Oncology providers familiar with ASCO’s guideline on older adults with cancer are two to four times more likely to conduct a geriatric assessment on patients with cancer over the age of 65, according to the first international ASCO survey aimed at determining if and how often cancer providers are...
Significant changes are coming to the office and outpatient Evaluation and Management (E&M) services Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) codes (99202-99215). Practices, physicians, and staff who have not done so already must begin preparing for these changes today to ensure a successful...
Gateway for Cancer Research® is investing $1.5 million to ensure that a more diverse patient population is represented in oncology research and to expand clinical trial access for patients from underserved and underrepresented communities. The second biennial Gateway Discovery Grant, administered...
Job loss is stressful no matter the circumstances. Recently, millions of people have lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. To make matters more difficult, job loss in the United States can often mean a loss of health insurance. For people with cancer, losing a job is especially challenging...
The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) project is ending 2020 by surpassing a goal established 20 years ago, reporting more than 1 million nurses and other professionals trained using the ELNEC curriculum. Administered through a partnership between the American Association of Colleges ...
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center in Ann Arbor received an $11.2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study how to use the microbiome to limit complications of stem cell transplants for blood cancers and other diseases....
Global Cancer Institute (GCI), which is focused on improving survival rates for underserved patients with cancer worldwide, recently announced it has extended its programs to Bangladesh. The extension begins with the launch of monthly tumor boards, which help physicians and oncologists in...
A recent study finding similar overall survival rates for patients with melanomas of the trunk and extremities treated with Mohs micrographic surgery or wide local excision1 raises questions about why and when physicians might recommend, and patients opt for, one or the other procedure. “The most...
A cohort study of 188,862 cases of all-stage melanomas of the trunk and extremities found no differences in overall survival between patients treated with Mohs micrographic surgery or with wide local excision.1 “These findings add to the existing body of evidence demonstrating that wide local...
You could call it a sixth sense, but the moment I felt a lump in my left breast I knew it was cancer, although it would take several weeks to confirm the diagnosis. When I saw my primary cancer physician and told him of my concern, he said: “Don’t worry. Men don’t get breast cancer; it’s a woman’s...
The international hunt to find more genetic risk markers for testicular cancer is expanding. A team of researchers led by Katherine L. Nathanson, MD, Deputy Director of the Abramson Cancer Center and the Pearl Basser Professor for BRCA-Related Research in the Perelman School of Medicine at the...
The Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) has announced its collaboration with ASCO in the development of a series of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for integrative therapies in oncology care. The guidelines, planned for publication in 2021 and 2022, will provide clinicians and...
Mount Sinai has received a $4 million donation from Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch to support prostate health and the Milton and Carroll Petrie Department of Urology at Mount Sinai. The prostate program—founded by Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, Kyung Hyun Kim, MD Professor and Chair of Urology—will be named the ...
Four experienced oncologists who have been treating patients with cancer in South Florida for many years are joining Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Health System and the region’s only cancer center to achieve a National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation....
Stephen M. Hahn, MD, Commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), recently issued a statement regarding an important step that researchers and medical product sponsors can take to make sure clinical trials for medical products are more inclusive of multiple populations. “We have...
In states that have expanded Medicaid availability as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), mortality rates for three major types of cancer are significantly lower than in states that have not expanded Medicaid availability, according to a recent study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer...
Nationally recognized oncologic surgeon Sandra L. Wong, MD, MS, FASCO, FACS, was born and raised in Stockton, California, a city on the San Joaquin River, in California’s Central Valley. “My parents were both immigrants, but unlike the stereotypical picture of hard-driving immigrant parents who...
In the French phase III Senti-MERORL trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Renaud Garrel, MD, PhD, of the University Hospital Center of Montpellier, France, and colleagues, found that sentinel node biopsy was equivalent to neck lymph node dissection in 2-year neck node...
My patient with metastatic colon cancer was sitting across from me after being absent for several months. His cancer had been under excellent control on chemotherapy, but now he was having worse pain and shortness of breath. Despite our calls, he had not kept his appointments. We were 6 feet apart, ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and colleagues, the phase III TOURMALINE-MM4 trial has shown that postinduction maintenance with ixazomib prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in...
In an analysis from the phase III ExteNET trial reported in Clinical Breast Cancer, Arlene Chan, MD, of the Breast Cancer Research Centre of Western Australia and Curtin University, Perth, and colleagues, found significant improvements in efficacy outcomes with administration of neratinib vs...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, of Yale School of Medicine, and colleagues, the phase III IMpower110 trial has shown significantly prolonged overall survival with first-line atezolizumab vs platinum-based chemotherapy in metastatic non–small cell lung...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Stephen R.D. Johnston, MD, PhD, of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, and colleagues, an interim analysis in the phase III monarchE trial has shown that adjuvant abemaciclib plus endocrine therapy significantly improved invasive...
The American Cancer Society (ACS) Cancer Action Network has released new policy recommendations to increase the uptake of biomarker testing and to advance the use of precision medicine in cancer care. A recent report by the ACS Cancer Action Network and the LUNGevity Foundation found that although...
Heloisa Soares, MD, PhD, gastrointestinal and neuroendocrine tumor medical oncologist and researcher at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) and Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah, received two awards from external organizations honoring her contributions to the field of...
