Dostarlimab, a monoclonal antibody targeting PD-1, showed antitumor activity in patients with mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) gastrointestinal tumors in the phase I GARNET study, reported at the 2021 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium by Thierry André, MD, of Sorbonne University and Saint-Antoine...
The study’s invited discussant, Michael J. Overman, MD, Professor of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, said the findings of the study presented by Henriksen et al1 add to a convincing body of data showing that “the use of circulating...
Patients with stage I to III colorectal cancer who have a high risk for recurrence may be identified by serial testing of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) after resection, according to a study in which ctDNA proved more reliable than carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) surveillance or standard radiologic...
Invited discussant of the ClarIDHy trial, Rachna T. Shroff, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona, and Chief of GI Medical Oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, said positive findings for ivosidenib support the notion that “biliary cancer is a perfect example of...
Ivosidenib, an inhibitor of isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1), improved overall survival by almost 3 months in previously treated patients with advanced IDH1-mutated cholangiocarcinoma, compared with placebo, researchers of the global phase III ClarIDHy trial reported at the 2021 Gastrointestinal...
In December 2015, I thought I was through with cancer. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011 after a routine blood test showed that my prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level was high. I underwent prostatectomy, and although it was clear the cancer had breached the capsule of the prostate, for ...
Tuya Pal, MD, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research and Associate Director for Cancer Health Disparities at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, has been named to two cancer research leadership posts. She is the incoming Editor-in-Chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Daily Query (PDQ)...
Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, Donna S. Hall Professor of Breast Cancer Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has been named Interim Director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology. Dr. Park is Associate Director for Translational Research, Co-Leader of the Breast Cancer Research Program,...
In a phase II trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sherif S. Farag, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that the addition of the dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4; CD26) inhibitor sitagliptin to tacrolimus and sirolimus prophylaxis resulted in a low rate of acute graft-vs-host disease...
In a registry-based observational study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Anastasia Chalkidou, PhD, and colleagues found that stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) was associated with high overall survival and low rates of toxicity in patients with extracranial oligometastatic cancers. The...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Kevin Kalinsky, MD, MS, and colleagues, the NCI-MATCH trial’s phase II subprotocol EAY131-Y has shown activity of the pan-AKT inhibitor capivasertib in a range of metastatic tumors with an AKT1 E17K mutation. The phase II trial enrolled 35 evaluable adult patients...
The number of first-year students in U.S. medical schools increased by 1.7% in the 2020 academic year, according to data released recently by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Although the increase was modest, the number of students applying to medical school for the upcoming...
The medical career of Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, spans more than 4 decades and includes a roster of nearly unprecedented accomplishments in patient care, research, and mentoring. He has held leadership positions in academia, first at the University of Chicago, where he spent the...
The Lustgarten Foundation and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) have announced two new career development awards for early-career female and underrepresented pancreatic cancer researchers, representing a commitment of the Lustgarten Foundation of up to $1.8 million. The awards...
In the prospective LAST study reported in JAMA Oncology, Ehab Atallah, MD, and Kathryn Flynn, PhD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues, found that stopping tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) was associated with the...
Reduced levels of screening for prostate cancer using prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing correspond with recent increases in the diagnosis of metastatic disease in the United States, according to a study that will be presented by Vidit Sharma, MD, and colleagues at the 2021 Genitourinary...
Jacob Soumerai, MD, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, who was not involved in this study, commented on the MURANO study findings. “MURANO is the definitive phase III trial that established venetoclax/rituximab as a standard of care for...
Patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) treated with the combination of fixed-duration venetoclax/rituximab had a longer overall survival and progression-free survival at 5 years compared with those treated with bendamustine/rituximab, according to a 5-year analysis...
Janet Woodcock, MD, current Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has been named acting FDA Commissioner, according to a report published in The New York Times.1Stephen M. Hahn, MD, who had been FDA Commissioner since December 17,...
In the Neurofibromatosis Clinical Trials Consortium phase II NF106 trial, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Weiss et al found evidence of activity of the oral MAPK/ERK kinase inhibitor mirdametinib in adolescents and adult patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1)-related plexiform...
Gene therapy pioneer Arthur W. Nienhuis, MD, the fourth Director of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, died on February 3 at age 79. Under his leadership, the hospital grew exponentially in both size and scientific stature. “At St. Jude, the nature of our work requires a bold, ambitious...
HERO-TOGETHER is an opportunity for people working in health care who receive a COVID-19 vaccine to help the public understand how people fare after vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic is a once-in-a-generation challenge that health-care providers everywhere have worked together to face. On the...
In a U.S. population–based cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Hoskins et al found that among patients with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, Black women were more likely than White women to have a high Oncotype DX 21-gene recurrence score. Researchers also found that breast...
At-home tests, which measure blood in stool as a potential marker for colon cancer, are often used for colorectal cancer screening. Usage of these tests has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as patients try to avoid clinical visits. However, effectiveness of these screening tools, along with...
