An updated cervical cancer screening guideline from the American Cancer Society has called for less—and more simplified—screening. The guideline was published by Elizabeth T.H. Fontham, MPH, DrPH, of Louisiana State University School of Public Health, New Orleans, and colleagues in CA: A Cancer...
Women with early-stage cervical cancer treated with minimally invasive radical hysterectomy had a 71% increased risk of recurrence and a 56% increased risk of death compared with those treated with open radical hysterectomy, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of 15 studies involving ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Vicky Makker, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues, findings from a phase Ib/II trial indicate that the combination of lenvatinib and pembrolizumab is active in patients with previously treated advanced...
Combining the HER2-targeted therapy trastuzumab with carboplatin and paclitaxel improved survival rates for women with a rare, aggressive type of endometrial cancer, according to findings published by Amanda N. Fader, MD, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues in Clinical...
The ASCO Post spoke with Alexander Melamed, MD, MPH, a gynecologic oncologist and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, New York, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York. New York state has had more coronavirus cases ...
Discussant of the abstract on the WEE1 inhibitor adavosertib, Shannon N. Westin, MD, MPH, FACOG, Associate Professor and clinical investigator at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, called the interaction between p53 and WEE1 an “opportunity for synthetic lethality.” She continued:...
Monotherapy with the experimental WEE1 inhibitor adavosertib has shown activity in patients with advanced recurrent or metastatic uterine serous carcinoma,1 according to data presented during the 2020 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer Webinar Series. The initial ...
The invited discussant of the two trials in cervical and endometrial cancers presented at the ESMO Congress 2019 was Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy, who commented on what she called “exciting results in cancers with unmet needs.” Dr. Colombo noted: “The studies...
Kathleen N. Moore, MD, Associate Professor of Gynecologic Oncology and Director of the Oklahoma TSET Phase I Clinical Trials Program, Stephenson Cancer Center, Oklahoma City, underscored the importance of studying patients with stable disease and less robust partial response, not just those with...
In studies reported at the ESMO Congress 2019, immunotherapy yielded encouraging outcomes in two gynecologic cancer populations in need of new treatments, including patients with advanced cervical cancer that is microsatellite-stable and patients previously treated for advanced endometrial cancer....
An updated analysis of the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial, presented during the 2020 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer Webinar Series,1 suggested synergy between the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor veliparib and platinum chemotherapy in the...
Results of the NRG Oncology phase III clinical trial NRG-GY004 indicated that the addition of the investigational agent cediranib to olaparib and standard platinum-based chemotherapy did not improve progression-free survival outcomes for women with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer; however,...
For the first time, overall survival has been improved with maintenance therapy involving a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor in patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer associated with BRCA1/2 mutations. In the final, preplanned, overall survival analysis in the...
Discussant of the DESKTOP III and SOC1 trials, Robert L. Coleman, MD, of U.S. Oncology Research in Woodlands, Texas, congratulated the authors of both trials. He put these results in perspective with the GOG-0213 study, which did not show a survival benefit for secondary surgery. “There are general ...
Two phase III trials provided support for secondary cytoreductive surgery in women with recurrent ovarian cancer, with the caveats that patient selection is key and the surgery should be performed at sites of excellence. The results of the DESKTOP III and SOC1 trials, both presented during the...
Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, Head of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, discussed the PRIMA/ENGOT-OV26/GOG-3012 trial along with the results of the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial of olaparib plus bevacizumab maintenance. All three trials—PRIMA, PAOLA-1,...
In women with advanced ovarian cancer responding to first-line chemotherapy, maintenance therapy with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor niraparib significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 38% overall and by 60% in women with BRCA mutations. Even patients without a...
A number of new drugs and novel indications were added to the treatment armamentarium for gynecologic cancers over the past year. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals are noted here. Olaparib, PARP Inhibitor On May 8, 2020, the FDA expanded the indication of olaparib (Lynparza) to...
Thomas J. Herzog, MD, Deputy Director, University of Cincinnati Cancer Center, who presented a distillation of the PRIMA trial data along with updated results of the phase III PAOLA-1 trial of olaparib plus bevacizumab maintenance, called the data “practice-changing.” “We’ve suspected for a while...
Making sense of maintenance therapy in advanced ovarian cancer has been a tall order since the publication of impressive data for not one but three poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2019 Congress.1 The picture became a little clearer...
Based on multiple phase III prospective trials, there is evidence that both poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors and antiangiogenic therapies such as bevacizumab provide benefit when utilized in a maintenance strategy in the first-line treatment of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (GOG...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by Isabelle Ray-Coquard, MD, PhD, of the Céntre Léon Berard, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Groupe d’Investigateurs Nationaux pour l’Etude des Cancers Ovariens (GINECO), Paris, and colleagues, the phase III PAOLA-1 trial has shown a...
Ovarian cancer is associated with the highest risk of mortality among the five most common gynecologic cancers (cervical, ovarian, uterine [endometrial], vaginal, and vulvar) in the United States; in 2020 in the United States, ovarian cancer will be diagnosed in an estimated 21,750 women, and...
In an interim analysis of the German phase II IMMUNED trial reported in The Lancet, Lisa Zimmer, MD, of University Hospital Essen, and colleagues found that adjuvant nivolumab plus ipilimumab and nivolumab alone significantly prolonged recurrence-free survival vs placebo in patients with resected...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Bradley J. Monk, MD, and colleagues, the phase III MEK Inhibitor in Low-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer (MILO)/ARRAY-162-311/ENGOT-ov11 trial showed that the MEK1/2 inhibitor binimetinib did not improve progression-free survival vs physician’s choice...
