The role of adjuvant treatment for invasive, high-grade bladder cancer remains controversial and challenging. Sternberg et al reported a statistically significant progression-free survival benefit from adjuvant combination gemcitabine/cisplatin (GC) or MVAC (methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, ...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by Dean F. Bajorin, MD, of the Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase III CheckMate 274 trial has shown improved disease-free survival with adjuvant nivolumab vs placebo...
The Kingdom of Bahrain is a high-income island nation located in the Persian Gulf. The nation is an archipelago consisting of two separate groups of islands spanning 30 miles north to south, 10 miles east to west, and about 3.5 times the size of Washington, DC. Though situated in a region rich in ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Bolla et al, a 12-year analysis among patients with localized intermediate-risk prostate cancer in the EORTC 22991 trial showed improved event-free and disease-free survival with the addition of 6 months of concomitant and adjuvant androgen...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by John C. Byrd, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ELEVATE-RR trial has shown noninferior progression-free survival with the more selective Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor acalabrutinib vs the less selective inhibitor ibrutinib in previously...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Michael Gnant, MD, and colleagues found no difference in disease-free survival with 2 vs 5 years of treatment with the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole in postmenopausal women with early hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast...
In an article published by Rollison et al in Cancer Research, researchers demonstrated a link between the presence of cutaneous human papillomavirus (HPV) and the incidence of cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas. They also identified key characteristics of infection that may contribute to...
A new population-based study showed that although national lung cancer screening rates decreased in some states, 19 states actually experienced significant improvements in screening rates despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall lung cancer screening rates remained low and unchanged, according to...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Ashraf Zaghloul, MD, DrPH, Professor at the National Cancer Institute of Egypt and President of the Egyptian Society of Surgical Oncology. Dr. Zaghloul was born in 1956 in ...
Invited discussant Guru Subramanian Guru Murthy, MD, MS, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, commented on the study of aspacytarabine in the first-line therapy for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) unfit for standard chemotherapy. “This study elegantly highlights there is still ...
Aspacytarabine, a cytarabine prodrug, was reported to be safe and effective as first-line therapy for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were unfit for intensive induction chemotherapy, according to the results of a phase II study presented during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 The...
A study published by Nowakowska et al in the journal Cancer has found a significant association between the use of cholesterol-lowering statins and survival rates of patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Since statins are relatively inexpensive, easy to access, and produce minimal side...
Research published by Niazi et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network indicates a need to increase mental health and chemical dependency support capabilities at cancer centers across the United States. Previous studies have determined that people diagnosed with cancer...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Halpern et al found that cancer survivors with pain had worse employment and financial outcomes than did those reporting no pain. Study Details The study used data from 1,213 adult survivors identified from the 2016–2017 Medical Expenditure...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Irwin et al, the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) has developed a new neuroblastoma risk classification (COG version 2) that uses the International Neuroblastoma Risk Group Staging System (INRGSS) and incorporates segmental chromosome aberrations as ...
In a U.S. Food and Drug Administration pooled analysis of clinical trial patient-level data reported in The Lancet Oncology, Fallah et al found that second-generation androgen receptor inhibitor treatment was associated with survival benefits in patients aged 80 years or older with nonmetastatic...
The invited discussant of the RATIONALE 208 trial, Chris Verslype, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, said tislelizumab is an “active and safe” investigational PD-1 antibody, “comparable to other PD-1 agents.” In particular, he noted, the results of RATIONALE ...
With the investigational checkpoint inhibitor tislelizumab, durable responses were achieved by some patients with previously treated advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, regardless of the number of prior lines of therapy, in the phase II RATIONALE 208 trial. These findings were presented during the...
Studies show that unhealthy lifestyles—including smoking, drinking alcohol, having obesity, being physically inactive, and eating a poor diet—are associated with an increased risk of developing cancer. Studies also show that practicing a healthy lifestyle is associated with an increase in total...
Among women undergoing surgery for breast cancer, up to 13% will have a postoperative visit to an emergency department, according to recent research. A new study published by Falcone et al in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment discovered there is a greater likelihood that Hispanic and...
In a Chinese phase III trial (CCCG-ALL-2015) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Yang et al found that 1 year of maintenance therapy with pulsed vincristine and dexamethasone was noninferior to 2 years in low-risk pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and was borderline inferior in...
In a randomized expansion phase of a phase I/II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Robin Kate Kelley, MD, and colleagues found that a novel regimen consisting of a single priming dose of tremelimumab in combination with durvalumab was associated with good outcomes in patients with...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Tsakiridis et al, the Canadian phase II OCOG-ALMERA trial, which was closed early due to slow accrual, showed that the addition of metformin to chemoradiation therapy was associated with worse outcomes in patients with unresected locally advanced non–small cell lung ...
A combination of the kinase inhibitor cabozantinib and the immunotherapy nivolumab may make curative surgery possible for some patients with liver cancer who would generally not be considered candidates for surgery, according to research published by Ho et al in Nature Cancer. Rates of Resection...
In an Israeli single-institution prospective cohort study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Bergwerk et al identified breakthrough COVID-19 infections among 39 of 1,497 health-care workers fully vaccinated with the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine. As stated by the investigators:...
In a single-institution study reported in the journal Cancer, Hu et al found that use of a dedicated nurse navigation program contributed to redressing the recognized inequities in care and outcomes between minority patients and White patients with aggressive large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). As...
