About 3 years ago, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute launched PROMISE (Predicting Progression of Developing Myeloma in a High-Risk Screen Population; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03689595), a large, ambitious screening study to identify individuals at high risk of developing...
An article in The New York Times earlier this year crystallized the dilemma facing health-care providers when they are presented with a patient in a life-threatening situation: Should they rely on advance care directives written years prior to the current medical situation to accurately determine...
By searching previously ignored regions of the genome, researchers have found a multitude of new genetic mutations that may contribute to diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). These findings were published by Bal et al in Nature. “Our findings not only show that these mutations can contribute to...
Informed consent forms can be overwhelming for patients—they are written at a level that is too high for many patients, possibly impeding true informed consent, according to a report given by King-Kallimanis et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2022 World...
On August 11, Roche announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a label expansion for the Ventana MMR RxDx Panel. The Ventana MMR RxDx Panel is the first immunohistochemistry (IHC) companion diagnostic test to aid in identifying patients whose solid tumors are deficient in DNA ...
About 7 years ago, I had emergency hernia surgery and soon after began experiencing severe constipation and abdominal bloating. I had started to have minor symptoms leading up to the surgery, but now the pain and exhaustion of trying to have a bowel movement became unbearable. I met with a...
Jaye Gardiner, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, is among 10 recipients of the 2022 Dr. Eddie Méndez Award. This honor recognizes underrepresented postdoctoral researchers across the United States who have demonstrated research expertise in cancer, infectious...
In 2016, Theresa Brown, RN, wrote The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, a vivid real-time description of an oncology nurse’s standard 12-hour shift on a hospital cancer ward. It was an excellent book, which was reviewed on these pages and highly recommended for readers of The...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, Deputy Director, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief of Solid Tumor Medical Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute, where his research focuses on the development of new therapies for...
Research shows that although 15% of Black individuals and 13% of Hispanic individuals have cancer in the United States, only between 4% and 6% of clinical trial participants are Black and between 3% and 6% are Hispanic.1-3 To improve these statistics, in 2020, ASCO and the Association of Community...
At the 2022 Summit on Cancer Health Disparities in Seattle, leaders from five of the leading professional societies in cancer discussed their respective organizations’ current initiatives toward improving cancer health disparities.1 Representatives from ASCO, the American Society for Clinical...
In a collaboration announced on June 4, ASCO will work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to measure and improve the quality of cancer care internationally. The goal is to achieve health-related targets of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and WHO Global Action Plan on Non-Communicable...
ASCO has released the first comprehensive set of guidelines for the management of metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).1 The guidelines are subdivided into six main sections: diagnosis, the role of cytoreductive nephrectomy, first-line systemic treatment, second- or later-line systemic...
ASCO has endorsed the recommendations put forth in a new guideline, developed by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), on the use of radiation therapy for the management of brain metastases.1,2 Although ASTRO—in conjunction with ASCO and the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO)—recently...
To shed some light on the importance of caring for the whole patient and his or her caregiver, as well as the role of cellular aging and oncogenesis, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Kaumudi Bhawe, PhD, a clinical scientist with Cancer Commons in Mountain View, California. Dr. Bhawe has more than ...
The invited discussant of the DS8201-A-U105 trial, Rebecca A. Dent, MD, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology, Senior Consultant, and Chief of the Breast Medical Oncology Service at the National Cancer Center Singapore, said the results were reassuring in terms of safety and may pave the way...
When the 21st Century Cures Act went into effect in April 2021, health-care organizations began releasing electronic health information to patients immediately. An aim of the act is to reduce barriers to patients’ timely access to electronic health information, and previous research has shown that...
Despite data showing that cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for the development of lung cancer,1 and a leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States, an estimated 30.8 million American adults continue to smoke cigarettes.2 Globally, the number of...
A study looking at the correlation between daily insulin dose and cancer incidence among patients with type 1 diabetes found that higher insulin dose is positively associated with cancer incidence and that the association is stronger among those with insulin resistance. The results were published...
Physicians and researchers from UK HealthCare's Transplant Center and the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center conducted a study of patients over age 70 with hepatocellular carcinoma to examine how the outcomes of ablative treatments compare to liver transplants. The findings were published...
Women make up just 37.7% of all speakers at hematology and medical oncology board review lectures, according to a study published in Blood Advances. The findings call attention to the many barriers people underrepresented in medicine face in obtaining educational opportunities that can be vital to...
Patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head or neck were 93% less likely to die of any cause during the first 3 years after diagnosis if they ate a healthy diet high in nutrients found to deter chronic disease, according to results published by Vieytes et al in Frontiers in Nutrition. The...
The invited discussant of the ATLAS trial, Peter M. Voorhees, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Plasma Cell Disorders Division, at Levine Cancer Institute and Atrium Health/Wake Forest Baptist in North Carolina, applauded the very good outcomes achieved in the study.1 However, he posed the...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kevin Billingsley, MD, MBA, FACS, Chief Medical Officer of the Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Although interracial marriage is common in the United States...
From June 10 to 15, delegates from the Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) participated in the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association’s (AMA) House of Delegates (HOD). The AMA HOD is the principal policy-making body of AMA and meets twice a year to discuss pressing issues and...
