In the phase III DANUBE trial, reported in The Lancet Oncology, Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that durvalumab monotherapy did not prolong overall survival vs standard chemotherapy in previously untreated patients with largely metastatic urothelial carcinoma with high PD-L1...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Stephen R.D. Johnston, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III monarchE trial has shown that adjuvant abemaciclib plus endocrine therapy significantly improved invasive disease–free survival vs endocrine therapy alone in patients with hormone...
Five years ago, as Rachel B. Issaka, MD, MAS, was beginning her second year as a gastroenterology fellow and feeling proud of the progress she was making in her training, she was suddenly confronted with an all-too-familiar slight that underrepresented minority providers may often experience. As...
In a paper published by Banerjee et al in JAMA Network Open, researchers reported that genetic testing is cost-effective and beneficial for newly diagnosed patients with metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), a type of soft-tissue sarcoma that develops in specialized nerve cells in the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gallamini et al, the final analysis of the phase III GITIL/FIL HD0607 trial has shown that consolidation radiotherapy did not improve progression-free survival vs no further treatment in patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma and a baseline large...
Each year in the United States, about five million adults with cancer are admitted to hospitals. Given our aging population, this trend will increase, putting added stress on the oncology community, which is already dealing with an impending workforce shortage. Although physician extenders, such...
Monika K. Krzyzanowska, MD, MPH, of the Princess Margaret University Health Network, discusses study findings on remote proactive telephone-based toxicity management for patients with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy. Although the telehealth program was associated with fewer grade 3 toxicities...
MK-4830—a novel, first-in-class human IgG4 monoclonal antibody targeting the myeloid-specific anti–immunoglobulin-like transcript 4 (ILT4) receptor—administered either as a single agent or in combination with pembrolizumab was well tolerated and showed activity in heavily pretreated patients with...
Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis is a minimally invasive genomic assessment tool utilizing targeted next-generation sequencing of peripheral blood. At the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020, Zengin et al reported genomic results from a large cohort of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dores et al found that patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma continue to be at elevated risk for mortality from causes other than lymphoma, despite advances in treating this disease. As stated by the investigators, “Mortality for patients...
Upon hospital admission for cancer, many patients already demonstrated a high prevalence of malnutrition per Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria, which was associated with the risk of developing a nosocomial infection, according to findings presented by Nuñez Abad et al at...
Pembrolizumab monotherapy induced responses in patients with rare sarcomas that varied by histotype, according to findings presented by Jean-Yves Blay, MD, at the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020 (Abstract 1619O). Methods Dr. Blay presented first results from a cohort of patients with rare sarcomas in...
In a quality-of-life analysis from the phase IV CARD trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Karim Fizazi, MD, and colleagues found that cabazitaxel was associated with improved pain response, time to pain progression, and time to symptomatic skeletal events vs abiraterone or enzalutamide in...
In a Danish Breast Cancer Group phase III trial (DBCG HYPO) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Offersen et al found no difference in the rates of breast induration with moderately hypofractionated vs standard fractionated radiotherapy in women with early breast cancer or ductal carcinoma ...
In response to studies showing that between 30% and 60% of patients with blood cancer are at risk of death if infected with COVID-19 compared with patients who are cancer-free, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) has announced its launch of the first clinical trial dedicated solely to this...
Incidence rates for pancreatic cancer were 6-fold to 10-fold higher among participants in a study who had recent-onset diabetes and weight loss.1 This led the study authors to write: “The coexistence of these symptoms should be recognized by clinicians given that both the relative and absolute...
Flexibilities in reimbursement that have allowed the expanded use of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic should continue and be made available to more providers and patients, according to a recent statement from ASCO. ASCO Interim Position Statement: Telemedicine in Cancer Care also calls for ...
A large cohort study with close to 160,000 men and women reported that “recent-onset diabetes accompanied by weight loss was associated with a substantial increase in risk for pancreatic cancer and may represent a high-risk group in the general population for whom early detection strategies would...
MorphoSys and Incyte have announced that tafasitamab-cxix, a humanized Fc-modified cytolytic CD19-targeting monoclonal antibody, has been included in the latest National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines® (NCCN Guidelines®) in Oncology for B-Cell Lymphomas. Specifically,...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Stephen W. Duffy, MSc, of the Centre for Cancer Prevention, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, final results of the UK Age Trial show that initiation of annual mammography screening for breast cancer at...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jean-Jacques Grob, MD, PhD, of Aix-Marseille University, France, and colleagues, the first interim analysis of the phase II KEYNOTE-629 trial has shown the achievement of durable responses with pembrolizumab treatment of recurrent or metastatic...
Delays and cancellation of cancer treatments and other safety measures undertaken to minimize the risk of exposure to COVID-19 have generated a huge backlog in oncology care and research. The threat of delayed diagnoses looms while oncology professionals face burnout, according to new studies...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Daniel O. Persky, MD, of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, and colleagues, the phase II Intergroup National Clinical Trials Network Study S1001 has shown good outcomes with positron-emission tomography (PET)-directed therapy in...
In september, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released new data from the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). The results, published by Wang et al in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), showed 1.8 ...
