In an international trial, treatment with MK-6482, a small-molecule inhibitor of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-2a, was well tolerated and resulted in clinical responses for patients with von Hippel-Lindau disease–associated renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The results of the phase II trial were shared ...
The successful treatment of malignant lymphoma has been one of the great achievements in medical oncology, but certainly more work is needed to define key biologic targets as well as molecular markers for a more accurate definition of prognosis following therapy. In day-to-day practice, unanswered...
It has been 5 years since ASCO has been part of a new publication, the last being the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). As the ASCO Board and leadership evaluated the publication mix we recognized there was a gap that needed to be filled. The Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), now 25 years old, ...
Final analysis of the LOTUS trial has shown numerically longer overall survival with ipatasertib plus paclitaxel vs placebo plus paclitaxel in patients with inoperable locally advanced/metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. In all biomarker-defined subgroups (PTEN normal or low, PIK3CA/AKT1/PTEN ...
On her wedding day, a father—who happens to have colorectal cancer—walks his daughter down the aisle. His oncologist, Rona Yaeger, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, helped him mark this milestone. Currently, patients with BRAF-mutant colorectal cancers face a poor prognosis. Dr....
The fundamental goal of scientific meetings is to share knowledge and accelerate scientific advances. Investigators use different types of presentations to disseminate and share their valuable work with others in the field. This is an important aspect of promoting their scientific careers. These...
The doctor-patient relationship, a time-honored tradition based on trust and cooperation, is critical for vulnerable patients, as they experience a heightened reliance on the physician’s competence, skills, and good will. That same trust is critical on the public health stage, when a nation is...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays, historical...
Most who leave a mark in life are noted for a single contribution; few are remembered for the breadth of their contributions. Such a man was John W. Yarbro, MD, PhD, who, near the end of his rich life, stepped foot on Antarctica, completing his desire to have visited all of the world’s seven...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, The ASCO Post will be interviewing oncologists on how they and their centers are dealing with the crisis. Here, we speak with Alexander Melamed, MD, MPH, a gynecologic oncologist and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia...
The management of pediatric brain and spinal cord tumors is extremely complex, as are the survivorship issues in this highly vulnerable patient population. To shed light on the current clinical reality in this setting, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Katherine E. Warren, MD, an internationally...
You’ve agreed to be interviewed on Zoom. If you’re like most people, the technology itself isn’t a barrier. (And if it is, you can consult our step-by-step guide to using Zoom at https://bit.ly/2yxcTN0.) However, you might be less sure about what you can do to make the best impression (and the most ...
In this edition of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with John Craig Venter, PhD, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of the J. Craig Venter Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to human, microbial, and environmental genomic research. A...
In 2019, the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center began planning a demonstration program, called Cancer Care at Home, to broaden the delivery of oncology treatments to patients in the home setting. The existing services offered by Penn...
Thomas J. Herzog, MD, Deputy Director, University of Cincinnati Cancer Center, who presented a distillation of the PRIMA trial data along with updated results of the phase III PAOLA-1 trial of olaparib plus bevacizumab maintenance, called the data “practice-changing.” “We’ve suspected for a while...
As the worldwide cases of the coronavirus started to mount in February and March, medical societies and organizations monitoring the escalating COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international and domestic travel made the difficult decision to postpone or cancel their scientific conferences. On...
Despite facing challenges such as limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE) following the COVID-19 outbreak, radiation oncology clinics quickly implemented safety and process enhancements that allowed them to continue caring for patients, according to a new national survey conducted by...
AS I WRITE TO YOU, I am happy to report I have just completed a 7-day rotation at the COVID-19 inpatient service at my hospital in New York City! Overall, it was a positive experience, despite the occasional sad and scary moments. I left the service feeling uplifted and fulfilled. I am glad to have ...
Over the past few weeks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designations for an antibody-drug conjugate in the treatment of gastric and lung cancers. The Agency has also issued Orphan Drug designations for agents being investigated in chronic myeloid...
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed cancer care, seemingly overnight, as practices scrambled to ensure a safe environment for caregivers and patients. Although regulatory burdens have been relaxed to allow patients to continue on trial treatment and telemedicine has expanded its competency and reach, ...
The COVID-19 pandemic (caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus) has created a host of diagnostic, treatment, and follow-up problems for patients with cancer of all types, and this is particularly true for patients with lung cancer, their families, and providers. Everyone wanted to...
People who received information from the Screen to Save program, a culturally tailored initiative from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD), increased their knowledge of colorectal cancer and indicated willingness to adopt potentially preventive...
In my native language, there is a saying that is translated as, “A child who does not travel only appreciates their mother’s cooking.” In the broad sense, as we grow up and experience the different things that life has to offer, two things happen if we allow our minds to open up: we realize there...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Patient-reported outcomes are measures used in clinical trials to capture aspects of a patient’s health condition, reported directly by the patient, without introduction of bias from third parties. They are distinct from the physical toxicities reported by clinicians1 and are collected using a...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Schmid et al1 found that the addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in stage II or III triple-negative breast cancer significantly improved the pathologic...
