Disease-free survival after 9 weeks of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) and standard chemotherapy was not comparable to disease-free survival after 12 months of adjuvant trastuzumab and standard chemotherapy for women with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer, supporting the current...
Cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy is the preferred first-line therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer and the only treatment shown to improve survival in patients with previously untreated disease for many years. This chemotherapy also has proven to be beneficial in the neoadjuvant and...
On October 25, 2017, intravenous (IV) rolapitant (Varubi) was approved for use in combination with other antiemetic agents in adults for the prevention of delayed nausea and vomiting associated with initial and repeat courses of emetogenic cancer chemotherapy, including but not limited to highly...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has created a new resource for patients living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who develop acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related Kaposi sarcoma. This newly released NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN...
While hope for a cure after a cancer diagnosis is a feeling both patients and oncologists rightly cling to during treatment, when too much emphasis is placed on this type of “focused” hope, it can make it more difficult for patients to face their mortality. Moreover, such a focus can deny patients ...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final rule on the 2018 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (PPS). In the rule, CMS finalized a proposal to cut reimbursement for separately paid drugs under the 340B Drug Pricing Program (340B) from average sales price...
The Walther Cancer Foundation, Inc., a private foundation based in Indianapolis, Indiana, has endowed a new ASCO award and lecture bearing its name to be presented annually at the Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium. This grant represents a new foray for the foundation as it...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO is committed to supporting the research and career development of young researchers through its Grants & Awards Program. In October 2017, Conquer Cancer hosted its third Scientific and Career Development Retreat at ASCO Headquarters in Alexandria,...
On November 9, 2017, dasatinib (Sprycel) was granted regular approval for treatment of pediatric patients with Philadelphia chromosome–positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in chronic phase.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings among 97 pediatric patients with chronic-phase...
The roadside along the path to curing follicular lymphoma is riddled with the debris of failed cytotoxic regimens. For decades, clinical trials unsuccessfully pitted various chemotherapy combinations against each other. It took but a single, noncytotoxic molecule, rituximab (Rituxan), to forever...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On November 6, 2017, vemurafenib (Zelboraf) was granted...
The inaugural Mary Pazdur Award for Excellence in Advanced Practice in Oncology was announced at the 2017 JADPRO Live at APSHO (Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology) conference. Jack Gentile, Chairman of Harborside, which sponsors the JADPRO Live at APSHO conference (and...
Future oncology drug development and approvals will be faster and more efficient as well as take the patient experience more into account, said Richard Pazdur, MD, Director of the Oncology Center of Excellence at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Center was established as part of...
Obesity has been established as a strong risk factor for the development of cancer. African Americans and Hispanics are particularly at risk, and their access to health care is often poor. How do racial and ethnic disparities in the development of obesity as well as access to care intersect to...
Cancer may be a disease of aging, but data suggest that older patients with cancer are undertreated, especially with respect to chemotherapy. One analysis showed that approximately 40% of patients in their 70s—and 60% of patients in their 80s—do not receive adjuvant therapy after surgery for colon...
MedStar Health, the largest not-for-profit health-care system across Maryland and the Washington, DC, region, has named Louis M. Weiner, MD, as Director of its MedStar Georgetown Cancer Institute. Dr. Weiner will serve in this capacity while also remaining Director of Georgetown Lombardi...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has named three investigators as recipients of this year’s Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research. The award recognizes promising investigators aged 45 years or younger at the time of nomination for their efforts in advancing cancer research. The...
Cancer care in Sub-Saharan Africa, as in other low-resource settings, can be a challenge: The right medications and equipment may be in short supply, maintaining equipment can be a problem, basic chemotherapy drugs may be unaffordable, and patients may not see doctors until the cancer is advanced....
“We are in the midst of a steep increase” in the incidence of breast cancer among women aged 65 years and older, Arti Hurria, MD, reported at the 19th Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium, Chicago.1 “Are we prepared as a health-care system and as providers to address this burgeoning need?” she...
Neurotoxicity in advanced breast cancer is not limited to chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, according to Matti Aapro, MD, of IMO Clinique de Genolier, Switzerland. Surgery, radiation therapy, and medical therapy can all have detrimental effects on either the central or peripheral nervous ...
As low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer has moved from clinical trials to clinical practice, management issues are growing more urgent for screening centers around the country: for instance, how to support referrals from and to other providers; how to ensure the quality of...
Formal discussant of this trial, Michael Boyer, MBBS, PhD, a medical oncologist at Sydney Cancer Centre, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, Australia, was enthusiastic about these results, with the caveat that overall survival data are needed. “Unresectable stage III non–small cell lung...
The PACIFIC study showed that the addition of the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi) following chemoradiotherapy for patients with unresectable stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) dramatically improved progression-free survival compared with placebo....
Meta-analysis of individual patient data from five randomized clinical trials provided a high level of evidence that treatment with a gonadotropin-releasing hormone analog (GnRHa) could safely and effectively protect ovarian function and potentially preserve fertility in premenopausal women...
With the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of two chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell products, this novel approach seems to be moving into the mainstream. The approvals were tisagenlecleucel (also known as CTL019; Kymriah) for the treatment of pediatric B-cell acute...
Acupuncture significantly reduced joint pain for postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer receiving treatment with an aromatase inhibitor compared with both sham acupuncture and no treatment, according to data from the randomized, phase III SWOG S1200 trial presented by Hershman et al at ...
Over the past 15 years, multiple myeloma has garnered among the highest number of regulatory approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the management of all phases of the disease. This fast-expanding repertoire of treatment options has pushed the median survival of multiple...
This year has been an important transitional period for oncology providers to start collecting their performance data to meet the requirements of the Quality Payment Program outlined in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). The Quality Payment Program is a...
Adding the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor ribociclib (Kisqali) to standard endocrine therapy with temporary ovarian suppression significantly improved progression-free survival for pre- and perimenopausal women with advanced hormone receptor–positive (HR-positive), HER2-negative...
A combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and trastuzumab (Herceptin) tested in patients with trastuzumab-resistant advanced HER2-positive breast cancer was well tolerated and had clinical benefit in patients whose tumors were positive for a biomarker for pembrolizumab, according to data presented...
In a webcast press briefing prior to the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, journalists got a peek at some of the most anticipated abstracts. ASH President Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, Director of the Lebow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and Jerome Lipper...
Increasing the dose intensity of chemotherapy—by either shortening the intervals between the cycles or by sequential administration instead of concurrent administration of the drugs—reduced the risk of early-stage breast cancer recurrence and death compared with standard chemotherapy...
Adding trastuzumab (Herceptin) to standard adjuvant chemotherapy did not improve invasive disease–free survival for patients with early-stage breast cancer found to have low levels of HER2, defined as immunohistochemistry (IHC) 1–positive or IHC 2-positive and/or in situ hybridization...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Javle et al found that the oral pan-fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) kinase inhibitor BGJ398 was active in FGFR-altered advanced cholangiocarcinoma. It is estimated that FGFR2 fusions/translocations are present in 13% to 17%...
An analysis of bacteria present in the mouth showed that some types of bacteria that lead to periodontal disease were associated with higher risk of esophageal cancer, according to a study published by Peters et al in Cancer Research. Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer and the...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved trastuzumab-dkst (Ogivri) as a biosimilar to trastuzumab (Herceptin) for the treatment of patients with breast or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma whose tumors overexpress the HER2 gene. The drug is the first...
On November 30, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the FoundationOne CDx (F1CDx), the first breakthrough-designated, next-generation sequencing–based in vitro diagnostic test that can detect genetic mutations in 324 genes and 2 genomic signatures in any solid tumor type. The ...
A new physician assistant (PA)-based study finds that despite personal satisfaction in the oncology specialty, high rates of burnout—over one-third of PAs (34.8%)—are common. These findings reveal important factors that could help to decrease burnout and improve the oncology workforce...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has created a new resource for patients living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who develop acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related Kaposi sarcoma. This newly released NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN...
Compared with the non-Hispanic white (NHW) population, the urban American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) community was more likely to have lower survival rates following invasive prostate and breast cancer, according to a new study by Emerson et al in Cancer Research. “It’s been...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Oudkerk et al, a European Union (EU) expert group has issued a position statement on low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer, proposing a near-term phased implementation of screening in high-risk regions within 18 months and extension to all ...
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Cancer Research Fund, there is a causal association between a high body mass index (BMI) and 14 cancers, including colorectal, gallbladder, pancreatic, kidney, liver, endometrial, postmenopausal breast, ovarian, gastric...
This image of fluoroscopy documents modern cancer diagnostic possibilities. It is in startling contrast to the photograph of fluoroscopy taken a decade earlier. Published by James T. Case, MD, in 1914 to illustrate his book Stereoroentgenography of the Alimentary Tract, it presents the advances in ...
Among men diagnosed with prostate cancer, about one in two will receive androgen-deprivation therapy, which is associated with many potential adverse side effects, including significant bone loss and increased risk for low trauma or fragility fractures similar to those found in people with primary ...
Donald Coffey, PhD, a distinguished Johns Hopkins Professor and prostate cancer expert, who was the former Director of the Brady Urological Research Laboratory and Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, died on November 9, 2017, at the age of 85. In his more than 50 years at...
The following essay by Robert J. Green, MD, is adapted, with permission, from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor James R. Downing, MD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with the 2017 E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize for his discoveries related to the hematopathology and molecular biology of childhood leukemia. This lectureship and prize is named...
Cancer memoirs come in a variety of literary styles and voices. Not surprisingly, the most poignant cancer memoirs are by those who are writing, in essence, their final words before departing this earth. The most widely read of that variety has been the beautifully written best seller When Breath...
ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2017, nivolumab (Opdivo) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients previously treated with sorafenib (Nexavar).1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data APPROVAL WAS based on findings in a 154-patient subgroup of the CheckMate 040 trial consisting...
MORE THAN A QUARTER of patients with recurrent high-grade glioma treated with the retroviral vector Toca 511 and the prodrug of the chemotherapy fluorouracil (5-FU), Toca FC, were alive more than 3 years after treatment, according to data from a subset of patients in a phase I clinical trial, Toca ...