A new study led by American Cancer Society investigators found that cancer survivors are more likely to change their prescription drug use for financial reasons than those without a cancer history. These findings were published by Zheng et al in Cancer. The rising cost of cancer drugs imposes a...
As an increasing number of patients look to the internet for cancer information, researchers from the University of Alabama found that the websites of many National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers lack sufficient information to help patients with breast cancer understand all their...
An influx of new oral cancer drugs provides patients with a more convenient and less invasive way to take medication, but such treatments are often associated with adherence challenges and medical errors. New research shows that the addition of an in-house specialty pharmacy at a cancer center in...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Mackler et al found that use of a validated symptom assessment tool for patient-reported outcomes was feasible in evaluating symptom burden in outpatients receiving oral anticancer treatment in the clinical setting. Study Details The study...
People with rare cancers now have the option of joining a national clinical trial testing leading-edge immunotherapies for a wide variety of tumor types. It’s the first federally funded immunotherapy trial devoted to rare cancers. Despite their name, rare cancers make up more than 20% of cancers...
My breast cancer diagnosis in 1993, at age 34, came at the happiest moment in my life. I had gotten married just 10 months earlier and was looking forward to the future and children. But instead of celebrating my first wedding anniversary with my husband over a romantic dinner, we were at a cancer ...
Translational research in pancreatic adenocarcinoma has been limited by the difficulty of obtaining sufficient quality and quantity tumor tissue from patients. A study by Pietrasz et al assessing the feasibility and prognostic value of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in pancreatic adenocarcinoma has...
In part 1 of the phase II ARIEL2 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Elizabeth M. Swisher, MD, of the University of Washington, and colleagues found that the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib was associated with prolonged progression-free survival among patients with...
Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian, and the Life Raft Group, a patient advocacy organization specializing in advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), announced that they have entered into a collaborative research project to investigate the efficacy of a novel system...
“The big thing that is going to become more and more of an issue, and that you are going to hear a lot more of this year, and in the next several years, is overdiagnosis,” Otis W. Brawley, MD, FACP, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society, told The ASCO Post in an interview following...
Many news reports about the latest cancer statistics released by the American Cancer Society (ACS) have focused on the 25% reduction in cancer mortality since 1991. Several reports quoted ACS Chief Medical Officer Otis W. Brawley, MD, FACP, who said in a statement1 announcing the publication of...
Scientific Name: Glycine max Common Names: Soybean, soya, tofu, miso, tempeh Overview An annual herb indigenous to East Asia, soy was domesticated more than 3,000 years ago for its pods and edible seeds. It is now the world’s most important legume crop and is grown in diverse climates. Foods...
Phase I Study Title: Phase I Study to Determine the Effects of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Secreting Interferon Beta in Patients With Advanced Ovarian Cancer Study Type: Phase I/interventional/single-group assignment Study Sponsor and Collaborators: MD Anderson Cancer Center Purpose: To find the...
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine used heart muscle cells made from stem cells to rank commonly used chemotherapy drugs based on their likelihood of causing lasting heart damage in patients. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors can be an effective treatment for many types of cancers, ...
Scientists at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a noninvasive technique to detect the presence of prostate cancer cells in patients' urine. The pilot study, led by Mathew L. Thakur, PhD, Director, Laboratories of Radiopharmaceutical Research and Molecular ...
A new global initiative that includes founding partner University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was launched on January 17, 2017, at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. It signals a dramatic shift in the way international organizations help country and city leaders...
During the past 40 years, hundreds of randomized trials testing treatments for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma have been published.1 Conventional systemic chemotherapy and radiotherapy lack survival advantages for these patients.1,2 In 2007, a phase III trial demonstrated survival benefits for...
The AURA3 study—reported by Mok and colleagues and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—confirms the dramatic activity of osimertinib (Tagrisso) in patients with advanced epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and acquired resistance to prior EGFR...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present this special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the world. For the convenience of the reader, each issue will focus on one country from one of the six regions...
One of the most prestigious awards in the field of medicine will be presented to University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine faculty members and University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers Yuan Chang, MD, and Patrick S. Moore, MD. The duo, whose Chang-Moore Laboratory at the...
The optimal treatment strategy for low-grade glioma has yet to be established, and practice patterns vary in regard to the timing of treatment, as well as the chosen treatment modality. It was against this backdrop, at a time when the benefits of radiation and chemotherapy remained uncertain but ...
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists and doctors are embarking on the first-ever clinical trial to determine whether a genetic test they pioneered could successfully spare patients with nonaggressive thyroid cancer from complete removal of their thyroid. Such thyroid-preserving...
“Estimates suggest that by the year 2020, there will be over 500,000 adult survivors of childhood cancer in the United States,” Daniel A. Mulrooney, MD, MS, of the Division of Cancer Survivorship, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, reported at the 10th Oncofertility Conference in...
Nearly 60% of colorectal cancer cases are diagnosed in patients ≥ 65 years, with a median age at diagnosis of 68 years,1 but this population makes up only 34% of clinical trial participants.2 In addition, the older adults enrolled on clinical trials are traditionally the most-fit older adults....