Alexandra Leary, MD, PhD, of the Gustave Roussy Institute of Oncology, Paris, underscored the controversy surrounding the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in advanced ovarian cancer, suggesting the discord may be “more cultural and emotional than scientific” to some degree. “Some countries, such as ...
Before the dawn of the modern antibiotic era and amid the chaos of World War II, future Professor of Radiology and Founding Dean of two American medical colleges, Dr. George T. Harrell,* penned what could now be argued was far too bold a statement. As the opening lines of his nonrandomized study...
In dealing with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some oncologists are modifying conventional treatment regimens to limit patients’ visits to infusion centers and providers’ offices. The ASCO Post asked C. Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, Chief of the Myeloma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer...
ASCO (the Society) and its affiliate organization the Association for Clinical Oncology (the Association) recently announced the results of a survey that tracked the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer clinical trials, highlighted a new research initiative to address the data gap on...
For several tumor types, can the successes achieved with immunotherapy in the metastatic and adjuvant settings be replicated in the neoadjuvant setting? An explosion in clinical trials—with more than 300 listed on ClinicalTrials.gov—point to “yes.” “The neoadjuvant use of immunotherapy is of great ...
The first trial to evaluate anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) blockade combined with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibition in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma demonstrates promising activity of the drug combination in patients with platinum-refractory or -ineligible...
The lymphomas are an incredibly complex assemblage of neoplastic diseases. They are not one disease, and, at least based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Classification of Tumors published in 2017, they represent a collection of approximately 80 different malignancies, a number that will...
A population-based retrospective cohort study involving 12,700 patients found that men with high-risk prostate cancer who took a statin alone or in combination with metformin had reduced all-cause and prostate cancer–specific mortality. The associations between the medications and reduced...
In the fall of 2009, I began experiencing some abdominal discomfort, pain in my right shoulder, and severe fatigue that were easily explained away as the result of gallstones and by my career as a paramedic. I had many of the risk factors for gallbladder disease, and both my mother and sister...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays, historical...
In this edition of Living a Full Life, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with hematologist Parameswaran Hari, MD, MRCP, Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In addition, Dr. Hari holds the Armand J. Quick/William F. Stapp Chair...
Aspirin may be associated with a reduction in the risk of developing several cancers of the digestive tract. The largest and most comprehensive analysis to date of the link between aspirin and digestive tract cancers, published by Bosetti et al in Annals of Oncology, found reductions in the risk of ...
A $12 million federal grant enabled City of Hope and collaborators to deploy a novel cloud-computing platform, making an immense amount of data from a historic 25-year study more accessible and user-friendly. The ongoing California Teachers Study, which began in 1995, has already given researchers...
The Combined Annual Meetings of the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) and the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) were held in Orlando, Florida, from February 19–23, 2020. The scientific program addressed the most timely issues in ...
Each year, The ASCO Post asks Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, Chairman of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Taussig Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, to offer his picks for the most important research presented at 2019 San...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Trigo et al, second-line treatment with the selective oncogenic transcription inhibitor lurbinectedin showed activity in patients with small cell lung cancer included in a phase II basket trial. The trial includes cohorts representing nine different tumor...
A study published by Naing et al in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer found that treatment with pembrolizumab demonstrated acceptable toxicity and antitumor activity in patients with four types of advanced, hard-to-treat rare cancers. “Our findings that pembrolizumab has a favorable toxicity...
The coronavirus-related pandemic has affected nearly every corner of the globe. What originated in one country is on course to likely affect every country in the world. In a few countries, the disease has peaked and is on the downward trend. In some, including the United States, the disease is on...
In some patients with advanced ovarian cancer, the combination of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors can produce responses, but up until now, investigators have been unable to predict which patients would not benefit from the treatment and...
An American medical student travels to rural Uganda; there, he finds most villagers walking miles to receive health care at the nearby district hospital. Upon arrival, they spend hours waiting in line. Some patients make this trip monthly. Before entering internal medicine residency, Daniel O’Neil, ...
Although more transgender patients are presenting to breast centers for imaging, many “report significant social stigma when seeking care,” according to a study in the Journal of Breast Imaging.1 Reported verbal abuse and other forms of harassment “can lead to transgender patients concealing their...
Physicians and scientists interested in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have lost one of the community’s shining lights with the death of Clara D. Bloomfield, MD, FASCO, on March 1, 2020, at age 77 years. Dr. Bloomfield is well known for her more than 50 years of groundbreaking research in blood...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays, historical...
As has often been written, “Cancer is the greatest equalizer.” It tends to strike its victims regardless of their financial status. In low- and middle-income countries, however, the impact of poverty on the treatment of cancer is strikingly conspicuous. It is the major catalyst for delay in seeking ...