As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Richard S. Finn, MD, of Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues, the phase III IMbrave150 trial has shown that anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) plus...
The ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program was the forum for an unusual but profoundly important event in oncology. Four studies that should be practice-changing were presented.1-4 These studies provided irrefutable evidence that we can improve the quality of life of older patients by reducing toxicity. ...
The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab was recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in two different regimens: On May 15, 2020, the two-drug combination was approved for first-line treatment in...
At the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, Nathalie LeVasseur, MD, BSc, FRCPC, received the Annual Meeting Merit Award for a project titled, “Whole-Genome Sequencing in Metastatic Breast Cancer: Lessons Learned From the BC Cancer Personalized Oncogenomics Program.” Along with her clinical work, Dr....
Although the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with cancer is still being evaluated, data from several studies show that in comparison with people who do not have cancer, those who do generally experience a higher risk of severe events including admittance to the intensive care unit, ...
A visiting away elective is a resident’s designated time to visit another academic program to foster the growth of medical knowledge through patient care from the perspective of another health-care system and educational experience. The time dedicated to make this dream happen is grueling. First...
Pain is among the most difficult medical issues for oncologists to confront, said Tony L. Yaksh, PhD, Professor of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego, during his keynote address at the 2019 Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium. Failure to adequately manage...
With the rapid expansion of scientific advances, the intersection of ethics and the delivery of cancer care becomes ever more complicated. To shed light on some of the challenging ethical issues faced by today’s busy oncology practitioners, The ASCO Post spoke with Rebecca D. Pentz, PhD, Professor ...
Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, announced its 2020 grant and award recipients in conjunction with the 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program. The awards will support researchers with projects spanning many areas in cancer care, including immunotherapy, lung and breast cancers, and palliative...
Effective for services starting March 1, 2020, and for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will reimburse for telehealth services for all beneficiaries. To help explain this and other changes to telehealth coverage related to the pandemic,...
The world is grappling with a pandemic and we are all adjusting to a new reality. Fewer handshakes, more masks. Fewer hugs, more fear. COVID-19 has tested us, challenged us, changed us. It’s changed the way we look, the way we work, the way we socialize. It’s changed us, but it can’t stop us. It...
Health-care innovator and leader Glenn D. Steele Jr, MD, PhD, has been elected Board Chair at City of Hope. Dr. Steele joined the City of Hope Board of Directors in 2016 and was Chair of the Executive Compensation and Governance Committee from 2018 to 2020. “City of Hope has benefited from...
Adolescents and young adults (AYA) who have survived cancer may continue to suffer from insomnia long after treatment ends, interfering with a range of daily activities. In Pediatric Blood & Cancer, Eric S. Zhou, PhD, and Christopher J. Recklitis, PhD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,...
“As a medical student, I often felt marginalized from my medical community. I have been told that my name is ‘not American,’ fallen prey to being confused for support staff such as a janitor (even while wearing my white coat), and been asked questions like, ‘Where are you really from?’ or ‘How old...
Combining the HER2-targeted therapy trastuzumab with carboplatin and paclitaxel improved survival rates for women with a rare, aggressive type of endometrial cancer, according to findings published by Fader et al in Clinical Cancer Research. Each year, more than 65,650 women in the United States...
Patients who were unexpectedly hospitalized for dehydration, fever, or other events while undergoing radiotherapy for head and neck cancer were at a higher risk for less favorable outcomes, according to a study published by Anurag K. Singh, MD, and colleagues in Oral Oncology. Researchers found...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Xie et al found that event-free survival including prostate-specific antigen biochemical failure as an event is not an adequate surrogate for overall survival in men receiving radiotherapy as primary therapy for localized prostate cancer....
In a single-institution study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Kouzy et al found that gastrointestinal (GI)-related patient-reported outcomes among those receiving chemoradiation for anal cancer improved vs baseline at 1 week after treatment initiation, were worse vs baseline at 5 weeks, but did...
Elizabeth H. Phillips, MD, of the University of Manchester and The Christie Hospital, discusses phase II findings showing inotuzumab ozogamicin plus rituximab, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and prednisolone is a feasible and effective regimen for front-line treatment of high-risk patients with...
Discussant of the DESKTOP III and SOC1 trials, Robert L. Coleman, MD, of U.S. Oncology Research in Woodlands, Texas, congratulated the authors of both trials. He put these results in perspective with the GOG-0213 study, which did not show a survival benefit for secondary surgery. “There are general ...
Two phase III trials provide support for secondary cytoreductive surgery in women with recurrent ovarian cancer, with the caveats that patient selection is key and the surgery should be performed at sites of excellence. The results of the DESKTOP III and SOC1 trials, both presented during the...
Over the past 3 decades, colorectal cancer survival in the United States has improved significantly, but in young people—particularly men diagnosed with colorectal cancer before age 50—incidence and mortality due to colorectal cancer are on the rise. Additionally, among patients with early-stage...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Ghosh et al found that a more intense reduced-intensity conditioning and nonmyeloablative conditioning (RIC-NMAC) regimen consisting of fludarabine plus melphalan at 140 mg/kg (Flu-Mel14) appears to be associated with poorer overall survival and higher...
On July 7, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an oral combination of decitabine and cedazuridine (Inqovi) for adult patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), including the following: Previously treated and untreated de novo and secondary MDS with the following...
On July 7, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) posted a draft recommendation statement, draft evidence review, and draft modeling study on screening for lung cancer in people who do not have signs or symptoms. Based on the evidence, the USPSTF recommends annual screening using a...
Discussant Scott T. Tagawa, MD, MS, of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, agreed that prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted positron-emission tomography (PET) is the wave of the future, but data on long-term outcomes are needed, he said. “We are all aware of the deficiencies of imaging ...
Commenting on the SOLO2 trial for The ASCO Post was Don S. Dizon, MD, FACP, FASCO, Director of Women’s Cancers at Lifespan Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. “It’s great to get an overall survival advantage from a PARP inhibitor study. Coming...
New, longer-term data from a pivotal phase II trial in advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC), were presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program and discussed during a poster discussion.1 Danny Rischin, MD, of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Victoria, Australia, presented...
Targeting MET alterations with savolitinib appears to be a better strategy than sunitinib for patients with MET-driven papillary renal cell carcinoma, according to results of the open-label, randomized, phase III SAVOIR trial.1 Patients with MET-driven metastatic papillary renal cell carcinoma...
In a poster presentation at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, Mansoor Raza Mirza, MD, of the the Department of Oncology, Rigshopitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, and colleagues reported the final analysis of the phase II NSGO-AVANOVA2/ENGOT-OV24 trial comparing the...
In the final, preplanned, overall survival analysis in the randomized phase III SOLO2/ENGOT-ov211 trial, maintenance treatment with the PARP inhibitor olaparib extended overall survival by an unprecedented 12.9 months, compared with placebo. This marks the first time that overall survival has been...
Two gynecologic oncologists and ASCO’s Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, commented on the findings of the TROPHIMMUN trial for The ASCO Post. “The authors demonstrate efficacy of a new treatment approach for gestational trophoblastic...
Almost 50% of patients resistant to single-agent chemotherapy responded in the first trial of immunotherapy for gestational trophoblastic tumors, reported French investigators in an abstract presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program.1 Benoit You, MD, PhD, of Lyon University Hospital,...
Bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy represents the current “gold standard” for lymph node staging in cervical cancer—but an assessment of disease-free and disease-specific survival among patients with early-stage cervical cancer determined that sentinel lymph node biopsy alone is a valid standard of...
Discussant for the CheckMate 227 and CheckMate 9LA trials, Scott N. Gettinger, MD, of Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut, said: “There is tremendous interest in lung cancer to combine nivolumab plus ipilimumab, driven by the melanoma experience. However, combinations of immunotherapy come ...
When added to bortezomib and dexamethasone in patients with multiple myeloma, selinexor significantly improved progression-free survival and response rates, with a lower incidence of peripheral neuropathy, compared with bortezomib/dexamethasone alone, according to results from the global phase III...
Treatment of relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma yielded responses with the antibody-drug conjugate belantamab mafodotin, both as a single agent and in combination with bortezomib and dexamethasone. Two reports from the DREAMM team expanded on these findings at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific...
Results of the phase III E2108 study indicate that surgery and radiotherapy given after systemic treatment afforded no additional survival benefit among women with newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancer. The practice may, however, reduce locoregional progression of disease, according to a report...
The importance of first-line therapy in multiple myeloma is that the first therapy typically achieves the most impact, and subsequent lines of therapy tend to be less effective, explained ENDURANCE study discussant Jesús G. Berdeja, MD, Director of Myeloma Research at the Sarah Cannon Research...
No superior efficacy was shown with the combination of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) in newly treated patients with standard- and intermediate-risk multiple myeloma who are not slated for immediate autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT), compared with the standard of care: ...
Sharing his perspective on KEYNOTE-177 with The ASCO Post was Axel Grothey, MD, Director of GI Cancer Research at the West Cancer Center, OneOncology, Memphis. “This is a very important, highly anticipated study,” he said. “It’s the first randomized trial of any checkpoint inhibitor in...
Upfront treatment with immunotherapy not only improved results in a subset of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, it doubled the rates of median progression-free survival. These findings—the first of their kind—arose from the interim analysis of the randomized open-label phase III...
“These data are solid, showing a 7-month improvement in overall survival in patients with stable disease or better after first-line chemotherapy. This is roughly a 50% improvement in survival, which is clinically meaningful. Also, progression-free survival was significantly increased with...
According to an interim analysis of the phase III JAVELIN Bladder 100 trial, rates of survival among patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma who did not progress on first-line platinum-based chemotherapy were significantly prolonged by maintenance therapy with avelumab and best supportive care...
Lecia V. Sequist, MD, who was not involved in the ADAURA study, said this could be a practice-changing study. Dr. Sequist is the Landry Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Innovation in Early Cancer Detection at Massachusetts General Hospital....
The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many cancer societies, including ASCO, to cancel their in-person meetings this year and instead present the latest advancements and new approaches in oncology care via a virtual platform. For the first time in its 56-year history, the ASCO Annual...
AN APPROACH using an RNA-based personalized cancer vaccine called RO7198457 in combination with the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab has shown a preliminary benefit, according to an early study in patients with advanced solid tumors. The novel combination was well tolerated, and 8% of patients showed a ...
In the phase IIb SADAL trial reported in The Lancet Haematology, Kalakonda et al found that the oral nuclear export inhibitor selinexor produced durable responses in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Findings in the trial supported the recent accelerated U.S. Food...
In a new study published by Wentzensen et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a computer algorithm improved the accuracy and efficiency of cervical cancer screening compared with cytology (Papanicolaou [Pap] test), the current standard for follow-up of women who test positive in...
For patients with neuroendocrine tumors and liver metastases, a new radiopharmaceutical, Ga-68 DOTA-JR11, has shown a benefit in imaging for tumor detection, staging, and restaging, providing important information to guide treatment. In a head-to-head comparison of two somatostatin receptor (SSTR)...