Radiotherapy to the axilla may replace axillary lymph node dissection for local tumor control in selected patients with sentinel node–positive breast cancer, sparing many patients lymphedema, according to the final results of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC)...
“These patients finally have options,” commented the DECISION trial’s discussant at the ASCO Plenary Session, Ezra Cohen, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Director for Education at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center. He further noted that differentiated thyroid...
Formal discussant Electra D. Paskett, PhD, Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University, was enthusiastic about these trial results and the potential of visual inspection with acetic acid screening, as well as low-cost human papillomavirus (HPV) screening to save lives in the developing...
In the era of personalized medicine for cancer care, it was both surprising and encouraging to hear about a simple low-tech intervention delivered by women in the community that cut the rate of death from cervical cancer in India by about one-third. The intervention, a simple visual inspection...
Yogi Berra offered the comment “It’s déjà vu all over again” when he witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris repeatedly hitting back-to-back home runs in the early 1960s. His pithy remark neatly summarizes my reaction when I read the article, “Dose-Adjusted EPOCH-Rituximab Therapy in Primary...
Lynn Mara Schuchter, MD, the C. Willard Robinson Professor of Hematology-Oncology and Program Leader of the Melanoma Program at Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, commented on the wealth of promising agents now dotting the formerly barren landscape for...
Plasma Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) DNA has prognostic significance in Hodgkin lymphoma, both prior to therapy and at 6 months of follow-up, according to results of a study published in Blood. “Plasma EBV-DNA positivity at month 6 is associated with particularly poor outcomes and may serve as an...
“Among men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer, replacing carbohydrates and animal fat with vegetable fat may reduce the risk of all-cause mortality,” according to a prospective study of 4,577 men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Vegetable fat intake...
About one in five patients who had completed primary breast cancer treatments but had not started endocrine therapy “had elevated memory and/or executive function complaints that were statistically significantly associated with domain-specific” neuropsychological test performances and depressive...
In the June 10 issue of The ASCO Post, the article, “Study Questions Routine Use of Imaging after Treatment for Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma,” includes an error in an Expert Point of View box featuring an interview with Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD. Dr. Zelenetz is quoted as saying that at his...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
In today’s high-tech, sci-fi–loving culture, “programmed death receptor” seems like a term apt to stir up public interest, particularly when those receptors are being “targeted” by “agents.” In this case, however, the agents are antibodies that target programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor and disable...
Founded in 1994, just 1 year after ASCO launched the State/Regional Affiliate Program, the Society of Rhode Island Clinical Oncologists is one of ASCO’s oldest state affiliates. Like many other ASCO affiliates, the Providence-based group is facing a myriad of challenges, including ensuring...
FDA has approved the following new drugs and/or indications in 2013: Denosumab (Xgeva subcutaneous injection) for giant cell tumor of bone. Lenalidomide (Revlimid capsules) for relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma FDA approved. Trametinib (Mekinist tablets) for unresectable or metastatic...
The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) recently announced the appointment of Gary L. Dillehay, MD, FACNM, FACR, to 2013-2014 President, SNMMI, during the Society’s Annual Meeting in Vancouver. Dr. Dillehay is Professor of Radiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in...
The amino acid imaging agent, O-(2-[18F]-fluoroethyl)-L-tyrosine (F-18 FET), may improve upon standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and its diagnostic benefit for imaging pediatric gliomas when conventional MRI is not sufficient, said researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular ...
Investigators in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network have uncovered a connection between how tumor cells use energy from metabolic processes and the aggressiveness of the most common form of kidney cancer, clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Their findings demonstrate that normal...
A Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database analysis reported by Ravi Shridhar, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Cancer indicates that patients receiving surgery and radiation therapy for metastatic gastric cancer have prolonged survival compared with those receiving either alone or...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication On May 14, 2013, erlotinib (Tarceva) was approved for...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded the approved use of denosumab (Xgeva) to treat adults and some adolescents with giant cell tumor of the bone, a rare and usually noncancerous tumor. Denosumab, which was granted orphan product designation, was reviewed under the FDA’s...
Management of metastatic breast cancer requires monitoring of tumor burden to assess response to treatment, and there is a need for biomarkers that can measure tumor burden with high sensitivity and specificity. Assays measuring serum cancer antigen (CA) 15-3 and circulating tumor cells have been...
Dermatologic Events in Oncology is guest edited by Mario E. Lacouture, MD, an Associate Member in the Division of Dermatology, Department of Medicine, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. He is a board-certified dermatologist with a special interest in dermatologic conditions that...
ASCO has released a Progress Report on the gains made toward achieving goals set forth in its landmark 2011 report, Blueprint for Transforming Clinical and Translational Cancer Research. The ASCO Blueprint laid out an innovative roadmap for the clinical research system to capitalize on the new...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication On May 15, 2013, radium Ra 223 dichloride (Xofigo) was...
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a clinically and molecularly heterogeneous disease.1 This concept has been supported by more than 4 decades of studies showing distinct outcomes of subsets of patients that differ in age, disease type (primary vs secondary vs therapy-related), and cytogenetic and...
One-quarter of women who should take hormone-blocking therapies as part of their breast cancer treatment either do not start or do not complete the 5-year course, according to a new study led by University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers. For many women with hormone...
