At my last screening mammogram in 2015, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The technician took the usual four x-rays of my breasts, and I was told I could leave. So it was especially shocking to get a phone call from the radiologist a week later telling me that I had to come back for an additional ...
A large prospective Swedish study reported by Susanna C. Larsson, PhD, of the Unit of Nutritional Epidemiology at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues found a 2.2-fold increased risk of gallbladder cancer in people who consumed two or ...
A phase I study by Timothy F. Cloughesy, MD, Director of the Neuro-Oncology Program at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and colleagues published in Science Translational Medicine investigated the effectiveness of vocimagene amiretrorepvec (Toca 511), an experimental nonlytic,...
A review of more than 50 studies (many randomized controlled trials) concluded that surgery and radiation therapy “remain standard-of-care treatment options” in the management of ductal carcinoma in situ.1 The review continues the widely reported discussion on managing ductal carcinoma in situ,...
Two clinician-scientists whose groundbreaking work has shown how the human body’s own immune system can fend off cancer will share the 2016 $100,000 Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Science, the University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute announced....
Scientific Name: Cimicifuga racemosa Common Names: Black snakeroot, rattlesnake root, squawroot, bugbane, bugwort Brand Names: Remifemin, Menofem, Klimadynon Overview A perennial plant native to the eastern United States and Canada, black cohosh root was used by Native Americans to treat colds,...
The Genomic Data Commons (GDC), a unified data system that promotes sharing of genomic and clinical data among researchers, was launched on June 6 with a visit from Vice President Joe Biden to the operations center at the University of Chicago. An initiative of the National Cancer Institute (NCI),...
A 65-year-old patient with widely metastatic pancreatic cancer was emergently transferred to our facility in the early hours of the morning with free air suggestive of a perforated viscus. The patient is from a small town several hundred miles away from our academic center, which can be quite...
Phase 0 Study Title: Use of Definity® Contrast Agent for Ultrasound of Intraocular Tumors Study Type: Interventional/single-group assignment Study Sponsor and Collaborators: Emory University Purpose: To determine if microbubbles may be used as a contrast agent to help image tumors in the eye. In...
ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) have launched a collaborative effort to modernize eligibility criteria to promote greater patient participation in cancer clinical trials. Although it is important for defining the population under study and ensuring patient safety, overly strict...
Thomas G. Roberts, Jr, MD, is Managing Member at Farallon Capital Management, LLC and Chair of the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Board of Directors and Executive Committee. What led you to oncology prior to your career in finance? TGR: As an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital, I was...
Asia is currently experiencing an unprecedented rate of growth in its aging population. This “silver tsunami” has translated into a burgeoning number of older patients with cancer, as cancer is a disease of aging. However, unlike their Western counterparts, elderly patients with cancer in Asia are ...
Older patients with cancer generally have multiple comorbidities, with each often requiring separate medications. Studies have shown that polypharmacy and inappropriate drug use are prevalent among older cancer patients, leading to an enormous amount of preventable adverse events, many requiring...
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have emerged as one of the most promising new areas of drug development in oncology. Broad activity has been observed for these agents across a spectrum of hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Muro and colleagues now...
Case reports on 13 patients with cancer suggest that patients taking the immunotherapeutics ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo) may be at higher-than-normal risk of developing autoimmune joint and tissue diseases, including inflammatory arthritis, according to a preliminary study by Johns...
The KEYNOTE-012 phase Ib trial assessed single-agent pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)–positive gastric cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, urothelial cancer, and head and neck cancer. The activity of pembrolizumab in study patients with...
Mark A. Dickson, MD, has been fascinated by science and medicine since he was in high school. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1999, Dr. Dickson pursued a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York. Once he decided on a...
With the advent of the Papanicolaou (Pap) test and population-based screening, along with the development of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, cervical cancer has become a largely preventable disease for many. However, in India, cervical cancer is a leading cause of cancer mortality. To...
According to the American Cancer Society’s 2016 Cancer Facts & Figures, behaviors such as poor diet choices, physical inactivity, excess alcohol consumption, and unhealthy body weight account for about 20% of all cancers diagnosed in the United States and likely could be prevented with...
In 2015, four new drugs were approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: panobinostat (Farydak), daratumumab (Darzalex), elotuzumab (Empliciti), and ixazomib (Ninlaro). Of them, the first three are drugs with unique new targets, whereas ixazomib is the...
In the phase III TOURMALINE-MM-1 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Philippe Moreau, MD, of the University Hospital Hôtel Dieu, Nantes, France, and colleagues found that adding the oral proteasome inhibitor ixazomib (Ninlaro) to lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone...
Although oncology has moved toward a personalized approach to care, medical decision-making within the context of multidisciplinary care has broad public health implications. To shed light on this and other relevant issues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with William Dale, MD, PhD, of the University ...
Five years ago, the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Delaware, and The Wistar Institute, a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated biomedical research center, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, joined forces to collaborate on...
Although new gastrointestinal cancers are on the rise, advancements in their treatment, as well as the upcoming results of perioperative trials, could prove to be “clinical practice game-changers,” declared Thomas J. George, Jr, MD, FACP, at the 2016 Community Oncology Conference in Orlando,...
Initial encouraging news from a first-in-human trial suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate rovalpituzumab tesirine (Rova-T) may turn out to be a new option for patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) whose tumors overexpress delta-like protein 3 (DLL3). Study results were presented at the...
