The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently announced that John D. Carpten, PhD, FAACR, has been elected by the association to serve on its Board of Directors. Dr. Carpten has accepted the position previously held by Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, PhD, who is stepping down to fulfill her...
New York University (NYU) Langone/NYU Grossman School of Medicine recently announced that Kathie-Ann Joseph, MD, MPH, has been promoted to the rank of Professor in Surgery. Dr. Joseph has also assumed the rank of Professor in Population Health. In addition, Dr. Joseph has been named the inaugural...
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” —Mark Twain To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on...
On April 23, 2021, loncastuximab tesirine-lpyl, a CD19-directed antibody and alkylating agent conjugate, was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy, including diffuse large B-cell...
The Brigham and Women’s hospital community mourns the loss of Francisco Marty, MD, of the Division of Infectious Diseases, who died April 8, 2021, after a tragic accident while hiking in the Dominican Republic. He was 53. A member of the Brigham community for more than 20 years, Dr. Marty is...
In women with locally advanced cervical cancer, adjuvant chemotherapy adds no benefit to standard cisplatin-based chemoradiation, results of the international phase III OUTBACK study have shown,1 as reported at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Linda R. Mileshkin, MD, Professor of Medical Oncology at ...
As our population rapidly ages, the burden of cancer incidence increases accordingly, creating an urgent need for greater and more incisive research on the diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship issues for older adults with cancer. Given the numerous challenges faced by today’s busy oncologists, a...
Invited discussant of the KEYNOTE-564 trial, Rana R. McKay, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Urology at the University of California San Diego, offered these comments about these trial results. “This is a positive study, showing a 32% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death with...
Adjuvant pembrolizumab following surgery significantly improved disease-free survival compared with placebo among patients with high-risk clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the international phase III KEYNOTE-564 study presented at the Plenary session during the 2021 ASCO Annual...
Morocco is an Arab country in North Africa. It covers 716,550 square kilometers and has a population of nearly 36 million. The median age is 29.3 years. Morocco’s estimated gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 was $122 million. As of 2019, Morocco’s health budget was equivalent to 4.5% of the total ...
When I interviewed for my current post as a first-time consultant in medical oncology in the United Kingdom, I was asked about my 5-year career plan. I remember some detail of my reply, but I don’t think it even remotely encompassed the depth of insight I would gain from the patients I’ve treated...
Mark G. Kris, MD, FASCO, Chief of the Thoracic Oncology Service and the William and Joy Ruane Chair in Thoracic Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, commented on the excitement in the field of lung cancer about the new drugs targeting KRAS. Sotorasib is one of several new...
Established by Michael C. Ost, MD, MBA, the 2012–2013 American Urological Association Young Urologists Committee Chair, the Young Urologist of the Year Award is presented annually to select early-career association members in recognition of their efforts and commitment to advancing the development...
Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), has been selected as a Temple University Gallery of Success honoree for 2021. Each year, Temple University showcases exceptional alumni from its 17 schools and colleges in its Gallery...
Cynthia M. Yoshida, MD, is one of six winners of a national award recognizing health-care providers and institutions for their work to increase colorectal cancer screening rates. Dr. Yoshida, a gastroenterologist and medical leader of the University of Virginia (UVA) Cancer Center’s Colorectal...
Chanita Hughes-Halbert, PhD, will join the University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center as Associate Director for Cancer Equity, a newly created position, and the Keck School of Medicine of USC as Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Preventive...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recently presented Mary B. Daly, MD, PhD, FACP, Professor in the Department of Clinical Genetics and Director of the Risk Assessment Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, with the Rodger Winn Award. The Rodger Winn Award is given annually to one NCCN...
This past October, in a virtually held ceremony of the General Assembly of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), Anil K. D’Cruz, MBBS, MS, DNB, FRCS (Hon), Director of Oncology at Apollo Hospitals in Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi, India, began his 2-year tenure as President of the global...
The breakthrough KRAS-specific inhibitor sotorasib achieved responses in patients with KRAS G12C–mutated non–small lung cancer (NSCLC) who had experienced disease progression on platinum-based chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or both treatments. The objective response rate was 37.1%, and responses...
Although both incidence and mortality rates in colorectal cancer have been declining among people older than 65 by 3.3% and 3% annually, respectively, among individuals younger than age 50, the incidence rate has risen about 2% annually, and death rates have increased by 1.3% annually.1 Colorectal...
Formal discussant of OlympiA, Nadine M. Tung, MD, Director of Breast Medical Oncology and the Cancer Genetics and Prevention Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, was enthusiastic about the ability of olaparib to improve invasive disease–free survival and...
The role of vaccines in mitigating the significant morbidity and mortality associated with infections in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a developing field of study, punctuated by the advent of novel therapeutic agents and pressing questions regarding the global SARS–CoV-2 vaccination...
Adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib for 1 year extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline (inherited) mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented at the...
In an Italian study reported in Leukemia, Francesca Romana Mauro, MD, of the Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, Sapienza University, Rome, and colleagues found that only a small minority of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) developed an adequate immune response to...
Session moderator during the 2021 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting, Sarah Blair, MD, FACS, Vice Chair of Academic Affairs for the Department of Surgery at University of California San Diego, urged widespread dissemination of these survey findings. “I was struck by how important...
