INTENSE MEDIA COVERAGE of the opioid crisis has ranged from the dire statistics of addiction and death to some hopeful stories of treatment and recovery, but what may raise questions and concerns are the reports of people who start with a prescription opioid and then in a few weeks or months are...
“WE’VE GOT A CHALLENGING TIME right now, trying to relieve pain during the time of an opioid epidemic,” Judith A. Paice, RN, PhD, acknowledged at the 2017 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago.1 She cited a recent study reporting that up to 40% of cancer survivors are living with pain, and...
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEMATOLOGY (ASH) will honor Luigi Naldini, MD, PhD, of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan, and Marina Cavazzana, MD, PhD, of Paris Descartes University, Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, and Imagine Institute of Genetic Diseases, AP-HP, Inserm in...
HERE IS A BRIEF LOOK at the study findings and clinical implications of several recent and important clinical trials in neoplastic hematology. Attention is focused on clonal myeloid disorders, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, lymphoma, and plasma cell dyscrasias. Clonal Myeloid Disorders STUDY:...
On October 12, 2017, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and 11 leading biopharmaceutical companies launched the Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT), a 5-year public-private research collaboration totaling $215 million as part of the Cancer Moonshot. PACT will initially focus...
Timothy Gilligan, MD, FASCO, Co-Chair of ASCO’s Expert Panel on Patient-Physician Communications Guideline and Vice-Chair for Education and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, spends half of his professional time treating patients with urologic...
In September 2017, ASCO published a new guideline in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that outlines best practices for communicating effectively with patients and their family members.1 The guideline is the result of recommendations from a multidisciplinary panel of experts in a number of fields,...
African Americans and members of other communities of lower socioeconomic status have higher burdens of lung cancer mortality. Therefore, targeting underserved patient populations with lung cancer screening is of the utmost importance, according to Christopher Lathan, MD, MS, MPH, a medical...
Although it has long been known that certain cancer types disproportionately affect individuals from underserved and underrepresented populations, the sources of these disparities are still not entirely clear. In a “Facebook Live” session at the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)...
Individuals and organizations looking to contribute to advancements in metastatic breast cancer research can now do so by participating in Susan G. Komen’s inaugural crowdfunding initiative. Through this initiative, donors have the opportunity to contribute directly to the pioneering work of four...
A deeper understanding of biology has allowed significant advances in the treatment of breast cancer. In the early-stage setting, standard pathology measures can help identify which subset of patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancers are more likely to experience benefit from...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Losk and colleagues from Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center report their institution’s implementation of a protocol of surgeon-initiated genomic profiling of estrogen receptor–positive tumors in women with early breast cancer that resulted in ...
AT THE 2017 ASCO ANNUAL MEETING, the leaders of the newly formed Value in Cancer Care Consortium (vi3c; vi3c.org) met to discuss the group’s plan to study how to improve the affordability of cancer drugs and make them more accessible to patients. The goal of the Value in Cancer Care Consortium is...
A matched case-controlled study among Medicare beneficiaries with metastatic lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers has found that palliative care consultation significantly reduced total health-care costs following intervention. According to data presented at the 2017 Palliative and...
A new electronic curriculum delivered via e-mail with push technology may provide an efficient, cost-effective solution to the shortage of palliative care faculty serving the nation’s oncology fellowship programs. According to data presented at the 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology...
A new study has shed light on how palliative care interventions may improve patient outcomes. According to data presented at the 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium,1 patients with incurable cancer who received early integrated palliative care had an increased use of active...
For 50 years, clinicians in the United States have had a legal duty to disclose to patients with cancer the risks, benefits, and alternatives to a proposed cancer treatment. Until recently, however, it has been unclear whether clinicians have a similar duty to discuss the costs of that treatment....
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEMATOLOGY (ASH) has elected Stephanie Lee, MD, MPH, a member of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch), as its Vice President. Dr. Lee will begin her 1-year term after the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition in December...
NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) researchers have found that for the most common high-risk type of human papillomavirus (HPV) to cause cervical cancer, an important viral gene may need to have a precise DNA sequence. The findings, published by Mirabello et al in Cell,1 contribute to a better...
Nicaragua, situated between Costa Rica and Honduras, is the poorest country in Central America. Following the U.S. occupation in 1912, the Somoza family began a brutal political dynasty that would end in 1979 during the bloody Nicaraguan Revolution. Marcela G. del Carmen, MD, MPH, Chief Medical...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Sheila N. Garland, PhD, R Psych, and Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, present...
In recognition of her work in value-based care, Barbara McAneny, MD, FASCO, MACP, was honored with the Annual Achievement Award of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC). Her work in developing the grant-funded COME HOME oncology medical home initiative demonstrated reduced costs and...
On October 1, 2017, nutritional epidemiologist Marian Neuhouser, PhD, RD, became head of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch). She replaces Acting Program Head Johanna Lampe, PhD, RD, Associate Director of...
On September 22, 2017, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of recurrent locally advanced or metastatic, gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with tumors expressing programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1), as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug...
In a meta-analysis reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Pan et al for the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG), it was found that breast cancer recurs at a steady incidence following cessation of adjuvant endocrine therapy after 5 years, with the risk...
It had been an uneventful Sunday morning, and I was writing my final note for the day, hopeful to make a stealth exit and perhaps join my family at church. But as I closed the chart and looked up, I saw Ruthie, my oncology fellow, approaching with a grim expression. “I just left the room of a...