Formal discussant Taofeek Kunle Owonikoko, MD, of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta, said it has been controversial whether to use once-daily or twice-daily radiation therapy in this patient population. “CONVERT is one of two studies trying to step into this gap, and it failed...
A schedule of once-daily radiation therapy (66 Gy) was no better than a twice-daily schedule (45 Gy) for optimization of chemoradiotherapy in patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC), according to the eagerly anticipated results of the phase III CONVERT trial, presented at the...
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common and costly disease, largely of the elderly, with nearly 25% of cases diagnosed among patients aged 75–84 years. However, but the guidelines for CRC screening of Americans aged 75 or older vary according to the source. In a study published by Klabunde et al...
Oncologists in the United States may need to improve their efforts to reduce unnecessary care for younger patients with terminal cancer over the last 30 days of life, based on the findings of a study reported at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Contrary to recommendations, aggressive care is still...
The role of intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy in the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer has been debated for a long time. According to a new study presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, a combination of IP and intravenous (IV) chemotherapy appears more effective than IV chemotherapy alone in...
A new biosimilar version of the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin) is getting close to the finish line in the race to develop biosimilars in oncology. The new antibody, MYL-1401O, demonstrated comparable efficacy and safety compared with trastuzumab as front-line treatment of women with...
Last June, ASCO published its initial concept for a value framework in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).1 The framework, developed by ASCO’s Value in Cancer Care Task Force, is designed to provide a standardized approach to assist physicians and patients in assessing the “value” of a new...
In children with high-risk neuroblastoma, tandem autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) improved event-free survival rates in the ANBL0532 trial from the Children’s Oncology Group. The study was presented at the plenary session of the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting by Julie R. Park, MD, of Seattle...
As reported by Choueiri et al in The Lancet Oncology, the final results of the phase III METEOR trial indicate significantly improved overall survival with cabozantinib (Cabometyx) vs everolimus (Afinitor) in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) that had progressed after previous...
Preliminary tests have demonstrated that a new device may enable existing breast cancer imagers to provide up to six times better contrast of tumors in the breast, while maintaining the same or better image quality and halving the radiation dose to patients. The advance is made possible by a new...
A new study published by Kariminia et al in the journal Blood has identified a protein that could diagnose chronic graft-vs-host disease in patients undergoing blood and bone marrow transplantation. The work was led by researchers in the Michael Cuccione Childhood Cancer Research Program at BC...
Researchers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) presented a molecular imaging technique that allows oncologists to set patients’ radiotherapy doses right at that critical limit of delivering the most powerful dosage to neuroendocrine...
The use of adjuvant chemotherapy in early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients improves overall survival and 5-year overall survival rates in patients with tumor sizes ranging from 3 to 7 cm. These findings were published by Morgensztern et al in the Journal of Thoracic...
In the first-ever clinical trial for metastatic patients previously treated for the disease, research led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found that the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) shows promise for the majority of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the ...
In long-term follow-up of a European trial reported by Demeestere et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist treatment during chemotherapy in young women with lymphoma was not associated with reduced premature ovarian failure or an improved pregnancy...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center will receive $10.6 million in funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) for two collaborative studies targeting crucial issues in lung cancer. The two multi-investigator research awards, designed to support teams of...
The International Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia–International Prognostic Index (CLL-IPI) working group has developed an International Prognostic Index for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia based on a meta-analysis of individual patient data, as reported in The Lancet Oncology. The...
On May 31, 2016, ASCO published an updated framework for assessing the relative value of cancer therapies that have been compared in clinical trials. The framework, published by Schnipper et al,1 defines value as a combination of clinical benefit, side effects, and improvement in patient symptoms...
There were once two patients with leukemia. Other than their diagnoses and their ages, these two men had nothing in common. Meet Michael Michael was an artist—a sculptor. He had large, sensitive, blue eyes and a quiet, pensive manner. His acute observational power led him to ponder deep questions...
The Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association (HOPA) has awarded two HOPA Research Grant Awards to Val Adams, PharmD, BCOP, FCCP, and Jill S. Bates, PharmD, MS, BCOP, for their respective research projects. The goal of HOPA’s Research Grant efforts are to fund work that results in facilitating...
An otherwise healthy, actively working, independent 60-year-old patient came to us with a several months’ history of abdominal pain. He had been seen by other physicians prior to coming to us for a second opinion. Our workup revealed a large cystic lesion emanating from the pancreas but involving ...
On May 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved fluciclovine F-18 (Axumin), a radioactive diagnostic agent for injection. Fluciclovine F-18 is indicated for positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging in men with suspected prostate cancer recurrence based on elevated...
Pilot Study Title: Pilot Study of Hepatic Arterial Infusion Therapy in Patients With Unresectable or Borderline Resectable Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Study Type: Interventional/nonrandomized/parallel assignment Study Sponsor and Collaborators: Washington University School of Medicine Purpose: ...
Multiple myeloma cells uniformly overexpress CD38.1 Daratumumab (Darzalex), a CD38-targeting human IgG1 kappa monoclonal antibody, has been evaluated in a series of phase I/II trials involving patients with relapsed or relapsed and refractory myeloma who have received at least two or more prior...
In the phase II SIRIUS trial reported in The Lancet, Sagar Lonial, MD, of Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, and colleagues found that the CD38-targeted monoclonal antibody daratumumab (Darzalex) produced durable responses in patients with multiple myeloma who had received at least three ...