Ramucirumab added to first-line docetaxel failed to improve progression-free survival in patients with metastatic breast cancer in the large, randomized, placebo-controlled ROSE/TRIO-12 trial.1 An interim analysis of overall survival showed no advantage for the addition of ramucirumab. This study,...
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium brings together specialists from all over the world who focus on management of breast cancer. We have covered many of the important presentations in the pages of The ASCO Post and in our online Evening News. Below are summaries of additional noteworthy...
The Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology (APSHO) announced its launch as a new organization focused on meeting the unique educational and professional needs of the advanced practitioner in hematology and oncology. The formation of the Society was made public on January 26,...
In the global phase III RAINBOW trial in patients with metastatic gastric cancer, the investigational monoclonal antibody ramucirumab significantly improved both progression-free and overall survival, when added to paclitaxel in second-line therapy, as reported at the 2014 Gastrointestinal Cancers...
Last September, Jamie H. Von Roenn, MD, left her position as Professor of Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago to join ASCO as its Senior Director of Education, Science and Professional Development. In her new position, Dr. Von Roenn will provide strategic...
The connection between smoking and lung cancer is universally accepted as scientific fact, and those who choose to smoke are painfully aware of the risk it poses for addiction and subsequent cancer. However, to fully appreciate the significance of the Surgeon General’s report, one must turn back to ...
The tobacco industry has always been a major player in congressional races, especially in Southern tobacco-growing states. Moreover, the industry is notoriously bipartisan in their political donations, and members of both parties have returned the favor by voting for tobacco interests. “The 2014...
On January 11, 2014, the nation commemorated the 50th anniversary of a document that transformed our public health landscape and has saved millions of lives: Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. This groundbreaking report, which...
City of Hope in Duarte, California, has named Steven T. Rosen, MD, as its first Provost and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Rosen will guide the scientific direction of the center’s medical research, treatment, and education. He will also assume directorship of the comprehensive cancer institute,...
David A. Fullerton, MD, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, was elected President of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) at the Society’s 50th Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. “STS has been a preeminent medical society for many years,” said Dr. Fullerton. “It is truly a great...
The Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology (APSHO) is issuing a call for members to oncology nurse practitioners, physician assistants, clinical nurse specialists, advanced degree nurses, and pharmacists. The Society was launched recently during JADPRO Live, a meeting of the...
As a medical oncologist and palliative care physician, I’ve had the privilege of caring for cancer patients and delivering primary palliative care and symptom control, as well as the chance to care for patients especially referred for complex pain and symptom problems (in secondary and even...
Currently, one of the most challenging problems in oncology is to accurately predict whether neoplastic lesions detected by screening tests will progress. The focus on developing ever-more sensitive cancer screening tests has produced the clinical dilemma of overdiagnosis. Overdiagnosis occurs when ...
The recent report from the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS)—published in BMJ and reviewed in The ASCO Post, early release online—concluded that annual mammography in women aged 40 to 59 does not result in a reduction in mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical...
As reported in BMJ by Anthony B. Miller, MD, Professor Emeritus at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and colleagues, the 25-year follow-up of the Canadian National Breast Screening Study has shown no mortality benefit of annual mammography screening for breast cancer...
Nearly 250 advanced practitioners assembled at the first annual JADPRO Live educational symposium in St. Petersburg, Florida, hosted by the Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology (JADPRO). Leaders from four prominent oncology organizations championed collaborative practice as not only...
Two novel agents have shown promising activity in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), including poor-risk patients: the Bcl-2 inhibitor ABT-199 and the small-molecule PI3K inhibitor IPI-145. Both drugs achieved excellent response rates in heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory patients including...
ASCO is committed to ensuring that Americans have access to high-quality, high-value cancer prevention and treatment services—and that all patients benefit fully from our nation’s investments in cancer research. In mid-March, the Society will be releasing The State of Cancer Care in America: 2014,...
Do you share our passion to conquer cancer? Connect with the Conquer Cancer Foundation online to receive up-to-the-minute news and events, researcher spotlights, videos, and updates on progress against cancer worldwide. Visit our website to learn more about our mission and the programs we support:...
Amid studies of novel targeted therapies, genetic analyses of tumors, and new ways to approach the treatment of breast cancer, a low-tech study presented at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium found that a yearlong exercise program reduced joint pain associated with aromatase inhibitors in ...
An innovative approach to streamlining the testing of novel agents in breast cancer has yielded some of its first results, which were reported at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 Adaptive Trial Design The veliparib/carboplatin plus standard neoadjuvant therapy regimen is currently...
CVS Caremark recently announced that it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its more than 7,600 CVS/pharmacy stores across the United States by October 1, 2014, making CVS/pharmacy the first national pharmacy chain to take this step in support of the health and well-being of...
The U.S. Congress recently did something rarely seen on Capitol Hill: Leaders from both sides of the aisle agreed on a piece of legislation. On February 6, 2014, the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees and the Senate Finance Committee announced its agreement on a bill—the SGR...
In January, Congress approved a $1 trillion appropriations bill for the rest of fiscal year 2014. While the new bill includes $29.9 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—$1 billion above FY2013 levels after sequestration—including $4.9 billion for the National Cancer Institute (NCI),...
Charles Ryan, MD, moderator of the press conference at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium where the PREVAIL trial data were discussed, emphasized that this study breaks new ground for enzalutamide (Xtandi) in chemotherapy-naive patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. “The...