In a National Cancer Database cohort study reported in a research letter in JAMA Network Open, Ma et al found that receipt vs no receipt of adjuvant endocrine therapy was associated with improved overall survival in women with small hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancers. As...
A study published by Gaba et al in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has found that risk‐reducing early salpingectomy and delayed oophorectomy is highly acceptable among premenopausal women at increased risk for developing ovarian cancer—particularly among patients...
Doxorubicin is a standard of care in patients with advanced inoperable soft-tissue sarcoma. In the EPAZ study, German researchers tested whether pazopanib showed comparable efficacy to doxorubicin in the first-line treatment of elderly patients with soft-tissue sarcoma. Grünwald et al reported in...
On September 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved oral azacitidine (Onureg; also known as CC-486) for the continued treatment of adult patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who achieved first complete remission or complete remission with incomplete blood count recovery...
After more than 20 years of failed strategies to improve survival rates for locally advanced lung cancers, checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized therapy, but prognoses still lag behind other tumor types. During the ASCO20 Virtual Education Program, Mark G. Kris, MD, FASCO, a thoracic medical...
In a single-institution study reported in JAMA Network Open, Shahrokni et al found that postoperative care comanaged by the geriatrics service and surgical service was associated with reduced 90-day postoperative mortality vs care managed by the surgical service alone among patients aged 75 and...
In a single-center phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, McBride et al found that use of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for a potential abscopal effect together with nivolumab did not improve objective response rate vs nivolumab alone in patients with metastatic head...
The message still needs to get out that metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer should be treated with both androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) and either docetaxel or an androgen receptor pathway inhibitor. In spite of “overwhelming” support for ADT plus abiraterone/prednisone,...
The invited discussant of the ORIENT-11 trial, Misako Nagasaka, MD, a medical oncologist at Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, Detroit, noted that, if approved, sintilimab will join a crowded list of first-line immuno-oncology agents for advanced non–small cell lung cancer,...
The first-line setting for patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) now has become more complicated, according to data presented during the 2020 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s World Conference on Lung Cancer Virtual...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Bitterman et al found that Black pediatric patients enrolled in Children’s Oncology Group (COG) trials were significantly less likely to receive proton radiotherapy than non-Hispanic White pediatric patients. As stated by the investigators, “Proton radiotherapy ...
Given the rising costs of cancer care, many patients with cancer and cancer survivors are challenged by financial toxicity, the burden of care costs. Many struggle to choose a health insurance plan that best meets their needs. Moreover, these challenges are often exacerbated by limited health...
Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is a debilitating and enduring adverse effect of many antineoplastic agents, which negatively impacts the quality of life of patients with cancer and survivors. Current pharmacotherapy has limited efficacy and causes undesirable effects. In this...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Dee et al found that radiotherapy (RT) initiated at up to 6 months after the start of androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) was not associated with poorer overall survival vs initiation before ADT in men with prostate cancer. The investigators observed that these...
For patients with non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) marked by RET gene fusions, the targeted therapy selpercatinib was well tolerated and achieved durable objective responses in the majority of participants in the phase I/II LIBRETTO-001 trial, according to researchers from The University of...
In an Austrian study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Berghoff et al found that 0.4% of consecutive patients with cancer treated at Medical University of Vienna tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between March 21 and May 4, 2020, after implementation of institutional and governmental...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dunsmore et al, the phase III Children’s Oncology Group AALL0434 trial has shown that the addition of nelarabine to standard therapy improved disease-free survival in children and young adults with newly diagnosed T-cell acute lymphoblastic...
Public momentum for efforts to address structural and systemic racism has led many health-care institutions to consider how they can work to bring about positive change. In this column, drawing on important recent work by Kimani Paul-Emile, JD, PhD, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of ...
In a single-institution phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rogers et al found that the combination of obinutuzumab, ibrutinib, and venetoclax produced high response rates in both treatment-naive and relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Study Details A total ...
In a study published by Gao et al in The American Journal of Pathology, scientists reported the discovery of an increased level of the neuroprotein sortilin in pancreatic cancer cells. The investigators speculated that this finding may lead to the development of more effective treatment for...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jee et al found that the receipt of cytotoxic chemotherapy within 35 days of COVID-19 diagnosis in patients with cancer was not associated with increased risk of severe or critical COVID-19. The investigators also...
The Cancer Research Institute and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research have launched an innovative clinical trial that aims to demonstrate the utility of liquid biopsy in assessing responses of patients with lung cancer to immunotherapy (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT04093167). If the trial...
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair of Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine and an internationally recognized pioneer in molecular imaging, died on July 18, 2020, of cancer. He was 57. The Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research, Dr. Gambhir dedicated his career...
Patients prescribed tamoxifen may not report when they interrupt or discontinue therapy, according to the results of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 Using blood draws to determine serum levels of tamoxifen among 1,177 premenopausal women with invasive breast cancer, the...
Measuring serum levels of tamoxifen among premenopausal women being treated for invasive breast cancer identified a “worryingly high proportion of patients, one in six, who were nonadherent to therapy at only 1 year after treatment prescription,” researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical...