In an equatorial African region known as the “lymphoma belt,” children are ten times more likely than in other parts of the world to develop Burkitt lymphoma. This area is also plagued by high rates of malaria, and scientists have spent the past 50 years trying to understand how the two ...
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have identified a molecular partnership in pancreatic cancer cells that might help to explain how the disease metastasizes in some cases. Their findings reveal urgently needed new targets to treat pancreatic cancer and were published by Foley et...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Palumbo et al, the International Myeloma Working Group recommends the use of a revised international staging system (R-ISS) for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma that incorporates chromosomal abnormalities detected by interphase fluorescent in situ...
Medulloblastoma, the most commonly occurring malignant brain tumor in children, can be classified into four subgroups, each with a different risk profile requiring subgroup-specific therapy. Currently, subgroup determination is done after surgical removal of the tumor. Investigators at...
Duke University researchers found that packaging the widely used cancer drug paclitaxel into nanoparticles more than doubled the drug’s effectiveness in destroying tumors in preclinical models. Their findings were published by Bhattacharyya et al in Nature Communications. Paclitaxel has been ...
Older persons are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population and account for the majority of cancer diagnoses and deaths and the majority of cancer survivors. However, since this population is underrepresented in clinical trials, the evidence base for treating older patients is poor. As...
A team of researchers at Barts Cancer Institute–Queen Mary University of London has discovered a combination of three proteins found at high levels in urine that can accurately detect early-stage pancreatic cancer. The discovery could lead to a noninvasive, inexpensive test to...
More than 80,000 people undergo resection of a pulmonary tumor each year, and currently the only method to determine whether the tumor is malignant is histologic analysis. A new study reported that a targeted molecular contrast agent can be used successfully to render lung adenocarcinomas...
After decades of overtreatment for low-risk prostate cancer and inadequate management of its more aggressive forms, patients are now more likely to receive medical care matched to level of risk, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, San...
A new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, reveals a protein’s critical—and previously unknown—role in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The finding offers a novel target for better treating AML, and...
Scientists at Lawson Health Research Institute have uncovered an important new target for ovarian cancer therapy. Contrary to current research, this new study found that LKB1, a molecule that regulates the metabolism of many adult cells, is important in the cancer's promotion and survival. These...
Although palliative chemotherapy is used to improve quality of life for patients with end-stage cancer, a study evaluating its use found that palliative chemotherapy did not improve quality of life near death for patients with a moderate or poor performance status and that it worsened quality of...
A “pill on a string” developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge could help doctors detect esophageal cancer at an early stage, helping them overcome the problem of wide variation between biopsies, suggests research published by Ross-Innes et al in Nature Genetics. The...
Delcath Systems, Inc, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Orphan Products Development has granted Orphan Drug designation to melphalan for the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma. Cholangiocarcinoma is recognized by the FDA as an orphan disease,...
By combining two modalities of imaging, investigators from Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth, led by Keith Paulsen, PhD, and collaborators from Xijing Hospital in Xian, China, demonstrated that a dual breast exam using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and near-infrared spectral tomography is ...
The enzyme phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) appears to be exploited in almost every type of human cancer, making it the focus of considerable interest as a therapeutic target, with many PI3K-inhibiting drugs currently in various stages of clinical development. However, PI3K inhibitors have only ...
On the hunt for better cancer screening tests, Johns Hopkins scientists led a proof-of-principle study that successfully identified tumor DNA shed in the blood and saliva of 93 patients with head and neck cancer. A report on the findings was published by Wang et al in Science Translational...
A protein encoded by the gene glypican-1 (GPC1) present on cancer exosomes may be used as part of a potential noninvasive diagnostic and screening tool to detect early pancreatic cancer, potentially at a stage amenable to surgical treatment, according to a study completed by University of Texas MD...
Janssen Biotech, Inc, announced the opening of a daratumumab expanded access program for eligible U.S. patients. Daratumumab is an investigational human anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody being evaluated in clinical trials as a treatment for patients with multiple myeloma. The multicenter, open-label...
Researchers have a significantly better understanding of the genetic alterations found in cutaneous melanoma as part of a multi-institution, international effort of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The study, published in Cell, refined and revealed new molecular subgroups of patients who could...
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered that inhibiting the immune receptor protein TLR4 may not be a wise treatment strategy in all cancers, as research now shows TLR4 can either promote or inhibit breast cancer cell growth depending on mutations in...
A large population-based prospective analysis of the consumption of psoralen-rich citrus products and the risk of malignant melanoma has found that the melanoma risk was 36% higher in people who consumed citrus fruit or juice at least 1.6 times daily compared with those who consumed it less than...
A large international prospective study investigating the safety and effectiveness of using annual low-dose computed tomography (CT) as a screening tool to monitor nonsolid lung nodules has found that CT was accurate in identifying nodules that were likely to become cancerous. The study also found...
New research published by Søgaard et al in Blood found that blood clots in the abdominal veins might be an indicator of undiagnosed cancer. The study also suggests that these clots predict poorer survival in patients with liver and pancreatic cancer. Clotting and Cancer Risk Compared to...
A single dose of the recombinant human papillomavirus (HPV) bivalent (types 16 and 18) vaccine (Cervarix) appears to be as effective in preventing certain HPV infections as three doses, the currently recommended course of vaccination, concluded a study published by Kreimer et al in The Lancet...
In the largest study of its kind, transplant physicians at Mayo Clinic in Florida have found that liver cancer patients have similar beneficial outcomes whether using organs donated by patients after cardiac death or brain death. The study was recently published by Croome et al in the American...
Interpace Diagnostics, a subsidiary of PDI, Inc, announced new data demonstrating the clinical value of BarreGen, a molecular diagnostic test that predicts the risk of progression from Barrett’s esophagus to esophageal cancer approximately 3 to 4 years before the cancer develops. These...
A recent analysis of a large observational study has revealed that men with a history of asthma are less likely than those without it to develop lethal prostate cancer, researchers at Johns Hopkins reported. These findings were published by Platz et al in the International Journal of Cancer....
ASCO’s wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary, CancerLinQ LLC, provided the first demonstration of its groundbreaking health information technology platform at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. Beginning May 30, demonstrations of the CancerLinQ platform’s initial components were...
Investigators for the nationwide trial NCI-MATCH: Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice announced at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago that the precision medicine trial will open to patient enrollment in July. The trial seeks to determine whether targeted therapies for people whose tumors...
ASCO announced its first-ever clinical trial, which will offer patients with advanced cancer access to molecularly targeted cancer drugs and collect “real-world” data on clinical outcomes, to help learn the best uses of these drugs outside of indications approved by the U.S. Food and...
First results from a randomized phase III study show that the combination of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and bendamustine (Treanda)/rituximab (Rituxan) improves outcomes for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that progressed despite prior therapy. At a median follow-up of 17 months,...
Adding the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody obinutuzumab (Gazyva) to standard bendamustine (Treanda) chemotherapy and then following that with single-agent obinutuzumab maintenance therapy “resulted in a statistically significant, but more importantly, a clinically meaningful increase in...
Immunotherapy with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) produced a clinically meaningful overall response rate in a study among 132 patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. The overall objective response rate was 24.8%, and 57% of patients experienced some tumor...
A phase I/II study testing the safety and antitumor activity of nivolumab (Opdivo) in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma has revealed one of the first signs that immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors will have a role in the treatment of liver cancer. The results and potential implications...
In the phase III CONCUR trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Li et al found that the multikinase inhibitor regorafenib (Stivarga) improved overall survival vs placebo in Asian patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer. Regorafenib has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug...
Expanding on the Consolidated Payments for Oncology Care (CPOC) payment model circulated last year to improve the quality and affordability of care for patients with cancer, ASCO’s new Patient-Centered Oncology Payment: Payment Reform to Support Higher Quality, More Affordable Cancer Care...
In a population-based study reported in JAMA Oncology, Thomas and colleagues found significantly poorer disease-specific survival among melanoma patients with stage ≥ T2b tumors with NRAS or BRAF mutation. Study Details The study included data from 912 U.S. or Australian patients in the...
An early-phase study testing the anti–PD-L1 agent MPDL3280A in combination with standard chemotherapy in the treatment of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has provided promising early results, prompting multiple phase III studies in lung cancer. The findings are being...
In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, physician-scientists at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center, Seidman Cancer Center, and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine found that a new, noninvasive technology for colon cancer screening is a promising alternative to colonoscopy...
The new nine-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (Gardasil 9) can potentially prevent 80% of cervical cancers in the United States, if given to all 11- or 12-year-old children before they are exposed to the virus. Additionally, the new vaccine, which includes seven cancer-causing...
Using brain tumor samples collected from children in the United States and Europe, an international team of scientists found that the drug panobinostat (Farydak) and similar gene-regulating drugs may be effective at treating diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an aggressive and lethal form of...
Some at-risk patients opted out of comprehensive cancer gene screening when presented with the opportunity to be tested for the presence of genes linked to various cancers, according to a recent study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the...
Taking aspirin reduces a person's risk of colorectal cancer, but the molecular mechanisms involved have remained unknown, until a recent discovery by researchers at The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota. These findings were published by Li et al in EBioMedicine. EGFR and COX-2 Association ...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Coromilas et al found that axillary lymph node evaluation is frequently performed in women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), and a number of hospital or surgeon characteristics are associated with likelihood of evaluation. As noted by the authors, benefit...
ASCO issued an endorsement of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) evidence-based guideline on external-beam radiotherapy for patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The ASCO endorsement was published by Bezjak et al in the Journal of Clinical...
The PREVAIL trial showed that enzalutamide (Xtandi) improved overall survival and progression-free survival vs placebo in asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic chemotherapy-naive patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. In analyses reported in The Lancet Oncology, Loriot et al...
The American College of Physicians (ACP) released its clinical advice for cervical cancer screening in asymptomatic, average-risk women 21 years or older. Women at average risk are defined as those with no history of a precancerous lesion (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or a more severe ...
A clinical trial of the EGFR inhibitor AZD9291 in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had disease progression after previous treatment with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors has found that the drug was highly active—achieving a 95% disease control rate—in...
Despite strong evidence and guidelines supporting its use, postsurgical radiation therapy for prostate cancer patients at risk of tumor recurrence is declining in the United States. The study, published by Sineshaw et al in European Urology, finds fewer than 10% of patients at risk of tumor...