On April 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the indication of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) to include its combination with rituximab for the initial treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). This review was conducted...
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. —T.S. Eliot, The Burial of the Dead, The Waste Land, 1922 I started...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the first diagnostic test with a home collection option for COVID-19. Specifically, the FDA re-issued the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) COVID-19 RT-PCR Test to permit testing of samples...
Patients may experience a greater occurrence of infections in the years preceding a cancer diagnosis, according to results from a study published by Inaida et al in Cancer Immunology Research. “Cancer can develop in an inflammatory environment caused by infections, immunity disruption, exposure to...
The coronavirus pandemic is being compared to a battlefield, with health-care workers seen as the front-line soldiers in the war against the disease. There is certainly truth to that, insofar as doctors and nurses in many countries now face an unprecedented workload in saving lives, along with the...
Adaptive treatments based on evolutionary principles may be an effective approach to prostate cancer treatment by preventing the development of drug resistance and prolonging patient survival. In an article in Nature Communications, Brady-Nicholls et al provided a closer look at a model and data...
In an article published in Annals of Oncology, members of the National University Cancer Institute of Singapore (NCIS) workflow team described a segregated-team workflow model that allowed continuation of cancer care at the comprehensive cancer center during the COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore....
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement encouraging patients who have fully recovered from COVID-19 for at least 2 weeks to donate plasma, in order to ramp up supply of convalescent plasma for treatment of infected individuals. The agency also announced that spun...
In a meta-analysis reported in JCO Global Oncology, Desai et al found a pooled prevalence of cancer of 2.0% among patients with COVID-19 infection. Key Findings A literature search identified 11 reports providing data on prevalence of cancer in patients with COVID-19 infection. The overall...
The American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS), the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Radiology (ACR) have released new joint ...
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 ...
In an article published in The Oncologist, an international collaborative group outlined issues and potential management approaches for the treatment of patients with cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Key issues facing cancer treatment and some of the potential measures for addressing these...
On April 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mitomycin (Jelmyto) for adult patients with low-grade upper tract urothelial cancer. OLYMPUS Trial Efficacy determination was based on OLYMPUS, an ongoing, single-arm, multicenter trial enrolling 71 patients with treatment-naive or...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Naiyer A. Rizvi, MD, and colleagues, the phase III MYSTIC trial showed no overall survival benefit with durvalumab vs chemotherapy, or overall or progression-free survival benefit with durvalumab/tremelimumab vs chemotherapy, as first-line treatment in patients with...
A recently published article by Schatz et al offers new clarity around the use of prescription opioids in pain management for people with a diagnosis or history of cancer and chronic pain. The joint publication, which appeared in both JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and...
In an article published in the journal Immunotherapy, Melissa Bersanelli, MD, of the Medical Oncology Unit, University Hospital of Parma, Italy, discusses controversies regarding the use of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in patients with cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Jayant S. Vaidya, MBBS, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III TARGIT-A trial showed that delayed second-procedure targeted intraoperative radiotherapy (TARGIT-IORT) was not noninferior to whole-breast external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) in preventing local recurrence of...
ASCO has released a set of recommendations to support the oncology community as health-care institutions across the United States face potentially difficult decisions around the allocation of scarce health-care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some geographic areas, the ongoing crisis is...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Sarah B. Goldberg, MD, MPH, and colleagues, continued follow-up of the non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cohort of a single-institution phase II trial showed that pembrolizumab produced responses in patients with brain metastases and programmed cell death...
Over the past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to an immunotherapeutic agent for solid tumors with a high tumor mutational burden and to a combination treatment for the first-line treatment of metastatic or recurrent non–small cell lung cancer. The agency...
On April 10, ASCO launched the ASCO Survey on COVID-19 in Oncology Registry (ASCO Registry) to help the entire cancer community learn about the pattern of symptoms and severity of COVID-19 among patients with cancer, as well as how COVID-19 infections impact the delivery of cancer care and patient...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in the Annals of Oncology, Li Zhang, MD, of the Department of Oncology, Tongji Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and colleagues described characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 infection in 28 patients with cancer from...
On April 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved selumetinib (Koselugo) for pediatric patients aged 2 years and older with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) who have symptomatic inoperable plexiform neurofibromas. Selumetinib, a kinase inhibitor, is the first therapy approved for...
Cancer.Net, ASCO’s patient information website, reports a current survival rate for stage I testicular cancer at 99%, but in 1974, men faced an overall survival rate of 5%. Surgery was the only viable treatment option, and if it failed, the prognosis was fatal. Lawrence Einhorn, MD, FASCO, was a...
