Early data from a clinical study published in Science Immunology1 suggest that blocking the Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) protein provided clinical benefit to a small group of patients with severe COVID-19 infection.1 Roschewski et al observed that the off-label use of the BTK inhibitor...
The ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program was different in many ways, not only because of the virtual modality forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because of the resilience of the scientific society and my colleagues around the world. I’m in the plenary session of the ASCO 2025 Annual Meeting....
Select Baylor College of Medicine faculty are honored annually through the Michael E. DeBakey, MD, Award for Excellence in Research for outstanding published scientific contributions to clinical and basic science research over a 3-year period. Included among the honorees for this year’s DeBakey...
On May 22, 2020, brigatinib was approved for the treatment of adult patients with ALK-positive, metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test.1,2 The FDA also approved the Vysis ALK Break Apart FISH Probe Kit as a companion...
Studies have shown a disconnect between where patients say they want to die and where they actually die. According to research from Stanford School of Medicine, although an overwhelming majority of Americans—about 80%—would prefer to die at home, just 20% do. In fact, 60% die in acute care...
As reported inThe Lancet by Jeff P. Sharman, MD, of Willamette Valley Cancer Institute/US Oncology, Eugene, Oregon, and colleagues, the phase III ELEVATE-TN trial has shown significantly improved progression-free survival with both acalabrutinib/obinutuzumab and acalabrutinib monotherapy vs...
On May 29, 2020, ramucirumab was approved for use in combination with erlotinib for first-line treatment of metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EGFR exon 19 deletion or exon 21 (L858R) substitution mutation.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings from the...
As reported in The Lancet by Matthew D. Galsky, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Tisch Cancer Institute, New York, and colleagues, the phase III IMvigor130 trial has shown prolonged progression-free survival with first-line atezolizumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy vs...
The global toll of breast cancer on women is staggering. In 2018, nearly two million new breast cancer cases were diagnosed, an increase of more than 20% since 2008,1 and mortality rates have increased by 14%, bringing the annual number of deaths worldwide from the cancer to more than 611,625.2...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On May 15, 2020, the receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor...
Commenting on the final overall survival analysis of the LOTUS trial, the study’s invited discussant, Suzette Delaloge, MD, MSc, Chair of the Breast Cancer Group at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Paris, said: “We see there might also be an overall survival effect with ipatasertib and paclitaxel…....
In the phase II LOTUS trial, the addition of the AKT inhibitor ipatasertib to paclitaxel in the first-line treatment of patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer yielded a strong numerical improvement—a median gain of 9 months—in overall survival, in the final survival analysis reported...
Discussant of the abstracts, Antonio Llombart-Cussac, MD, PhD, of Hospital Arnau de Vilanova, Universidad Catolica Valencia, Spain, noted that establishing these regimens in the third-line setting of metastatic disease and beyond will require demonstration of consistent gains in both...
First- and second-line treatments of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer have become the standard of care based on solid gains in overall survival, but the prevalence of resistance to these agents is increasing; up to 55% of patients will ultimately develop brain metastases. According to a pair...
Worldwide, nearly 1.7 million women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Of that number, nearly 300,000 Americans and more than 500,000 Europeans will be diagnosed with both invasive and in situ breast cancers.1,2 Breast-preserving surgery will initially be performed on approximately 60% of...
Study discussant Taofeek Kunie Owonikoko, MD, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of Hematology/Oncology, Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University, Atlanta, had praise for the design of KEYNOTE-604. He noted the adoption of the combination of pembrolizumab plus etoposide/platinum for the treatment of ...
Pembrolizumab added to etoposide and platinum significantly improved progression-free survival compared with placebo and etoposide/platinum as first-line therapy in patients with newly diagnosed, extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC).1 These results from the randomized, double-blind, phase...
On June 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients with recurrent or metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma that is not curable with surgery or radiation. KEYNOTE-629 Efficacy was investigated in KEYNOTE-629, a multicenter, multicohort,...
Due to COVID-19, this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting was convened using a virtual format. It was multidisciplinary, featuring more than 250 oral and 2,500 poster presentations from around the world in 24 disease-based and specialty tracks. Among the exciting talks in the session on symptoms and...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched Project Patient Voice, an initiative of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE). Through a new website, Project Patient Voice creates a consistent source of publicly available information describing patient-reported symptoms from cancer ...
As reported in The Lancet by Kuderer et al, a cohort study using the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) database has shown that increased risk of severe COVID-19 in patients with cancer is associated with such factors as age, comorbidities, performance status, hematologic malignancy, and...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Hayashi et al, the Children’s Oncology Group AALL0434 study has shown “excellent” outcomes with Capizzi-based methotrexate/pegaspargase (C-MTX) treatment in patients with newly diagnosed pediatric T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma (T-LL). The addition...
DESTINY-CRC01 study discussant, Michael S. Lee, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, called the findings “most promising” for the subsequent anti-HER2 treatment of HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer. The...