Lung cancer continues to be the most deadly solid cancer in the world, despite the fact that survival rates have been improving over the past decade. However, Black patients have worse outcomes and shorter lifespans after being diagnosed with lung cancer. A study published in the Journal of...
The University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, UT Austin Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, and UT Austin Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) launched a new collaboration in oncologic data and computational science earlier this year. The strategic initiative...
The Rutgers School of Public Health has received a $1.5 million Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant to support volunteer firefighter cancer research. This grant will enhance the research currently underway in collaboration with Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, which is geared...
Numerous studies over the past 4 decades have chronicled the lack of progress in improved outcomes for adolescents and young adults (AYAs)—defined by the National Cancer Institute as those ranging in age from 15 to 39—diagnosed with cancer compared with children and older adults diagnosed with the...
On October 16, 2020, venetoclax was granted regular approval for use in combination with azacitidine, decitabine, or low-dose cytarabine for the treatment of newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in adults aged 75 years or older or those with comorbidities precluding intensive induction...
In partnership with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, The Focus Fund GP, LLC, has launched the “Cancer Focus Fund,” to provide investment support to investigational therapies in late preclinical development through to phase I and phase IB/II clinical trials. Along with the fund’s...
The Colorectal Cancer Alliance, a national nonprofit committed to ending colorectal cancer, has launched a comprehensive marketing campaign. The effort will alert the public to the continued risk of colorectal cancer and the necessity of life-saving screening, which can be conducted safely during...
New diagnostic criteria and modern imaging techniques, a wealth of new therapeutics, and an update on current thinking as to when to treat patients with smoldering myeloma were highlighted during the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) 2020 Virtual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies™....
Despite decades of research, multinational clinical trials, regular guideline updates by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and coordinated efforts by ASCO and other major oncology organizations, the management strategy for prostate cancer remains controversial. To keep the oncology community ...
OCE Insights is an occasional column developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this installment, Vishal Bhatnagar, MD, Associate Director for Patient Outcomes, Bellinda King-Kallimanis, PhD, Senior Staff...
Based on early results in clinical trials, interest in the use of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in multiple myeloma has been high, especially for products targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA). During the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, further support for CAR T-cell...
The SOLAR-1 invited discussant, Fatima Cardoso, MD, Director of the Breast Unit at the Champalimaud Clinical Center in Lisbon and Chair of the ABC Global Alliance, commented: “The overall survival results, though numerically different by almost 8 months, unfortunately do not reach statistical...
The statistically significant benefit of alpelisib in reducing disease progression, as reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2 years ago, did not translate into a significant improvement in overall survival, although a numerical 8-month gain was observed in the final ...
The Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) brings together key stakeholders in all areas of cancer research to make connections, build collaborations, and explore and expand the frontiers of integrative cancer science and medicine. After careful consideration of...
“There has been a lot of interest in the development of new antiandrogens” for clinical use in patients with breast cancer,” Anthony D. Elias, MD, reported in an update on male breast cancer at the 2020 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium, sponsored by the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center...
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 October 14, 2020, the approval of pembrolizumab was...
“This study highlights an interesting difference between breast cancers that are detected at the time a woman attends a scheduled appointment as part of a national screening program and those that are diagnosed in the interval between screenings,” commented European Breast Cancer Conference...
Breast cancers detected between mammographic screenings carry a worse prognosis than those detected at the time of screening, even when tumor biology is similar, according to research presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC 12), which was held virtually this year.1 The 8-year...
Keerthi Gogineni, MD, MSHP, Assistant Professor of Hematology and a medical oncologist at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, commented on the long-term follow-up of the MINDACT trial presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference. She noted that, for patients with early-stage...
Long-term analysis of the phase III MINDACT trial, with a median follow-up of 8.7 years, confirmed that the 70-gene signature MammaPrint assay can identify which patients with breast cancer can safely forgo adjuvant chemotherapy, reported Emiel Rutgers, MD, PhD, FRCS, a surgical oncologist at the...
Press briefing moderator and meeting Co-Chair, Emiliano Calvo, MD, Director of the START Madrid Group and Director of Clinical Research at the START Madrid-Centro Integral Oncologico Clara Campal Hospital, stated: “Using drugs that are already approved and in worldwide use, and to be able to...
Angiotensin receptor blockers, commonly used to treat hypertension, may improve outcomes in patients treated with anti–PD-1/L1 agents, according to an observational study of almost 600 patients reported at the virtual 32nd EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.1 The...
Another novel oral KRAS inhibitor—adagrasib (MRTX849)—has shown promise in early clinical trials, according to investigators of the KRYSTAL-1 study who reported findings at the virtual 32nd EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.1,2 The conference is jointly provided...
Invited study discussant, Melina E. Marmarelis, MD, MSCE, of Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, noted that pembrolizumab has been evaluated in advanced mesothelioma in several clinical trials, with varying results. According to Dr. Marmarelis, this high...
The largest single-arm trial evaluating pembrolizumab in relapsed malignant pleural mesothelioma has demonstrated an “impressive” duration of response, according to a presentation during the virtual edition of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2020 North America...