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Showing 8951 - 9000Developments in Hematologic Cancers Include New Considerations in Treating Challenging Leukemias and Multiple Myelomas
Speakers at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) 7th Annual Congress on Hematologic Malignancies reviewed the current standard of care for various hematologic cancers and explored new concepts in treatment. Below are highlights from presentations on chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML),...
Regorafenib Approved for Advanced Colorectal Cancer
The FDA recently approved regorafenib (Stivarga) to treat patients with metastatic colorectal cancer that has progressed after treatment. Regorafenib is a multikinase inhibitor that blocks several enzymes that promote cancer growth. The drug was reviewed under the FDA’s priority review program that ...
Despite Progress, Chemotherapy Drug Shortages Still Vex the Oncology Community
During the first week of November 2011, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing the FDA to take steps to help resolve the drug shortages that were affecting patient care across the country. The oncology community was hit especially hard; many of the drug shortfalls were generic...
Short Interval between Initial and Contralateral Breast Cancer Increases Risk of Dying
Breast cancer survivors who develop contralateral breast cancer have an increased risk of dying from breast cancer throughout a follow-up period of 10 or more years, according to a study of a cohort of 42,670 women diagnosed with breast cancer in Sweden. “The added risk is considerable if the...
Pathologic Nodal Status and Tumor Response Can Predict Risk of Locoregional Recurrence
Pathologic nodal status/breast tumor response following neoadjuvant chemotherapy can be used to predict locoregional recurrence in women with operable, palpable breast cancer (T1-3, N0-1, M0) previously treated with mastectomy or lumpectomy plus radiotherapy. These results from the combined...
Cancer Genome Atlas Network Reports Comprehensive Molecular Portraits of Breast Tumors
The Cancer Genome Atlas Network recently reported findings of analyses of primary breast cancers in a total of 825 patients using genomic DNA copy number arrays, DNA methylation, exome sequencing, mRNA arrays, microRNA sequencing, and reverse-phase protein arrays.1 Integration of information across ...
Despite the Rhetoric, Cancer Care Costs Keep Skyrocketing: Is There a Solution?
Although health-care experts routinely agree that the rising costs of oncology services are untenable, there is disagreement about how to reduce expenditures without harming access and quality of care. At this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, Thomas J. Smith, MD, FACP, offered some interesting ideas...
Novel Drug Combinations Present New Hope for Effective Treatments in Multiple Myeloma
Developing early-phase clinical trials that incorporate combinations of novel agents targeting different pathways in the hematologic cancer multiple myeloma is a leading focus of the work of Sagar Lonial, MD, Professor of Hematology and Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs in the Department of Hematology ...
Fellowship Breathes ‘LIFe’ into the Careers of Young Oncologists in Developing Countries
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of the American Society of Clinical Oncology supports one-on-one training and research grants for the brightest minds in cancer care around the world through the Long-term International Fellowship (LIFe) and other programs. Through this 1-year fellowship, early-career...
Karnofsky Award Winner Honors Mentors through Gift to Conquer Cancer Foundation
Kanti R. Rai, MD, and his wife Susan have been loyal donors to the Conquer Cancer Foundation for the past 9 years, but in 2012, a momentous occasion in his career inspired Dr. Rai to make a unique gift. A Moment of Reflection In the spring of 2012, Dr. Rai, an internationally recognized expert on ...
AACR’s Cancer Progress Report 2012 Highlights Advances, Challenges, Opportunities
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently released its Cancer Progress Report for 2012,1 providing a snapshot of the major advances in cancer research, and highlighting the great need for continued funding for the field. “It is a new day for cancer research and cancer patients,” ...
Expert Point of View: Tim Eisen, MD, and Robert Figlin, MD
Over the past few years, we have gone from famine to feast.… We now have sorafenib [Nexavar] and sunitinib [Sutent], temsirolimus [Torisel], and everolimus [Afinitor], and interferon plus bevacizumab [Avastin] for treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma. If these drugs [in COMPARZ] are...
Pazopanib Noninferior to Sunitinib as Front-line Therapy for Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma
Pazopanib (Votrient) is poised to become another option for first-line therapy of metastatic renal cell carcinoma based on results of the phase III COMPARZ trial reported at the 2012 ESMO Congress in Vienna.1 The study met its primary endpoint by demonstrating that pazopanib was noninferior to...
Role of Crizotinib in Previously Treated ALK-positive Advanced NSCLC
In yet another success story for personalized medicine, a targeted therapy extended survival in patients whose cancers expressed the target. Crizotinib (Xalkori), the first-in-class ALK inhibitor, extended progression-free survival and improved response rates compared with single-agent chemotherapy ...
Whole-blood RNA Expression Profiles as Prognostic Models for Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer
Survival among patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer is highly variable, and there is a scarcity of prognostic markers that could be used to stratify patients in clinical trials, improve treatment, and accelerate drug development. Two recent studies reported in Lancet Oncology have...
Will mTOR Inhibitors Change the Treatment of Endocrine-sensitive HER2-negative Breast Cancer?
For the treatment of endocrine-sensitive metastatic breast cancer, the combination of an mTOR inhibitor and an endocrine agent represents a promising new option. At the 2012 Breast Cancer Symposium, the 18-month update of BOLERO-2, which tested therapy with everolimus (Afinitor) plus exemestane,...
SIDEBAR: Dacomitinib: Better in Whom? Better in What?
Drug development is a highly competitive business. A new drug must be proven to be better than the standard one before it can be registered for public use. Starting with preclinical data, there should be evidence of lower 50% inhibitory concentrations in selective cell lines or a broader spectrum...
Phase II Study Suggests Advantage of Irreversible Pan-HER Inhibition in Advanced NSCLC
Dacomitinib is a new tyrosine kinase inhibitor that forms irreversible covalent bonds with the ATP domain of each of the three kinase-active members of the HER family—EGFR/HER1, HER2, and HER4. Agents such as erlotinib (Tarceva) and gefitinib (Iressa), which are of proven benefit in advanced...
One Year of Trastuzumab Remains the Standard of Care in HER2-positive Breast Cancer
For HER2-positive early breast cancer, 1 year of treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin)—rather than 6 months or 2 years—remains the standard of care, based on two pivotal studies presented at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress. The optimal duration of anti-HER2 adjuvant ...
Nab-paclitaxel Approved in First-line Metastatic NSCLC
The FDA has approved paclitaxel protein-bound particles for injectable suspension, albumin-bound (nab-paclitaxel, Abraxane) for use in combination with carboplatin for the initial treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are not candidates for ...
Challenging Times: A Day in the Life of a Community Oncologist
Community oncologists man the front line of cancer care, treating upward of 85% of our nation’s patients. Over the past 2 decades, regulatory and economic changes have left many practices in a state of flux and uncertainty, some struggling to keep their doors open. To shed light on the community...
Ignoring Level 1 Evidence in Invasive Bladder Cancer: Is Ignorance Bliss?
I’ve been part of the uro-oncology community for more than 30 years and have been proud to be involved in a good number of well-powered, enthusiastically subscribed randomized clinical trials. These have dated back to a time before randomization was necessarily the fashion. I have had the pleasure...
Combination of BRAF and MEK Inhibitors Paves Way for Phase III Studies in BRAF-mutated Metastatic Melanoma
Two late-breaking studies presented at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress highlight the promising potential of combining dual BRAF and MEK inhibitors for the treatment of BRAF-mutated metastatic melanoma. A phase II study showed that combining full doses of the BRAF...
Nobel Laureate E. Donnall Thomas, MD, Dies at 92
In his 1990 Nobel Prize Lecture, Eduard Donnall Thomas, MD, with characteristic humility, acknowledged that the success he celebrated “was made possible by the work of many others in this and related fields.” Dr. Thomas, whose groundbreaking work in bone marrow transplantation marked a new era in...
Surrounded by Breast Cancer
Nine women on my mother’s side of the family have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and nearly half have died from their disease, including my mother. With odds like these, I was determined to do what I could to stay ahead of this dreaded monster I thought was surely coming for me. First Tests...
Letter to the Editor: Origins of PSA Testing: The Conversation Continues
As Drs. James Mohler and Donald Trump noted in their September 15 letter to The ASCO Post (“More Thoughts on PSA,” 3[14]:2, 2012), Richard Ablin, PhD, discovered a “prostate-specific antigen” of unknown properties, but his PSA is not the antigen in the PSA test we know today. Since Dr. Ablin has...
Sorafenib Fails to Improve Survival as Third- or Fourth-line Treatment of Advanced Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
Third- or fourth-line therapy with sorafenib (Nexavar) failed to extend overall survival in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the main results of the phase III MISSION trial. However, a post hoc biomarker analysis of MISSION suggested that patients with...
Ruxolitinib: Novel Drug for Myelofibrosis
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication In November 2011, ruxolitinib (Jakafi) was approved for...
Intermittent Androgen Suppression in Prostate Cancer Noninferior to Continuous Suppression, Associated with Some QOL Benefit
A recently reported National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) Clinical Trials Group study, reported by Crook and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that intermittent androgen suppression was associated with noninferior overall survival when compared with continuous...
Options Shifting for First-line Treatment of Renal Cell Carcinoma
Trials with pazopanib (Votrient) have “provided significant efficacy, toxicity, and tolerability data for pazopanib to be established as a first-line standard of care” for renal cell carcinoma,” Tim Eisen, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, stated at the 11th International Kidney...
Stereotactic Radiosurgery May Offer Therapeutic Option for Patients with Primary Renal Cancer, Early Study Indicates
Stereotactic radiosurgery may hold potential as a therapeutic option for patients with localized primary renal cancer who are considered poor surgical candidates and who do not have a prior history of pelvic or abdominal radiation, according to data from a safety and toxicity study recently...
Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer Predicted by Disease, Age, and Insurance Type, but Not by Race
Breast cancer mortality has been found to be higher among black and Hispanic women than among white women, with the differences in outcome being attributed in part to more advanced disease stage and greater frequency of unfavorable tumor biology among black and Hispanic women. Studies to date have...