Oncologists are apt to give patients the worst news of their lives: You have cancer. Yet studies show that, by and large, despite the stressful aspects of treating people with a life-threatening disease, oncologists report one of the highest percentages of professional satisfaction among medical...
Invited discussant Eric Van Cutsem, MD, PhD, of the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, put the JACOB trial findings in context of what is known for HER2-positive metastatic gastric/gastroesophageal junction cancer, where two targeted agents are approved: trastuzumab (Herceptin) in the first...
THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (MATCH) clinical trial has achieved the goal of screening nearly 6,000 patients in just under 2 years, according to data presented at the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research–NCI–European Organisation for Research...
Bloodless stem cell transplantation, performed without the transfusion of allogeneic blood or blood products, has numerous clinical advantages, especially among populations of patients who prefer, for religious or other reasons, no blood methods of medical and surgical treatment. Patricia A. Ford, ...
ON OCTOBER 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), a cell-based gene therapy, to treat adult patients with certain types of large B-cell lymphoma who have not responded to or who have relapsed after at least two other kinds of treatment....
According to Alberto Sobrero, MD, Head of Medical Oncology at Ospedale San Martino in Genova, Italy, the results of the pivotal IDEA trial, which evaluated the optimal duration of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer, were not clear to clinicians.1 The combined analysis of six...
The Formal discussant of this presentation, Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, said, “Tailoring treatment to biology results in incremental improvements in outcome.” She continued: “This analysis gives us excellent data on the natural history of mostly hormone...
CLINICIANS ARE now well acquainted with BRAF mutations in advanced melanoma, but there is more to genomics in this disease than identifying BRAF and prescribing a BRAF inhibitor. At the 2017 Debates and Didactics Conference, held at Sea Island, Georgia, Melinda L. Yushak, MD, MPH, of Emory...
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, marks the 6th consecutive year of #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving that celebrates philanthropy. Taking place on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday serves as a reminder that the holiday season is about giving back as well as giving gifts. Those...
A large subset analysis of the MINDACT trial suggests that oncologists may be undertreating women with small (< 1 cm) node-negative breast tumors, which are clinically considered to be low risk but can be genomically high risk. About one in four women with small node-negative breast tumors <...
The ASCO Nominating Committee, which is itself elected by ASCO members, is charged with selecting candidates for future Society leadership. This job is both a great pleasure and a real challenge, since ASCO has so many dedicated members who have the desire, insight, and ability to lead our...
Invited discussant Nadia Harbeck, MD, PhD, Head of the Breast Center of the University of Munich (LMU), Germany, said the UNICANCER-NeoPAL trial points toward the future of endocrine therapy in early breast cancer—using cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors as a means of “enhancing” this ...
The phase III SWOG S1202 trial has shown benefit of the antidepressant agent duloxetine in reducing aromatase inhibitor–associated joint pain in women with early-stage breast cancer. These results were reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Henry et al. Study Details In the...
A randomized trial in 650 patients has confirmed the safety and efficacy of a new second-line treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer, researchers reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia 2017 Congress (Abstract LBA3_PR). Oral fluorinated pyrimidines have been...
As neoadjuvant treatment of women with high-risk luminal breast cancer, the combination of letrozole and palbociclib (Ibrance) did not reduce the residual cancer burden or improve the rates of breast-conserving surgery, in the phase II UNICANCER- NeoPAL study presented at the 2017 European Society ...
On April 28, 2017, brigatinib (Alunbrig) was granted accelerated approval for the treatment of patients with metastatic anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have had disease progression on or are intolerant to crizotinib (Xalkori).1,2 Supporting Efficacy...
On June 22, 2017, regular approvals were granted to dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) given in combination for the treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with BRAF V600E mutation as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved...
Stand Up To Cancer, joined by the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, LUNGevity, and the American Lung Association, announced that four teams of top researchers will study lung and pancreatic cancers using a new approach of “cancer interception” at their earliest stages. “The...
With the availability of at least five checkpoint inhibitors to treat non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and other solid tumors, appropriate patient selection for these expensive treatments remains key. The hope is that testing the level of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in tumor ...
On July 17, 2017, neratinib (Nerlynx) a dual inhibitor of HER2 and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), was approved for extended adjuvant treatment of adults with early-stage HER2-overexpressed/amplified breast cancer following adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin)-based therapy.1,2 Supporting...
On September 28, 2017, the cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) inhibitor abemaciclib (Verzenio) was approved for use in combination with fulvestrant (Faslodex) for women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer with disease progression following...
As computer-based physician support systems for decision-making in cancer management continue to evolve, “we will come to embrace this as something that liberates us to spend more time on the human aspects of cancer care,” Andrew D. Seidman, MD, told participants at the 2017 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer ...
While age remains a major risk factor for breast cancer, with nearly 80% of new cases occurring in women aged 50 years and older, women diagnosed at a younger age generally have poorer outcomes. This is partly because premenopausal women are more likely to have triple-negative breast cancer, which ...
The treatment of triple-negative breast cancer is rapidly evolving, as clinical trials continue to test chemotherapy agents and combinations and immunotherapy studies promise potentially “game-changing” interventions early in the course of disease, Joyce O’Shaughnessy, MD, reported at the 19th...