The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center has appointed Charles G. Mullighan, MBBS (Hons), MSc, MD, as its new Deputy Director. In this new position, Dr. Mullighan will help guide precision medicine and preclinical strategic research initiatives for the Center, which is...
The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health (SKCC) recently welcomed Anjali Mishra, PhD, and Nitin Chakravarti, PhD, to its team of researchers focused on hematologic cancers. Both Drs. Mishra and Chakravarti are Assistant Professors in the Department of Medical Oncology. Dr. Mishra is a...
Immunotherapies are radically changing outcomes, but while helping patients, they are creating complexities surrounding their cost. At the 2019 Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), a roundtable of experts, including clinicians and payers, discussed how chimeric...
On April 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the first-line treatment of patients with stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are not candidates for surgical resection or definitive chemoradiation, or those with metastatic NSCLC....
The AIM at Melanoma Foundation recently announced the grand opening of the first branch of the International Melanoma Tissue Bank Consortium (IMTBC) at the Hillman Cancer Center, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). The Pittsburgh site is the first of six global locations of the...
With increasing knowledge on the key role of the tumor microenvironment in lymphomagenesis, treatments for indolent B-cell lymphoma, especially follicular lymphoma, are mechanistically moving toward a more immunomodulatory approach. Chemotherapy-free regimens are an attractive alternative to...
In the phase III AUGMENT trial, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, John P. Leonard, MD, of Meyer Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and colleagues found that the addition of lenalidomide to rituximab significantly prolonged progression-free survival...
Over the past year, in recognition of their research and dedication to treating patients with cancer, several physician-scientists from City of Hope received awards, fellowships, and honor society inductions. These recipients listed below are experts in a variety of cancers and treatments, ranging...
Posters presented at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) Annual Conference continue to grow in number and in quality. The ASCO Post presents a few that we found interesting at the recent 2019 meeting. Next-Generation Sequencing Not Always Helpful in Practice The value of...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has shown remarkable efficacy in the treatment of certain hematologic malignancies, including several types of large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved...
In just 5 years since its launch in 2014, CancerLinQ®, ASCO’s big-data, rapid-learning, health information technology platform, has grown from 37 vanguard oncology practices to 58 participating practices in 2016 to 100 diverse oncology practices nationwide this year. CancerLinQ...
For recurrent, previously irradiated brain tumors, innovative treatment with surgically targeted brachytherapy yielded good local control and overall survival, as compared to historic controls, neurosurgeons reported at the 2019 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Association of Neurological...
ASCO and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) hosted a reception on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress and their staff to underscore the two organizations’ shared policy priorities to improve research and cancer care delivery for patients and survivors. During the...
ASCO recently announced a new task force aimed at reducing disparities and improving outcomes for patients and survivors of cancer who live in rural communities. The new Rural Cancer Care Task Force will identify opportunities to close the rural cancer care gap and implement strategies to improve...
The Cancer.Net blog (accessible at cancer.net/blog) features daily posts covering research highlighted at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting. Patients and caregivers can learn what this research means for their care and treatment. The Cancer.Net blog also offers continuing coverage from the ASCO Annual...
Join the discussion: Use #ASCO19 on Twitter and Instagram to follow and participate in conversations about the ASCO Annual Meeting in real time. During last year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, more than 17,000 health-care professionals, researchers, news outlets, patients, and advocates sent more than...
The work of nine researchers who have previously received funding from Conquer Cancer is featured in ASCO’s Clinical Cancer Advances 2019. Visit CONQUER.ORG/CCA for more details. In two separate trials, Conquer Cancer–supported investigators produced research results that improved treatment for...
Two of the nation’s leading lung cancer organizations—the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) and the Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA)—announced in April their merger to form the GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer. The new organization, which has offices in Washington, DC, and the San Francisco...
Improve the care your practice provides by participating in ASCO’s wide array of quality improvement programs. ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) is an oncologist-led, practice-based quality assessment program designed to promote excellence in cancer care by helping practices...
A must-attend event in cancer care, the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting will bring thousands of oncology professionals from around the world to Chicago. The theme for this year’s meeting, selected by 2018–2019 ASCO President Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, sets an exciting tone for the...
The University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center has launched a study to determine how financial assistance for costs associated with clinical trial participation might increase enrollment, particularly among low-income patients and racial and ethnic minorities. The...
In a clinical practice guideline released April 15, an ASCO Expert Panel outlined the latest recommendations for the duration of adjuvant chemotherapy with a fluoropyrimidine and oxaliplatin for patients with completely resected stage III colon cancer.1 New recommendations were based on the results ...
ASCO and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) have released an update to existing guidelines for use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents to manage anemia in patients with cancer.1 “The current update aims to increase awareness of recent developments regarding the use of...
Young age appears to be a risk factor for locoregional recurrence after mastectomy for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) with or without microinvasion, according to data presented at the 2019 Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Cancer Symposium.1 The retrospective analysis of more than 3,000 cases...
The discovery of trastuzumab has been revolutionary in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer, both in the metastatic and early-stage settings.1-6 This cannot be disputed. In the early-stage setting, the addition of trastuzumab to standard chemotherapy has led to a 50% gain in...
