoing allogeneic blood or marrow transplantation for hematologic malignancies has declined over the past 40 years,...
Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses results from the MONALEESA-2 trial, which showed that adding the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to first-line hormonal therapy prolongs survival by 1 year for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive, ...
Dozens of oral chemotherapy drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the past 2 decades and are now being prescribed in the treatment of many cancer types. However, most oral anticancer drug prescriptions require coordination between payers and providers, which can...
It has been well documented that a confluence of many factors, including low-socioeconomic status, contribute to health disparities and worse outcomes in minority patients with cancer. Strategies that partnered community-based health workers with low-income and minority patients with cancer...
Adjuvant pembrolizumab reduced the risk of disease recurrence in adults and children aged 12 years and older with high-risk stage II melanoma vs placebo, according to a late-breaking interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-716 trial presented by Jason J. Luke, MD, and colleagues at the European...
Results from the phase III MONALEESA-2 trial showed a significant overall survival benefit with ribociclib plus endocrine therapy for postmenopausal patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. This is the first demonstration of a survival advantage with a...
In a simulation-based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Ward et al estimated that delay in diagnosis due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile will lead to an early surge of newly diagnosed cancers at later stages, resulting in excess mortality over the next 10 years. As stated by the...
In a phase I/II study reported in The Lancet, Hutchings et al found that the novel bispecific antibody epcoritamab produced high response rates in patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Epcoritamab works by targeting CD3 and CD20 and inducing T-cell–mediated cytotoxic...
In a study reported in JAMA Network Open, Fleming et al found that low skeletal muscle area and high visceral-to-total fat ratio were associated with increased expression of proinflammatory cytokines and VEGF as well as worse 5-year outcomes in patients with nonmetastatic colon cancer. Study...
Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the Istituto Europeo Oncologico, discusses phase III results that showed improvements in progression-free and overall survival with a combination of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, compared with placebo and chemotherapy, for patients with persistent, recurrent, or...
Fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival vs trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) in second-line treatment for HER2-positive unresectable or metastatic breast cancer, according to results from the global phase III DESTINY-Breast03...
The addition of pembrolizumab to chemotherapy prolonged survival in recurrent, persistent, or metastatic cervical cancer, according to results of the KEYNOTE-826 study presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021 by Nicoletta Colombo, MD, and colleagues (Abstract...