“Older adults form the majority of patients with cancer.” For more than 3 decades now, almost every article, presentation, or discussion related to cancer and aging started with this statement. As I entered the field of geriatric oncology, I thought that by simply stating this fact, everyone would...
Most of the newer systemic treatments for breast cancer can be safely and effectively paired with radiation therapy—although there are some exceptions, according to Mylin A. Torres, MD, the Louisa and Rand Glenn Family Chair in Breast Cancer Research and Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at ...
Neratinib is an oral pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for two indications. The first is as adjuvant treatment of early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer following adjuvant trastuzumab therapy. The second is in combination with...
The first half of 2016 was arguably the most exciting of my life. My wife, Jaione, and I had decided to leave the United Kingdom and move with our two children, Andrew, then 14, and Alba, then 10, to Denver, where I was taking on a leadership role in corporate affairs for a brewery company. By the...
She was elderly, slightly confused, and very, very worried. I was not quite sure why. It was a minor procedure—a routine angiogram, one of a dozen to be performed that morning. The risks were so small that the job of admitting her had been handed to me, then a final-year medical student, with a...
Born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1919, Ezra M. Greenspan, MD, did not stray far from his birthplace, spending most of his 5-decade medical career in New York. After graduating from New York University School of Medicine in 1942, he was accepted into the house training program at Mount Sinai Hospital...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Botswana. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
As a young girl growing up in central New Jersey, Joyce F. Liu, MD, MPH, a medical oncologist specializing in gynecologic cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, dreamed of becoming an astronaut. However, she realized her fear of heights and propensity for motion sickness didn’t jive with...
The text and photograph here are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, The Antiseptic Era 1876–1900 by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photograph appears courtesy of Stanley B. Burns, MD, and The Burns...
On July 24, 2020, brexucabtagene autoleucel, a CD19-directed genetically modified autologous T-cell immunotherapy, was granted accelerated approval for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.1,2 Brexucabtagene autoleucel is approved with a Risk Evaluation...
Outcomes in patients with triple-class–failure relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma who experience disease progression on immunomodulatory agents, proteasome inhibitors, and CD38 antibodies are dismal. Most recently, early results of three anti-B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) chimeric antigen...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Cristina Saura, MD, of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, and colleagues, the phase III NALA trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with the irreversible pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor neratinib plus...
As reported inThe Lancet Oncology by Michael C. Heinrich, MD, of the VA Portland Health Care System and the Oregon Health & Science University Knight Cancer Institute, and colleagues, the phase I NAVIGATOR trial showed that the PDGFRA and KIT kinase inhibitor avapritinib produced a high...
Age is not just a number when it comes to prognosis for invasive breast cancer. According to data presented during the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care, age at diagnosis of breast cancer is a highly prognostic clinical variable that warrants...
Christopher Anker, MD, a radiation oncologist at The University of Vermont Medical Center and Associate Professor at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, Burlington, told The ASCO Post that although the benefit to overall survival disappeared with time likely due to a power ...
Improved local-regional tumor control may not be enough to justify the increased morbidity of adding neoadjuvant radiation to chemotherapy in esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers, according to a pair of studies presented during the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International...
George J. Chang, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS, of the Department of Surgical Oncology at The University of MD Anderson Cancer Center, told The ASCO Post that although adjuvant therapy in stage II disease has been shown to improve outcomes in patients with certain high-risk features, “the benefits are...
Findings from a retrospective cohort study could fuel the debate over the use of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer, according to data presented during the virtual edition of the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care.1 Results of the...
In a demonstration of global collaboration, clinician-scientists have pooled data from 121 hospitals in 8 countries to find that inexpensive, widely available steroids may improve the odds that very sick patients with COVID-19 will survive the illness. The findings were made through the Randomized...
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 September 1, 2020, azacitidine tabletswere approved...
Liquid biopsies using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) have the potential to personalize medicine for patients with lymphoma, going beyond traditional markers and risk factors to provide dynamic assessments over time. Expanded applications of ctDNA liquid biopsy beyond diagnosis include early response ...
Commenting on this presentation, session moderator Christopher Flowers, MD, Chair of the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, said: “The treatment of adolescent and young adult patients with lymphoma remains a considerable challenge. The...
The late effects of adolescent and young adults (AYA) with lymphomas are considerable and have not been given much attention, according to Theresa Keegan, MD, of the University of California at Davis. “Lymphoma is one of the most commonly occurring malignancies in AYAs,” she stated. “The 5-year...
“Good morning! I’m Dr. Saksena. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I wave my introduction as I enter the room. Two women sit beside each other. One of them wears a mask that reads “lipstick optional,” and the other dons a surgical mask. This is a new visit for breast cancer, but I haven’t yet deciphered ...
Erica L. Mayer, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses an initial analysis of phase III findings from the PALLAS trial, which suggested the benefits observed in the metastatic setting with palbociclib plus endocrine therapy did not translate into the earlier adjuvant setting for...
At the 2020 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Virtual Conference, sponsored by Emory University School of Medicine and Winship Cancer Institute, Pamela Allen, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Emory, described recent trials on therapeutic approaches that are informative on this...