Claire Harrison, MD, of Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital, discusses survival results from the JAKARTA and JAKARTA2 trials, which showed that fedratinib, an oral JAK2 inhibitor, significantly improved progression-free survival vs placebo as a first-line treatment for patients with myelofibrosis...
Gaurav Goyal, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, reports on findings from a large multi-institutional database study, which showed there was no apparent difference in overall survival between R-CHOP and R-EPOCH among patients with advanced-stage MYC-rearranged, double-hit, or...
In the Korean phase III PRODIGY trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yoon-Koo Kang, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of neoadjuvant docetaxel, oxaliplatin, and S-1 (DOS) to D2 gastrectomy followed by adjuvant S-1 was associated with improved progression-free survival in...
Most survivors of head and neck squamous cell cancers report that their sense of taste is dulled, changed, or lost during radiation treatment. In a study of taste and smell dysfunction in 40 cancer survivors, scientists found that the tips of these individuals' tongues were significantly less...
A study published by Strother et al in BJU International found that patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer can safely receive cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy, even when their tumors are blocking their kidneys. The findings suggest that patients with the most serious type of this...
A study by Lin et al comparing patients with colon cancer enrolled in the U.S. Military Health System, which provides universal health-care to its beneficiaries, with those in the general population has found that patients in the Military Health System had an 18% lower risk of death compared with...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Michael A. Thompson, MD, PhD, FASCO, and colleagues found that the use of convalescent plasma therapy was associated with improved 30-day mortality among patients with hematologic cancers hospitalized for COVID-19. Study Details The study...
In a Canadian/Australian phase II/III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Arjun Sahgal, MD, and colleagues found that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) produced a higher complete pain response rate vs conventional external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) in patients with painful spinal metastases. ...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Priority Review to therapies for multiple myeloma, cervical cancer, chemotherapy-induced neutropenia, and myelofibrosis. The FDA also granted a number of Breakthrough Therapy designations, including those for treatments in ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Paul G. Richardson, MD, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III TOURMALINE-MM1 trial showed no overall survival benefit with the addition of ixazomib to lenalidomide/dexamethasone (Rd) in relapsed or refractory multiple ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jeff M. Michalski, MBA, MD, and colleagues, the Children’s Oncology Group noninferiority phase III ACNS0331 trial has shown no decrease in event-free survival with reduced radiation boost volume in patients with newly diagnosed, average-risk...
In a prospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Frank et al found that monitoring of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) improved detection of early relapse after axicabtagene ciloleucel infusion in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma. Study Details A total of...
In a Chinese phase III study reported in The Lancet, Chen et al found that the use of adjuvant metronomic capecitabine improved failure-free survival vs observation after definitive chemoradiotherapy in patients with high-risk locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Study Details In the...
Martin Reck, MD, PhD, of LungenClinic, discusses a 2-year update of the CheckMate 9LA study, which sought to determine whether nivolumab plus ipilimumab combined with two cycles of chemotherapy is more effective than four cycles of chemotherapy alone as a first-line treatment for patients with...
Brian K. Link, MD, of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, reviews three abstracts on state-of-the-art therapies for mantle cell lymphoma: bendamustine, rituximab, lenalidomide and bortezomib; treatment patterns and outcomes for previously untreated patients; and venetoclax,...
Non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for 80% to 85% of cases of lung cancer; when it is diagnosed early, there is a 5-year survival rate of 50% to 80%. Black patients have a lower overall incidence of NSCLC than White patients but are more likely to be diagnosed at later stages. They also...
Adding the antibody-drug conjugate naratuximab emtansine to rituximab resulted in favorable overall survival and complete response rates for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), with a manageable safety profile. These findings from a phase II study were...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Eric Pujade-Lauraine, MD, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Ovarian 200 trial showed no significant improvement in progression-free or overall survival with avelumab alone or in combination with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) vs PLD alone in patients ...
Individuals with cancer or a history of cancer should be eligible for clinical trials—including COVID-19 vaccine trials—unless there is safety justification for exclusion, ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) asserted in a joint position statement released today. To date, clinical trials...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Chung-Han Lee, MD, and colleagues, findings in a cohort of the phase Ib/II Study 111/KEYNOTE-146 trial showed that the combination of lenvatinib and pembrolizumab produced high response rates among patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma...
As reported in The Lancet by Shah et al, the pivotal phase II ZUMA-3 trial has shown a high rate of complete remission with the autologous anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy brexucabtagene autoleucel (formerly KTE-X19) in adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute...
A study published by Sharp et al in The Breast Journal suggests that some patients with breast cancer may be able to forgo certain testing procedures after neoadjuvant chemotherapy without increasing their risk of cancer recurrence. Prior studies on detecting whether breast cancer has spread to...
New research has uncovered substantial differences in the rates of childhood cancers when considering a single year of age rather than grouping several years together. The study, published by Marcotte et al in the journal Cancer, also found that minority children seem to have different risks than...
In a primary analysis of the phase III GLOW study, a once-daily, all-oral, fixed-duration dose of ibrutinib and venetoclax for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) resulted in superior progression-free survival than treatment with chlorambucil and obinutuzumab. Arnon...
As reported in The Lancet by Philippe Moreau, MD, and colleagues, the phase III IKEMA trial has shown that the addition of the anti-CD38 antibody isatuximab-irfc to carfilzomib and dexamethasone resulted in significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with relapsed or refractory...