The close association between cancer and thrombosis has been recognized now for more than 150 years.1 Not only is it now known that patients with cancer are at substantially increased risk of developing venous thromboembolism, even prior to the diagnosis of cancer, but the association between...
ASCO has released a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline for venous thromboembolism prophylaxis and treatment, updating the 2007 practice guideline.1 The update is based on a systematic review of literature published from December 2007 to December 2012. An Update Committee reviewed...
The FIRE-3 investigators did not report the use of salvage treatments, and this may be confounding the results, according to Richard Goldberg, MD, who discussed the paper at an ASCO press briefing. Dr. Goldberg is Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University, Columbus. “The study shows a...
“Prostate cancer is a heterogeneous disease and has not yet benefitted from personalized medicine discoveries. Anything that gets us closer to personalized medicine [for prostate cancer] is a plus,” said Michael J. Morris, MD, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New...
At least 12 different genetic tests for prostate cancer are under development. The two tests currently available are Oncotype DX (Genomic Health, Redwood City, California) and Prolaris (Myriad Genetic Laboratories, Salt Lake City). Both tests can identify which low-risk patients are “truly” at low...
As a neoadjuvant regimen for HER2-positive early breast cancer, the use of two HER2-directed agents was no more effective than trastuzumab (Herceptin) alone in producing pathologic complete responses, although one subset of patients did benefit from this approach, according to the results of the...
At the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting, The ASCO Post caught up with new President Clifford A. Hudis, MD, Chief of the Breast Cancer Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, for a glimpse of his plans for ASCO in the coming year, and his thoughts on being elected ASCO...
“These three excellent, encouraging, tantalizing studies show that we really are making progress in the treatment of chronic CLL, whereas 10 to 12 years ago, we had no real progress to report,” stated Kanti R. Rai, MD, Chief, CLL Research Program, North Shore-LIJ Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY. ...
This is the first time I’m going public with the fact that I have advanced ovarian cancer. I thought I could avoid the fate of my mother and her mother, both of whom died of ovarian cancer in their 50s, and live well past my 60s and even 70s. But at 58, I’ve had to accept that that is not likely. I ...
On June 13, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that isolated human genes may not be patented. However, the creation of synthetic forms of DNA, known as complementary DNA (cDNA), is eligible for patent protection. The decision resolves the question brought before the Supreme Court justices in...
Given the results of the AVAglio trial, we feel that a more balanced discussion about the role of bevacizumab (Avastin) in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma is in order. The accompanying article in The ASCO Post suggests that bevacizumab has no benefit in newly diagnosed glioblastoma; data ...
Howard A. Fine, MD, Chief of Hematology/Oncology at New York University Langone Medical Center and Director of the NYU Brain Tumor Center, served as formal discussant of the RTOG 0825 study at the Plenary Session. He noted the strong rationale for studying bevacizumab in glioblastoma, which is a...
At the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting, studies evaluating the addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard therapy in newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme patients did not meet their primary endpoints. When paired with irinotecan, however, bevacizumab showed activity in MGMT-unmethylated tumors....
Men who have metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and have used docetaxel reported a higher prevalence and greater severity of pain than docetaxel-naive patients, according to results of an anonymous survey conducted at five comprehensive cancer centers in the Prostate Cancer Clinical...
The use of advanced treatment technologies, such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy and robotic prostatectomy, has increased among men unlikely to die from prostate cancer, according to a retrospective analysis of data from almost 56,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2004 and 2009....
More than 98% of adult survivors of childhood cancer in a large clinically evaluated cohort had a chronic health condition, including a substantial number of previously undiagnosed problems that are more likely to occur in an older population. “These findings underscore the importance of ongoing...
Dermatologic Events in Oncology is guest edited by Mario E. Lacouture, MD, an Associate Member in the Division of Dermatology, Department of Medicine, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. He is a board-certified dermatologist with a special interest in dermatologic conditions that...
The University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center has named Alon Weizer, MD, MS, as Medical Director. In this new role Dr. Weizer will be responsible for managing the day-to-day clinical outpatient operations at the Cancer Center. Dr. Weizer is Associate Professor of Urology at the University...
Pearls in Neuro-oncology is guest edited by Tracy Batchelor, MD, Director, Division of Neuro-Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston. The series is intended to provide the practicing oncologist with guidance in managing...
On July 12, 2013, the FDA approved the tyrosine kinase inhibitor afatinib (Gilotrif) for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors express epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 19 deletions or exon 21 (L858R) substitution mutations...
The International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) has developed clinical practice recommendations for the management of multiple myeloma-related bone disease based on published study data through August 2012. Consensus of the interdisciplinary panel of clinical experts on the plasma-cell cancer was...
The Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research is a combined research program of the National Marrow Donor Program and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. At the forefront of research to increase access to hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and improve outcomes, the ...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication On June 13, 2013, denosumab (Xgeva) was approved for the ...
Among the more than 200 types of cancer are those called “forgotten” or “orphan” cancers, with fewer than 40,000 new cases each year. They present treatment challenges in community cancer centers. Because of the low incidence of these diseases, such as chronic myeloid leukemia, acute promyelocytic...