This week, we’re hearing from two thoracic oncologists on research presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2020 World Conference on Lung Cancer Singapore, which was moved to a virtual format and held January 28 to 31, 2021, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On February 4, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the scheduling of a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee to discuss the request for emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine from Janssen Biotech Inc. Additionally, Acting...
A recent study found that long-term aspirin use before a diagnosis of colorectal cancer may be associated with lower colorectal cancer–specific mortality. The report, published by Figueiredo et al in JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggests that the findings for prediagnosis...
B-cell–depleting immunotherapy may cause B-cell aplasia and impair the body’s immune response. A retrospective, multicentric French study of patients with lymphoma and persistent COVID-19 infection has found that those treated with B-cell–depleting therapies within the previous 12 months had nearly ...
Due to concerns that patients with cancer may be at higher risk for contracting the coronavirus—and may have more severe complications if infected—during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and clinical practices have changed protocols to routine cancer care to reduce patients’ exposure to the virus....
Administering colorectal cancer screening kits through a socially distant drive-by flu vaccination clinic increased access to colorectal cancer screening among Black Americans, according to results presented by Washington et al at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S02-04)....
Prasad S. Adusumilli, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses ongoing CAR T-cell therapy clinical trials for solid tumors, the key determinants of success for developing this treatment, and some study results to date (Abstract PL03.05).
A recent study has found that more than half (56.4%) of cancer survivors in the United States reported having additional underlying medical conditions associated with severe COVID-19 illness. The report, published by Jiang et al in JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggested that...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Fransson et al, analysis of patient-reported quality of life in the Scandinavian phase III HYPO-RT-PC trial showed no significant differences at up to 6 years of follow-up between patients receiving ultrahypofractionated radiotherapy vs conventionally...
A study presented by researchers with the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taiwan confirmed low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening may be feasible in a predefined, never-smoking, high-risk population. The research was presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer...
Two presentations based on data from the ADAURA clinical trial advanced previous research that demonstrated improved disease-fee survival outcomes for patients with surgically resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving osimertinib, while also maintaining quality of life. The data were...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Hope S. Rugo, MD, and colleagues, the phase III SOPHIA trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with margetuximab-cmkb plus chemotherapy vs trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who experienced disease...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, members of the international Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC) identified the risk of disease associated with germline protein-truncating and rare missense variants of putative susceptibility genes in a large population of breast ...
Molecular profiling allows clinicians to identify the molecular and genetic signatures that help to deliver treatments that are highly specific to a tumor. This tool has made possible a number of advances in the past year that are improving care for patients with gastrointestinal cancers. In...
On February 27, 2020, the Journal of Thoracic Oncology published a case study that described two patients from Wuhan, China, who had recently underwent lung lobectomies for adenocarcinoma and were retrospectively found to have had COVID-19 at the time of surgery. Eleven months later, the lung...
In patients with relapsed malignant mesothelioma, treatment with single-agent nivolumab led to a significant improvement in both overall and progression-free survival in the phase III CONFIRM trial. These findings were presented by Dean A. Fennell, FRCP, PhD, Professor and Chair of Thoracic Medical ...
Neoadjuvant treatment with single-agent atezolizumab for patients with stage IB to IIIB lung cancer resulted in a major pathologic response rate of 21% and pathologic complete response rate of 7% in the primary analysis of the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium 3 (LCMC3) study. The findings were...
According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2020, 89,500 adolescents and young adults (AYAs) aged 15 to 39 were diagnosed with cancer, and of these, 84.6% are expected to survive their cancer for 5 years after diagnosis. However, the results from a study by De et al published in the Journal of...
Emil J Freireich, MD, an oncologist who developed groundbreaking therapies for childhood leukemia and came to be recognized as a founding father of modern clinical cancer research, passed away on February 1. He was 93. Dr. Freireich was a faculty member at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer ...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet, Lheureux et al found that the addition of the oral Wee1 inhibitor adavosertib to gemcitabine significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with platinum-resistant/refractory recurrent ovarian cancer. As related by the investigators, the...
In the French phase III SENIOR trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Oberic et al found that the addition of lenalidomide to subcutaneous rituximab plus attenuated-dose CHOP (mini-CHOP; cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisone) did not improve overall survival in...
At a press briefing held by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), researchers presented new data that revealed factors relating to race, gender, sexual orientation, and income continue to be significant barriers to those living with lung cancer. The press briefing is...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-598 study, the addition of ipilimumab to pembrolizumab increased toxicity without boosting efficacy as first-line therapy for metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients with high expression of PD-L1, according to research presented at International...
The phase II CodeBreak 100 trial has validated the power of KRAS inhibition with sotorasib (AMG 510) in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In a follow-up to phase I data, the phase II cohort of the study has now shown a durable response rate of 37.1%, a disease control rate...
This week, we'll discuss the findings of a study that examined the prevalence of KRAS G12C mutations across different populations. Then, we'll hear recent news about FDA oncology drug approvals in the month of January.
Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, tobacco use remains a serious public health threat. In addition to tobacco-related death and disease, smoking also increases the risk of the most severe impacts of COVID-19. The American Lung Association has released its 19th annual “State of Tobacco Control”...