In the phase III KATHERINE trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine,1Gunter von Minckwitz, MD, of the German Breast Group, Neu-Isenburg, and colleagues found that adjuvant treatment with the antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) improved invasive disease–free survival...
Results from a study published by Cykert et al in The Journal of the National Medical Association show that a pragmatic system-based intervention within cancer treatment centers can nearly eliminate existing disparities in treatment and outcomes for black patients with early-stage...
“MYSTIC is the second phase III trial to compare a first-line immune checkpoint inhibitor with platinum that failed to meet the primary endpoint. However, both MYSTIC and CheckMate 026 identified patients who benefited from an immune checkpoint inhibitor based on tumor mutational burden,”...
The search for biomarkers to identify patients who are likely to respond to immunotherapy continues. According to biomarker tissue and blood analysis of patients enrolled in the phase III MYSTIC trial, high tumor mutational burden in both tissue and blood identified patients with non–small cell...
In a Norwegian study (To-Be) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Hofvind et al found that digital breast tomosynthesis (including synthetic 2D mammograms) did not perform better than standard digital mammography in a population-based breast cancer screening program. Study Details BreastScreen Norway ...
The 24th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) was held this past March in Orlando, Florida. Updates to a number of Clinical Practice Guidelines (NCCN Guidelines®) were reported, including three relevant to the field of genitourinary oncology: kidney cancer,...
THE COMBINATION of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab has demonstrated antitumor activity in patients with advanced urothelial cancer, including patients receiving later-line treatment. Results of a phase Ib/II trial showed an objective response rate of 25% and a median progression-free survival of 5.4...
A phase III Egyptian trial presented by Mohamad S. Zaghloul, MD, et al at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium focused on the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced bladder cancer treated with postoperative radiotherapy.1 Researchers compared postoperative...
Adding enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to the results of the ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis in the phase III LATITUDE trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of abiraterone acetate plus prednisone to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in newly diagnosed,...
In a trial with a modified primary endpoint due to slow accrual reported in JAMA Oncology,1 Axel Bex, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that deferred cytoreductive nephrectomy after sunitinib did not improve the 28-week progression-free rate vs immediate nephrectomy followed by sunitinib in patients...
Cabozantinib, a kinase inhibitor, is approved in metastatic renal cell carcinoma on the basis of studies in clear cell histology. Its activity in non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma is poorly defined. In a retrospective cohort study, Nieves Martinez Chanzá, MD, and colleagues reported that...
The TIVO-3 trial was conducted to confirm progression-free survival results from the TIVO-1 trial, which found an improvement in median progression-free survival in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated with tivozanib vs sorafenib. Findings from TIVO-3 were presented by Rini et al...
IN A RETROSPECTIVE analysis of median overall survival from the phase III METEOR trial,1 Ignacio Duran, MD, PhD, and colleagues sought to determine whether early tumor shrinkage following therapy with cabozantinib or everolimus could be an early indicator of prognosis for patients with...
The recently released ASCO Clinical Practice Provisional Clinical Opinion on Evaluating Susceptibility to Pancreatic Cancer highlights the importance of emerging data indicating a relatively high rate of germline mutations in pancreatic cancer.1 Recent studies have demonstrated that up to 1 in 10...
THE FRONT-LINE systemic treatment landscape for metastatic renal cell carcinoma has undergone tremendous movement over the past several years. A better understanding of the current management paradigm for therapy-naive patients warrants a reflection of historic landmark clinical trials that have...
TWO RECENTLY reported phase III trials have shown the benefits of combination therapy vs sunitinib in the first-line treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma. As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Brian I. Rini, MD, of Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and colleagues,...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®), covering eight tumor types. NCCN Guidelines are now published for more than 70 tumor types and topics. Some of the key updates for 2019 were presented...
“Older and frail adults with cancer are the types of patients we deal with every day,” said Armin Shahrokni, MD, a geriatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “The GO2 study is important, and I suspect it will be practice-changing,” he predicted. Older and frail...
A large randomized trial has found that frail and elderly patients with advanced gastroesophageal cancer may be safely and successfully treated with dose-reduced chemotherapy. In the GO2 phase III trial, low doses of oxaliplatin/capecitabine performed similarly to intermediate and high doses of the ...
IMMUNOTHERAPY WITH the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab may prove to be an effective option for patients with advanced non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma, according to results in cohort B of the KEYNOTE-427 trial, presented at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.1 Kidney cancers with a...
The past year has seen groundbreaking advances in the treatment of genitourinary (GU) cancers, which in some cases are resulting in altering the standard of care for patients with renal cell carcinoma, prostate cancer, and urothelial carcinoma. Some of the biggest changes that have occurred are for ...
This past year, I have traveled thousands of miles across the United States meeting with ASCO members and their patients, focusing on members who care for patients in particularly challenging settings. While I am not surprised by the extraordinary work our members are doing in every region of the...
For more than 3 decades, Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, has dedicated his medical career to researching the development of chemotherapies for breast cancer, including ado-trastuzumab emtansine, everolimus, and gemcitabine. In addition, he is credited with changing the standard of...
In patients with intermediate- to high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma, treatment with single-agent lenalidomide, vs observation, led to a 72% reduction in the risk of disease progression at 3 years.1 Results of the phase III E3A06 study were presented at a press briefing in advance of the 2019...