Encouraging results of the large phase III PREVAIL trial represent another positive milestone for men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Enzalutamide (Xtandi) improved overall survival by 29% and reduced the risk of radiographic progression of disease by 81% in men who had not...
I read with interest the note from Jeff Boyd, PhD, Senior Vice-President for Molecular Medicine at Fox Chase Cancer Center, calling into question my recent commentary about the high costs of partly validated testing in the domain of molecular medicine. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to...
I read with interest and concern the Perspective piece, “Cancer Genes, Promiscuity, and the National Debt,” which appeared on page 1 of the February 1st issue of The ASCO Post. The underlying premise of this wide-ranging and provocative article would appear to be that in a rush to implement...
The epidemiology of the increased incidence of thyroid cancer, which has nearly tripled since 1975, “suggests that it is not an epidemic of disease but rather an epidemic of diagnosis,” Louise Davies, MD, MS, and H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, concluded after analyzing trends in patients diagnosed with ...
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is committed to boosting public awareness about the importance of screening and treatment for colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer poses the greatest risk to adults over age 50, and the U.S. Preventive...
The state of Virginia encompasses a vast area of 40,000 square miles and is divided into five regions: the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge, the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Region, and the Appalachian Plateau. The diverse geography of the state creates unique challenges for...
A collaborative multisite study has found that teens and young adults undergoing stem cell transplantation as part of cancer treatment gain coping skills and resilience-related outcomes when participating with a board-certified music therapist in a therapeutic music protocol that includes writing...
Central nervous system (CNS) metastasis is a pervasive problem in the setting of HER2-positive breast cancer. While some patients can be managed easily, others are challenging, said Eric P. Winer, MD, Chief of the Division of Women’s Cancers and the Thompson Senior Investigator for Breast Cancer...
The Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) has announced the availability of a comprehensive consensus guideline for physicians treating breast cancer developed to help reduce health-care costs and improve the course of treatment. Developed in conjunction with the American Society of Radiation Oncology ...
In 2012, David B. Solit, MD, Geoffrey Beene Chair and Director of the Center for Molecular Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, and his colleagues published the results of a phase II study1 of 45 patients with advanced bladder cancer. The purpose of the clinical...
[On March 4, 2014], President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2015. Among several cost-cutting measures designed to preserve Medicare solvency is a proposal to reduce reimbursement for life-sustaining cancer drugs. Currently, reimbursement to physicians for “Part B” drugs is...
About 2½ years ago, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis conducted a series of focus groups to better understand the palliative care priorities of bereaved parents. Their findings were never intended to be generalized, but rather to be used to formulate a strategic plan for an...
The optimal time interval between surgery and initiation of adjuvant chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer is not well established. Although most physicians aim to initiate adjuvant chemotherapy within a few weeks of surgery, clinical factors may cause delay. The influence of delay on relapse...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Ye and colleagues showed that CD137 can be used to identify tumor-reactive T cells and to enrich for tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and tumor-associated lymphocytes for use in adoptive immunotherapy. In the study, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes from...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Gold and colleagues developed a risk model for recurrence of resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) based on protein expression and clinical variables. The study involved analysis of samples from 370 patients with NSCLC resected between 2002 and ...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Ahn and colleagues found that decreased diversity of gut bacteria and differences in levels of specific bacteria were associated with significantly increased risk of colorectal cancer. The study involved measurement of 16S...
In a study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Kokolusa and colleagues showed that fundamental aspects of antitumor immunity are significantly affected by ambient housing temperature for lab mice. Standard ambient temperature in research facility lab mice housing is...
In 1999, Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, received a Career Development Award from the Conquer Cancer Foundation for her project, “Isolation of Tumor Suppressor Genes Inactivated in DCIS of the Breast.” “The Career Development Award got me started,” she said. “When...
ASCO convened a leadership summit in late January with pharmaceutical representatives, insurance payers, patient advocates, and physicians to initiate a dialogue on the challenge of defining value in cancer care. This meeting was held amid growing concerns about the sustainability of continued...
The development of novel targeted therapies that capitalize on our growing understanding of the molecular underpinnings and vulnerabilities of specific malignancies has to rank among the most important advances we have seen in the 50 years since the American Society of Clinical Oncology was...
The availability of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib (Gleevec) has dramatically increased survival in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Nonadherence to therapy with imatinib and other tyrosine kinase inhibitors is associated with disease progression and treatment resistance. In a study reported ...
History of severe acne, which is a surrogate for high androgen activity, has been associated with increased risk of prostate cancer, and recent data suggest that severe teenage acne is a risk factor for melanoma. Such findings suggest a role of androgens in etiology for both prostate cancer and...
The professional paths of advanced practitioners (APs) in oncology are as varied as the locations in which they work. The first annual JADPRO Live 2014 educational symposium was held in St. Petersburg, Florida, and hosted by JADPRO, the Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology. A...
Crizotinib (Xalkori) produced promising results in patients with ALK-positive lymphoma in two small studies presented at the 2013 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. Crizotinib exerted potent antitumor activity in advanced ALK-positive lymphoma and achieved durable responses in...
The monoclonal antibody gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg) improved event-free survival and reduced the risk of relapse in children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in a study from the Children’s Oncology Group, presented at the 55th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition ...