In a preplanned pooled analysis of phase III trials reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Grothey et al did not establish noninferiority of 3 vs 6 months of adjuvant FOLFOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin) or CAPOX (capecitabine and oxaliplatin) in disease-free survival in...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Cheson et al, an updated analysis of the phase III GADOLIN trial showed an overall survival advantage with obinutuzumab (Gazyva) plus bendamustine induction followed by obinutuzumab maintenance vs bendamustine alone in patients with rituximab...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved rucaparib (Rubraca) tablets for the maintenance treatment of adult patients with recurrent epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer who have a complete or partial response to platinum-based chemotherapy. The FDA...
Topline results from the phase III REACH-2 study of ramucirumab (Cyramza) as a single agent in the second-line treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were recently announced. The trial met its primary endpoint of overall survival as well as the secondary endpoint of...
On April 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track designation for TAR-200, a gemcitabine-releasing intravesical system (GemRIS), for the treatment of patients with organ-confined or locally advanced muscle-invasive bladder cancer who are unfit for curative-intent therapy....
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Motzer et al, the phase III CheckMate 214 trial has shown an overall survival advantage with nivolumab plus ipilimumab vs sunitinib in patients with previously untreated advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Study Details In the open-label...
The Sarcoma Foundation of America (SFA) and Conquer Cancer have been working together for 13 years to fund cutting-edge sarcoma research. Most recently, the SFA joined forces with Conquer Cancer to support a 2018 Young Investigator Award (YIA) in sarcoma. This grant will provide 1 year of crucial...
Some patients may make discriminatory requests for a different clinician for their health care.1-5 These individuals may want to avoid treatment with clinicians of a certain race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin. Oncologists are not exempt from this type of patient...
Data presented at the 2017 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition on the longer-term follow-up analysis of results from the ZUMA-1 trial investigating the effectiveness of axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) in patients with refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) showed...
ELI LILLY AND COMPANY announced that Maura Dickler, MD, a breast cancer clinical researcher at the Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), will join Lilly Oncology as Vice President of Late Phase Development in early May 2018. Dr. Dickler is currently Section Head ...
THE INCIDENCE of cholangiocarcinoma is rising, and effective therapies are urgently needed. Several classes of experimental molecularly targeted agents might meet this challenge, according to Robin Kate Kelley, MD, Associate Professor of Medical Oncology and leader of the clinical trials program in ...
LONG-TERM SURVIVORS of pancreatic cancer display evidence of enhanced tumor-specific T-cell responses that are associated with unique neoepitope quality but not quantity, according to Steven D. Leach, MD, Director of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center and the Preston T. and Virginia R. Kelsey...
IN PATIENTS WITH breast and colon cancers, a physical exercise intervention conducted during adjuvant chemotherapy improved total physical activity levels 4 years after treatment, with a trend toward less fatigue, according to a follow-up study from the randomized multicenter PACT study, presented...
WHETHER THEY are parents themselves or dealing with their own parents, patients with cancer often look to their health-care team to help guide these relationships, but data on how best to help are lacking, according to two poster presentations at the 2018 American Psychosocial Oncology Society...
On April 3, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) accepted for review the Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) for cemiplimab for the treatment of patients with metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) or patients with locally advanced CSCC who are not candidates for surgery....
On April 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted a Biologics License Application (BLA) for moxetumomab pasudotox, an investigational anti-CD22 recombinant immunotoxin and a potential new medicine for the treatment of adult patients with hairy cell leukemia (HCL) who have received at ...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Fuchs et al, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) showed activity in patients with previously treated advanced gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer in the phase II KEYNOTE-059 trial. Study Details In the study, 259 patients from sites in 16 countries who had disease...
In a preplanned interim analysis of a phase II trial (JAVELIN Merkel 200 part B) reported in JAMA Oncology, D’Angelo et al found that avelumab was active in the first-line treatment of metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma. Avelumab was approved in March 2017 for treatment of patients aged ≥ 12 ...
CIRCULATING TUMOR DNA (ctDNA) assays are now commercially available for use in lung cancer and melanoma, where they can identify the presence of specific mutations that drive treatment selection. In breast cancer, ctDNA remains more of a research tool, but this is poised to change. At the 2018...
PENILE CANCER is rare, outcomes remain poor, and there are few data from randomized trials to guide treatment decisions. However, in the small phase II VinCaP study, presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, 45.5% of patients with advanced or metastatic penile cancer had a clinical...
THE 2018 GENITOURINARY Cancers Symposium hosted an international audience of oncologists and other stakeholders to hear about the latest advances in the field. We have included coverage of many of the top news stories from the meeting in previous issues of The ASCO Post. Here are summaries of a few ...
IN A POPULATION of heavily pretreated patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer and low or negative programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression, durvalumab (Imfinzi) monotherapy demonstrated an overall response rate of 9.2%, consistent with that of single-agent programmed...
THANKS TO the efficacy of five approved anti-HER2 agents, patients with HER2-positive breast cancer have overall survival numbers that are as good as, or better than, their HER2-negative counterparts. With the next generation of anti-HER2 therapies in clinical trials, these outcomes may become even ...
IN THE PHASE III COLUMBUS trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Reinhard Dummer, MD, of University Hospital Zurich, and colleagues found that the combination of the BRAF inhibitor encorafenib and the MEK inhibitor binimetinib improved progression-free survival vs vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in...
In an international phase II trial (Mayo Clinic Phase 2 Consortium–NCI-9742) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ma et al found that nivolumab (Opdivo) was active in previously treated recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Study Details In the study, 44 evaluable...
As reported by Armand and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, extended follow-up of the phase II CheckMate 205 trial continues to show benefits and good tolerability of nivolumab (Opdivo) treatment in relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma after failure of autologous ...
In the international PRECISION trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Kasivisvanathan et al found that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-targeted biopsy resulted in a significantly higher rate of diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer and a lower rate of diagnosis of...
A phase I/II trial has shown that the addition of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) to bendamustine is active in relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma. The study findings were reported in The Lancet Oncology by Owen A. O’Connor, MD, of the Center for Lymphoid Malignancies, Columbia University...
The proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib (Kyprolis) has taken on an increasing role in the treatment of multiple myeloma, but new research from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania shows the therapy may come with the risk of cardiovascular problems in a higher-than-expected...
An interim analysis of a phase II trial reported by Jones et al in The Lancet Oncology indicates that venetoclax (Venclexta) produces a response in a high proportion of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) progressing on or after ibrutinib (Imbruvica) treatment. John C. Byrd, MD, of...
A phase II study (ACE-LY-004) reported in The Lancet by Michael Wang, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues showed durable responses with the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor acalabrutinib (Calquence) in patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma....
“I think I found the trial that is going to save your life,” Stefanie Joho’s sister said after checking out the ClinicalTrials.gov website. “And sure enough, it did. That is not an exaggeration. That is exactly what happened,” Ms. Joho, a health advocate and consultant based in Philadelphia, told...
Physicians can be proactive in alerting patients to possible adverse effects of immunotherapy and in encouraging patients to report them. “It is important to emphasize that whenever a patient develops a new symptom, always considering that this might be an immune-related side effect. We need to...
“Immunotherapy has a completely different side-effect profile than chemotherapy, and that has caught physicians off guard,” noted Drew Pardoll, MD, PhD, in an article published earlier this year in The Washington Post.1 Since then, efforts have moved forward on several fronts to bring physicians,...
I’m sure every cancer survivor feels this way, but my diagnosis, in 1997, of stage III germ cell testicular cancer couldn’t have come at a worse time in my life. I was nearing the end of a 60-city tour with my figure skating show Stars on Ice, when a nagging pain in my abdomen became so severe I...
On March 23, 2018, ASCO President Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, issued the following statement: The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) applauds Congress for its bipartisan support of the omnibus spending bill that significantly boosts our nation’s investment in biomedical research. By...
On March 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the indication for nilotinib (Tasigna) to include treatment of first- and second-line pediatric patients 1 year of age or older with Philadelphia chromosome–positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the chronic phase. In the United ...
Postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer who took the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole for 2 years after an initial 5 years of adjuvant endocrine therapy received an equal benefit to those who took the drug for 5 additional years. The trial results suggest that a shorter...
At the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), Michael Gnant, MD, FACS, of the Medical University of Vienna presented the 9-year median follow-up of a trial looking at the length of extended aromatase inhibitor therapy. At least four other recently presented or published trials have...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies focused on preventing cancer. These studies are investigating a multitude of methods, including educational interventions; imaging devices; dietary changes/supplements; weight management;...
Survival of patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas is increasing, and with that comes the need, in some cases, for solid organ transplantation, often because of treatment-related toxicity. The factors involved in organ transplant among lymphoma survivors were discussed by Philip J....
Although aromatase inhibitors are highly effective as adjuvant therapy in metastatic breast cancer and for prevention of breast cancer, the side effects can be difficult to tolerate and often lead to discontinuation of therapy. A phase III randomized trial has found that acupuncture may relieve...
The phase III IMpower150 study met its coprimary endpoint of overall survival (OS) at interim analysis and showed that first-line treatment with the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and bevacizumab (Avastin) plus carboplatin and paclitaxel (chemotherapy) helped patients with advanced...
The average number of moderate or marked side effects reported by patients with breast cancer is lower if they are treated with radiotherapy to part of the breast or a reduced dose to the whole breast, rather than with standard whole breast radiotherapy (WBRT), according to new findings presented...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gettinger et al, 5-year follow-up of patients receiving nivolumab (Opdivo) in a phase I study (CA209-003) in previously treated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has shown prolonged survival and durable responses in a subgroup...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fader et al found that the addition of trastuzumab (Herceptin) to carboplatin/paclitaxel improved progression-free survival among women with HER2-overexpressing uterine serous carcinoma. HER2 has been found to be overexpressed in...
In a Korean study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Choi et al found that antibiotic treatment for Helicobacter pylori was associated with a significant reduction in metachronous gastric cancer in patients who had undergone endoscopic resection of early gastric cancer or high-grade...
Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, and nonmelanoma skin cancer is the most common type of skin cancer, affecting more than 3 million Americans every year. Moreover, nonmelanoma skin cancer incidence is growing at an exponential rate—between 1976–1984 and...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Michalski et al, long-term follow-up in the NRG Oncology/RTOG 0126 trial showed no significant difference in overall survival with dose-escalated vs standard-dose radiotherapy in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. High-dose radiotherapy was associated...
In an Asian phase III noninferiority trial (AXEPT) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Xu et al found that modified XELIRI (mXELIRI, capecitabine plus irinotecan) was noninferior in overall survival vs standard FOLFIRI (leucovorin, fluorouracil, and irinotecan), both given with or without bevacizumab...