Having recently gained approval in metastatic breast cancer, fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) is now proving its worth in metastatic colorectal cancer, according to results of the phase II DESTINY-CRC01 study in patients with HER2-positive disease.1 T-DXd is an antibody-drug conjugate...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Garbe et al found that melanoma-specific survival rates for patients with stage III disease differed markedly in three independent cohorts compared with those reported in American Joint Committee on Cancer version 8 (AJCCv8) stage III...
Lipophilic statins—a type of medication commonly prescribed to lower blood cholesterol—were associated with reduced mortality in patients with ovarian cancer, according to a study presented by Kala Visvanathan, MD, MHS, and colleagues at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual...
In a phase I study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mellinghoff et al found that ivosidenib was well tolerated in patients with IDH1-mutant advanced glioma and was associated with prolonged disease control in those with nonenhancing glioma. Study Details The study included 66 evaluable ...
A new clinical guideline from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) provides recommendations for radiation therapy to treat patients with nonmetastatic cervical cancer. The guideline—ASTRO's first for cervical cancer—outlines indications and best practices for external-beam radiation...
On June 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved oral selinexor (Xpovio), a first-in-class, selective inhibitor of nuclear export compound, for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) not otherwise specified after at least...
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 ...
According to the National Cancer Institute, each year, about 70,000 adolescents and young adults (AYA)—those between the ages of 15 and 39—are diagnosed with cancer. Evidence suggests that some cancers found in AYA patients may have unique genetic and biologic features. A study that investigated...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Tian et al identified factors associated with severity of illness in patients with cancer hospitalized for COVID-19 over a 2-month period in Wuhan. Study Details The study included all patients aged ≥ 18 years with any type of solid...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gul et al found that salvage therapy with nivolumab/ipilimumab was capable of producing a response after prior programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) pathway inhibitor therapy in some patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Study Details The...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Fast Track designation to agents designed to treat colorectal and pancreatic cancers, in addition to lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma/Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia; accepted a new drug application for a treatment for relapsed or...
In an International Rare Cancers Initiative phase II trial (InterAAct) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rao et al found that carboplatin/paclitaxel was associated with less serious toxicity and a trend toward improved overall survival vs cisplatin/fluorouracil in chemotherapy-naive...
In a cohort analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Rusthoven et al found that first-line stereotactic radiosurgery was associated with similar outcomes as whole-brain radiotherapy in patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) brain metastases. As stated by the investigators, “Although stereotactic...
In a study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Emily H. Castellanos, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that the requirement for Medicare Oncology Care Model (OCM) practices to report biomarker testing of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has not substantially altered the...
On June 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to tazemetostat (Tazverik), an EZH2 inhibitor, for adult patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma whose tumors are positive for an EZH2 mutation as detected by an FDA-approved test and who have...
As reported by Lee et al in The Lancet, a prospective cohort study from the United Kingdom performed by the UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project (UKCCMP) has found that increased risk of COVID-19 mortality in patients with cancer is associated with such factors as age, sex, and comorbidities,...
In the phase II L-MIND trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Gilles Salles, MD, and colleagues found that the combination of the Fc-enhanced anti-CD19 monoclonal antibody tafasitamab plus lenalidomide produced responses in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma...
By analyzing tumors from patients treated with immunotherapy for advanced kidney cancer in three clinical trials, scientists have identified several features of the tumors that influence their response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. The research was presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Jean-Yves Blay, MD, and colleagues, the phase III INVICTUS trial has shown that the oral KIT and PDGFRα tyrosine kinase inhibitor ripretinib prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) whose...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Petersdorf et al found that level of expression of patient HLA-DPB1 mismatches and number of mismatches affect risk of acute graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) after unrelated donor hematopoietic cell transplantation. Study Details The study...
The American Cancer Society has updated its guideline on diet and physical activity for cancer prevention. Staying at a healthy weight, staying active throughout life, following a healthy eating pattern, and avoiding or limiting alcohol may greatly reduce a person's lifetime risk of developing or...
On June 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic tumor mutational burden–high (TMB-H; ≥ 10 mutations/megabase [mut/Mb]) solid tumors, as determined by an ...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Yang et al described clinical characteristics, outcomes, and risk factors for mortality in patients with cancer hospitalized with COVID-19 over a 2-month period in Hubei, China. Study Details The study included 205 patients with...
In the phase II portion of a single-center phase I/II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Yu et al found that the combination of first-line osimertinib and bevacizumab resulted in a high rate of 1-year progression-free survival in patients with metastatic EGFR-mutant lung cancer. As stated by the...
New research published by Lage et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found 40.2% of hospitalized patients with advanced, incurable cancer were functionally impaired at the time of admission—meaning they needed assistance with activities of daily living like walking,...
The availability of an oral selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) would be good news for patients and clinicians as an alternative to intramuscular fulvestrant. The novel agent LSZ102 might fit the bill, based on early activity shown in combination with the targeted agents ribociclib and...
Advances in the treatment of hematologic malignancies and some of their associated symptoms were presented during EHA25 Virtual, an ongoing online conference from the European Hematology Association (EHA). Advances in the Treatment of High-Risk CLL: CLL2-GIVe Results In the CLL2-GIVe trial, the...