Time-limited venetoclax-based regimens provide deeper and more durable remissions than chemoimmunotherapy combinations in patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), regardless of patients’ fitness, according to late-breaking data presented during the European Hematology...
In the phase III EVEREST trial, adjuvant everolimus improved median recurrence-free survival in patients with resected renal cell carcinoma (RCC), but this finding failed to be statistically significant in the total study population of 1,499 patients, according to a prespecified boundary. However,...
In countries with a high income, research in oncology is sponsored by funding agencies and industry, which has meaningfully improved survival outcomes of patients with cancer. In contrast, the African continent is disadvantaged in all aspects of human development, particularly in the fields of...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Mark A. Lewis, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Intermountain Healthcare, Murray, Utah, and Vice President of American Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Support. Dr. Lewis is also a social media...
CancerCare has released a report entitled “Cancer Caregivers: National Research Report on Shared Treatment Decision-Making.” It details the findings of its caregiver decision-making survey, which polled a nationally representative sample of 2,703 cancer caregivers between February and July 2021....
The effective treatment of patients with brain metastases is an unmet need because, until fairly recently, patients with brain metastases were excluded from clinical trials of systemic therapies. However, the emergence of molecular targeted therapies has allowed a new treatment approach in patients ...
Invited discussant Susan Slovin, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, pointed out there are no relevant serum biomarkers for disease progression and the challenges of interpreting response in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. “We should have more definitive...
Lutetium-177–labeled PSMA-617 (LuPSMA; lutetium Lu 177 vipivotide tetraxetan) achieved longer progression-free survival with fewer toxicities compared with cabazitaxel in patients with prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose disease...
“BCMA-targeting bispecific antibodies work, showing impressive single-agent activity in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma. This class of agents is likely to become an important component of future antimyeloma therapies, but we must learn how to optimally use them,” said Madhav V. Dhodapkar,...
In patients with multiple myeloma exposed or refractory to three standard therapies, treatment with the bispecific antibody teclistamab produced strong and durable responses in the phase I/II MajesTEC-1 study.1 The results of weekly subcutaneous dosing of teclistamab in 165 patients were presented...
Experts’ discussions and recommendations addressing the interface between cancer and heart disease were published by Supriya Mohile, MD, MS, and colleagues in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, summarizing sessions from a virtual bench-to-bedside conference hosted by the American...
CLN-081, a novel agent targeted to non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells harboring epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 20 insertion mutations—ie, the addition of nucleotide base pairs in exon 20 of the EGFR gene, a known oncogenic driver event—holds promise, according to the results of...
After nearly 5 years as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), interrupted by 7 months as Acting Commissioner for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Norman E. “Ned” Sharpless, MD, left his position on April 29 to concentrate on his family and contemplate his next career choice....
Based on the final results of ECOG-ACRIN E2211, invited discussant Marianne E. Pavel, MD, of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, concluded: “Capecitabine/temozolomide is a preferred regimen…, but temozolomide can still be an option in patients who do not tolerate...
“If we have data, let’s look at it. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” —James Barksdale In this issue of The ASCO Post, Daniel Vorobiof, MD, and Irad Deutsch, principles at Belong.Life, a patient-oriented website whose self-described mission is to improve patient quality of life and ...
The invited discussant of the DYNAMIC study was Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, who said the study “has really moved the needle for circulating tumor DNA [ctDNA] analysis and guiding therapy.” Dr. Park is Director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville. Speaking more broadly about the use of...
“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow, we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” —Albert Camus, The...
High-dose ifosfamide extended event-free and overall survival in patients with recurrent or primary refractory Ewing sarcoma compared with other commonly used chemotherapy regimens, according to the results of a randomized trial reported at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting by lead author Martin...
Lori Wilson, MD, FACS, Chief of Surgical Oncology, Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity, and former Program Director of the General Surgical Residency at Howard University Hospital, is the first woman to hold the position of Division Chief as well as the first tenured Professor of...
New drugs for HER2-positive breast cancer are able to overcome some of the obstacles that have made brain metastases challenging to treat, according to Mark Pegram, MD, the Susy Yuan-Huey Hung Professor of Oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who described the promising ...
The invited discussant of PARADIGM, Chiara Cremolini, MD, PhD, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Pisa, Italy, said the findings prospectively confirm the superior benefit of FOLFOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin) paired with panitumumab rather than bevacizumab in RAS...
Dual targeting with the bispecific antibody amivantamab-vmjw showed antitumor activity and tolerability in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and MET exon 14 skipping mutations, according to results of the ongoing phase I CHRYSALIS study.1,2 Updated results were presented...
Black and Asian women are more likely than White women to experience significant delays in getting breast biopsies after a mammogram identifies an abnormality. Moreover, those delays appear to be influenced by screening site–specific factors that may stem from structural racism, according to...
Invited discussant of the DETERMINATION trial, Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, Professor of Applied Cancer Research and Drug Discovery at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, City of Hope Cancer Center, described the many implications of the important findings for DETERMINATION and offered some ...
In the phase III DETERMINATION trial, progression-free survival was significantly improved with triplet induction therapy and early transplantation in newly diagnosed patients with multiple myeloma, but overall survival at 5 years was similar to the nontransplant approach.1 The findings were...