Expert Point of View: Fausto Roila, MD
Thromboprophylaxis for patients with a central venous catheter is at present not recommended by the international oncologic associations. This is based on the results of four recent randomized controlled trials, three of them double-blind, in which there was no statistically significant difference...
Does Prophylaxis Prevent Catheter-related Thrombosis?
In ambulatory patients with cancer, the risk of catheter-related deep-vein thrombosis can be reduced by almost half with anticoagulation prophylaxis, according to a single-center French study presented at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna.1 Catheters implanted ...
Expert Point of View: Nicholas Turner, MD, PhD
Commenting on the studies evaluating novel agents in breast cancer, Nicholas Turner, MD, PhD, of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, observed that for BKM120 plus trastuzumab (Herceptin), the “benefit appears to be in only a relatively small proportion of patients, but in those patients there is...
Novel Agents for Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer Impressive in Early Trials
Several sessions at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna focused on novel targeted therapies in various stages of development. Summarized here are data on two promising drugs for breast cancer and two for prostate cancer. E-3810 in Breast Cancer Two experimental...
Regorafenib, Multikinase Inhibitor, for Previously Treated Metastatic Colorectal Cancer
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication On September 27, 2012, regorafenib (Stivarga) was...
Contralateral Breast Cancer Risk Is Highly Overestimated
Breast cancer is highly unlikely to develop in the contralateral breast of women treated for primary breast cancer, yet many women continue to fear it and undergo prophylactic mastectomies. “Regardless, the perceived risk of developing and dying from a contralateral breast cancer is highly...
No Survival Benefit for Oxaliplatin Added to Adjuvant Therapy in Stage II or Elderly Patients with Colon Cancer
Oxaliplatin plus fluorouracil (5-FU)/leucovorin or capecitabine (Xeloda) is a standard of care in adjuvant therapy for stage III colorectal cancer. There is ongoing debate about whether any adjuvant therapy is of benefit in patients with stage II disease, and it is not routinely recommended in this ...
FDA Approves Omacetaxine for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia
The FDA has approved omacetaxine mepesuccinate (Synribo) to treat adults with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) whose cancer has progressed after treatment with at least two tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Omacetaxine is injected subcutaneously twice daily for 14 consecutive days over a 28-day cycle...
Who Should Receive First-line BEACOPP Therapy for Hodgkin Lymphoma?
At the Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, held this year in Maui, Hawaii, Andreas Engert, MD, Chairman of the German Hodgkin Study Group, University Hospital of Cologne, Germany, led off the Hodgkin lymphoma section of the conference with a presentation on optimizing the use of BEACOPP (bleomycin,...
Updated Results from T-DM1 and Regorafenib Trials, plus Other Highlights from ESMO 2012
The 35th European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna broke all records for attendance, with about 16,000 attendees from all over the world. Some sessions were standing room only, including the Presidential Symposia, the ESMO-ASCO Joint Symposium on genomics in breast cancer, and ...
Defining a Cure for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and Strategies to Achieve this Goal
In chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), continued long-term therapy that prevents both progression to accelerated-phase disease and the emergence of resistance may be thought of as an “operational” or “functional” cure. However, long-term disease control without the requirement for continuous treatment...
Managing Treatment Failure in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia
As John Goldman, DM, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedSci, discussed earlier, a substantial minority of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) experience treatment failure. Jorge Cortes, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, introduced this session with two patient cases to illustrate...
Defining and Recognizing the Causes of Imatinib Resistance and the Importance of Adherence
Imatinib (Gleevec) is a highly effective therapy for the majority of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). In the IRIS study, only 30% of patients could be considered to have failed imatinib treatment after 6 years.1 However, these 30% of patients are a substantial minority. John Goldman,...
Introduction
This supplement to The ASCO Post highlights the proceedings of a satellite symposium that was presented as a case-based roundtable discussion titled, Monitoring, Treatment Resistance, and Treatment Failure in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: Breaking Barriers to Improved Outcomes and Looking Forward to a...
Past ASCO President, John Ridgway Durant, MD, Dies at 82
John Ridgway Durant, MD, ASCO’s 20th President, was born on July 29th, 1930, and died on October 28th, 2012. Dates that mark a person’s birth and passing are made all the more significant by how that person filled the days that link the two milestones. Dr. Durant will be remembered fondly as a man...
Small Increase in Cardiac Events for Trastuzumab plus Anthracycline in HER2-positive Disease
A 7-year follow-up of the phase III National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) protocol B-31 found that the cumulative difference in the rate of cardiac events was 3.1% between patients with HER2-positive, node-positive breast cancer who received trastuzumab (Herceptin) in addition ...
Early Surgical Treatment of Low-grade Glioma Improves Survival vs Watchful Waiting
In a comparison of surgical treatment strategies for low-grade gliomas, patients in Norway treated at a hospital that generally favored early surgical resection had better overall survival than patients treated at a hospital that favored diagnostic biopsy and watchful waiting, according to a study...
SIDEBAR: Expect Questions and Respond with Reasoned Explanations
“Soaring spending has presented the medical community with a new obligation. When choosing treatments for a patient, we have to consider the financial strains they may cause alongside the benefits they might deliver,” three physicians from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York...