In the German phase II VidazaAllo study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kröger et al found that switching from azacitidine to reduced-intensity conditioning allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) contingent upon donor availability was associated with better outcomes ...
Invited discussant Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Milan, Italy, and Head of the Division of Early Drug Development at the European Institute of Oncology, said the “clear” findings of KEYNOTE-5221 are “practice-changing.” However, the...
In a Children’s Oncology Group (COG) phase III trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Leary et al found that the addition of carboplatin to radiotherapy in pediatric patients with newly diagnosed high-risk medulloblastoma improved event-free survival in the group 3 molecular subgroup but not in others....
The latest analysis of the pivotal phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial demonstrated significant improvements in clinical outcomes with pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy vs chemotherapy alone as a neoadjuvant/adjuvant treatment of triple-negative breast cancer.1 This is the first large, randomized, phase III...
Recently, The ASCO Post published an article titled "Defining Cure in Multiple Myeloma: A Conversation With S. Vincent Rajkumar, MD." On this episode of the podcast, Dr. Rajkumar, of the Mayo Clinic, talks about what it means to “cure” patients, in light of the fact that multiple myeloma has been...
The session’s invited discussant Surbhi Sidana, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University, said CAR T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies targeting myeloma are emerging as potentially effective options for patients with highly refractory disease. For this population of triple...
For the challenging population of patients with multiple myeloma who have become refractory to essentially all current treatments, new approaches are much needed. Early clinical trials data suggest bispecific antibodies may help meet this need, as suggested by studies presented at the 2021 ASCO...
Cancer clinical trial research rapidly adapted to the circumstances of enrolling and treating patients in clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to findings from a study of enrollment during 2020 and early 2021 published by Joseph M. Unger, PhD, and colleagues in JAMA Network ...
A meta-analysis of nearly 200,000 men revealed 22 new genetic locations that could be susceptible to inherited testicular germ cell tumors—a 40% increase in the number of regions known to be associated with the cancer. The new findings, published by Pluta et al in Nature Communications, could help...
In a single-center retrospective study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Robinson et al found a vaccine-related axillary adenopathy incidence rate of 3% among women undergoing screening or diagnostic mammography within 90 days of receipt of at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine....
In a prospective study from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Williams et al found that prefrailty and frailty among young adult childhood cancer survivors were associated with neurocognitive decline vs nonfrail counterparts, mirroring the association...
In an analysis of four SWOG clinical trials of patients with advanced cancer reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Mo et al found that clinically significant fatigue at baseline was associated with poorer survival and increased risk of severe adverse events. Study Details The analysis included data...
In the Chinese phase III RESOLVE trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Zhang et al found that perioperative S-1/oxaliplatin was superior to—and adjuvant S-1/oxaliplatin was noninferior to—adjuvant capecitabine/oxaliplatin in terms of disease-free survival in patients undergoing D2 gastrectomy for...
Research shows that the majority of Americans—81%—are health-care information seekers, and that more than three-quarters of Americans get that information online. Unfortunately, much of that online information is inaccurate and could cause harm, according to a review of the most popular articles on ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Boddicker et al found that women older than age 65 in the general population who carry germline pathogenic variants in established high-risk breast cancer predisposition genes remain at significant risk of late-onset breast cancer and should...
NEOTALA’s invited discussant, Lisa Carey, MD, the Richardson and Marilyn Jacobs Preyer Distinguished Professor in Breast Cancer Research and Deputy Director of Clinical Sciences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, saw the findings as part of a bigger trend toward reducing the use of...
For the neoadjuvant treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, the oral poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor talazoparib yielded promising pathologic complete response rates in the phase II single-arm NEOTALA trial presented at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Preoperative chemotherapy is...
A new clinical guideline from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) published by Kilian E. Salerno, MD, and colleagues in Practical Radiation Oncology provides guidance on the use of radiation therapy to treat adult patients with soft-tissue sarcomas. Recommendations outline optimal...
The percentage of patients with inflammatory breast cancer who select reconstructive surgery after mastectomy—whether immediate or delayed—remains low in spite of improvements in treatment and long-term survival, but the numbers are increasing, according to recent research published by Karadsheh et ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting patients and health-care professionals that a clinical trial (OCEAN, Study OP-103; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03151811) evaluating melphalan flufenamide with dexamethasone to treat patients with multiple myeloma showed an increased risk ...
Worldwide, the global average surface temperature has risen at a similar rate of 0.17°F per decade since 1901, with the warmest year on record occurring in 2016 and the second warmest occurring in 2020. However, according to NOAA, since the late 1970s, the United States has warmed faster than the...
In the CAVA trial reported in The Lancet, Moss et al found that among central venous access devices used for the delivery of systemic anticancer therapy, totally implanted ports (PORTs) were associated with significantly reduced rates of complications compared with Hickman-type tunneled catheters...
In a French phase II trial (PANOPTIMOX-PRODIGE) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dahan et al found that 4 months of FOLFIRINOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, oxaliplatin) followed by leucovorin/fluorouracil maintenance was associated with favorable outcomes vs 6 months of...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Enzinger et al found that the prescription of opioids for cancer pain dropped markedly in the recent past among patients with poor-prognosis disease near the end of life, with the frequency of pain-related emergency department visits...