There’s no getting around it: the practice of oncology can be inherently stressful. First, there’s the workload: compared to other medical specialists, oncologists see a larger number of patients and spend more time with them in face-to-face interactions. It’s not unusual for oncologists to work 60 ...
Women Who Conquer Cancer is a group dedicated to advancing cancer research by supporting young women researchers early in their careers through the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Young Investigator Awards. These 1-year grants give promising researchers the boost they need to get started on the...
A 5-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Cancer Institute awarded to Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey resident research member Wenwei Hu, PhD, will support research to further elucidate the mechanisms behind the most frequently mutated gene in human tumors—p53. The aim is to explore...
The traditional three-phase clinical trial process for testing new drugs does not necessarily make sense when it comes to targeted therapies, according to many experts, including regulators, academic researchers, industry chief executive officers, and patient advocates alike. Instead of three...
On February 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the existing indication for lenalidomide (Revlimid) 10 mg capsules to include use for patients with multiple myeloma as maintenance therapy following autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant. The expanded indication makes...
Innovation in precision medicine has introduced an amalgam of testing options, of which hereditary cancer panels—multigene tests—are a major component. Additionally, the importance of inherited cancer genomics was further bolstered by former President Barack Obama’s Precision...
Patients with advanced malignant soft-tissue sarcoma of the extremities have typically faced amputation of the afflicted limb as the only treatment option. However, a technique that limits the application of chemotherapy to the cancerous region can preserve limbs in a high percentage of these...
A large population-based study suggests that the utility of particular types of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) to predict colorectal cancer survival depends on where the tumor originates in the body. Although prior research has shown an association between high TIL density and longer...
Researchers have found a link between microbes in the gut (the microbiome) and response to immunotherapy. In the study, the ability of patients with advanced melanoma to respond to programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitors depended on the presence of a diverse microbiome...
Results from the phase II IMmotion150 study that compared atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus bevacizumab (Avastin) and atezolizumab monotherapy to sunitinib (Sutent) alone in patients with previously untreated, locally advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma were presented at the 2017 Genitourinary...
The traditional three-phase clinical trial process for testing new drugs does not necessarily make sense when it comes to targeted therapies, according to many experts, including regulators, academic researchers, industry chief executive officers, and patient advocates alike. Instead of three...
Researchers from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom, have completed the first-ever systematic review of cancer survivors’ experience of online and telephone telehealth interventions in cancer care, according to a recent study reported by Anna Cox,...
According to Michael Boyer, MD, a medical oncologist at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Sydney, Australia, the development of testing for programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) has been complex. Efforts at harmonization have been made, but most laboratories actually use a single...
Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression assessed by immunohistochemistry in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor tissues is currently the main predictive biomarker for the benefit of anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and anti–PD-L1 agents in patients with non–small cell lung ...
A revised tumor classification based on 70,967 evaluable patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 6,189 patients with small cell lung cancer is now available to lung cancer specialists around the world in the form of the 8th edition of the tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM)...
Edward Garon, MD, a member of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Professor of Hematology and Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, has received a 5-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to...
Increasing experience with immunotherapy for lung cancer in both the lab and the clinic is helping to refine treatment approaches and point the way forward, according to Naiyer Rizvi, MD, Director of both Thoracic Oncology and Immunotherapeutics at Columbia University Medical Center in New York....
David Norris, MD, Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has become the new President of the American Skin Association (ASA). Dr. Norris will be taking over for Philip Prioleau, MD, who has held the position since 2014. Prior to Dr. Prioleau’s...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) announced that Justin Taylor, MD, and Roger Belizaire, MD, PhD, have been selected to participate in the American Society of Hematology–Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (ASH-AMFDP). Designed to increase the number of underrepresented...
Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of this year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, highlighting newer therapeutics in high-grade, aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs), including newly diagnosed as well as relapsed or refractory...
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) offers state-of-the-art information on all aspects of breast cancer biology, diagnosis, and treatment, drawing an international audience of more than 7,500 physicians, researchers, and other health-care professionals from over 90 countries. Through...
Understanding, anticipating, and managing the toxicities associated with immunotherapies for lung cancer are key to steps to safely using and achieving the most benefit from these new agents, according to Beth Eaby-Sandy, MSN, CRNP, OCN, a nurse practitioner at the University of Pennsylvania’s...
Philip Poortmans, MD, PhD, President-Elect of the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO) and Head of the Radiation Oncology Department at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, commented: “This research provides good evidence for the benefits of treating advanced-stage head...
Treating patients with head and neck cancer with hyperfractionated twice-daily radiation therapy combined with chemotherapy may potentially reduce mortality, according to new research presented by Claire Petit, PhD, and colleagues at the 2017 European Cancer Congress (ECCO).1 The study included...
“The KEYNOTE-010 updated survival is looking even more impressive with the benefit of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) over docetaxel. Survival at 2 years with pembrolizumab is more than double that with chemotherapy,” commented invited discussant, Paul Mitchell, MD, Associate Professor at the Olivia...
Pembrolizumab’s benefit in previously treated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that expresses programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) is long lasting, persisting even after therapy ends, suggests an update of the KEYNOTE-010 trial.1 Initial results of the randomized phase II/III trial,...