It was a great honor for the Russian Society of Clinical Oncology (RUSSCO) to collaborate on the ASCO IPCW, and for me to be a co-organizer of the event from the Russian side. RUSSCO is a professional cancer society with the mission to advance cancer treatment and cures. The organization...
ASCO, in collaboration with international oncology societies, hosts International Palliative Care Workshops (IPCWs) designed to teach participants practical skills in patient communication and the management of cancer symptoms and pain. The IPCWs are led by ASCO member volunteers and local experts...
Lawrence J. Solin, MD, FACR, FASTRO, a champion of breast-conserving therapy for women with breast cancer, died unexpectedly on March 3 at the age of 66. At the time of his death, Dr. Solin was Professor Emeritus, Department of Radiation Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of...
I have been a radiologic technologist for 47 years, so after going to the bathroom one Sunday morning in October 2018 and finding my urine had suddenly turned dark, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t in any pain and did not have a urinary tract infection, which would explain the discoloration of...
When Narjust Duma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and a thoracic oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison, presented the findings from her study, “Evaluating Unconscious Bias During Speaker Introductions at an International Oncology Conference,” during the...
An abstract presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting titled “Evaluating Unconscious Bias During Speaker Introductions at an International Oncology Conference,” by Narjust Duma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Thoracic Oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in...
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...
Semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D, and its receptor, plexin B1) is broadly expressed in malignant tumors. Aside from other “normal functions” in tumors, SEMA4D influences the infiltration and distribution of leukocytes into the microenvironment, and its inhibition promotes functional immune infiltration....
A novel class of inhibitors may hold some promise for boosting responses to checkpoint inhibitors and for sensitizing poorly immunogenic tumors, such as pancreatic cancer, to immunotherapy. The drug targets semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D), a glycoprotein expressed on the cell membranes of many tumor types....
Discussant of the abstract on antibiotic exposure, Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCh, Assistant Professor of Oncology and Attending Physician at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Chu and colleagues have added to the recent literature examining concurrent use of...
The loosening of restrictions on genetic testing would mean that all health-care providers could help move this needle to where it should be, according to Kevin S. Hughes, MD, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and Medical Director of the...
On March 24, 2020, ASCO issued the following statement: ASCO’s primary concern is the health and safety of the global oncology community and the patients we serve. As public health safety measures related to COVID-19 extend, the ASCO Board has concluded that the Annual Meeting, scheduled for May 29 ...
The combination of the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab and definitive radiation therapy appears to be a safe and feasible option for patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer who are not eligible for cisplatin, according to data presented at the 2020 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck...
Moderator of the session, Tanguy Y. Seiwert, MD, Director of the Head and Neck Cancer Oncology Disease Group and Assistant Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, underscored the “dramatically good” preclinical data supporting the use of mTOR inhibitors in advanced...
The mTOR inhibitor everolimus, used to treat breast and kidney cancers, may benefit patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, according to data presented at the 2020 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium.1 The results of an investigator-initiated, phase II...
ASCO has released a new guideline for clinicians and policymakers in resource-constrained settings on treating patients with late-stage colorectal cancer.1 “Around the world, there is a huge variation in resources, and what is available to clinicians may change week to week,” said Mary D....
Immunotherapeutics in breast cancer will likely not be limited to late-stage triple-negative breast cancer. Earlier lines, combination regimens, and expansion into different disease subtypes should become part of this emerging landscape, according to Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine...
Although patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer typically have limited responses to immunotherapy, a subset of patients with pretreatment evidence of active T-cell responses in their tumors experienced prolonged survival following treatment with ipilimumab in a phase II...
A new prognostic tool may help to predict time to first treatment for patients with early-stage, asymptomatic chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Researchers described what they hope will become a point-of-care resource to help improve clinical decision-making in a study published by Rossi et al in ...
In a study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Zibelli et al found that patients with cancer readmitted to hospital within 30 days from index admission often made the decision to return to hospital themselves, without input from their care teams. Study Details The study included 33 patients...
In an analysis from the NRG/RTOG 9601 trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Daniel E. Spratt, MD, and colleagues found that higher prostate-specific antigen (PSA) pre–salvage radiotherapy (SRT) levels after prostatectomy were associated with better overall survival vs lower levels in men with prostate...
On April 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved encorafenib (Braftovi) in combination with cetuximab (Erbitux) for the treatment of pretreated adult patients with metastatic colorectal cancer with a BRAF V600E mutation detected by an FDA-approved test. BEACON CRC Efficacy was...
Attendees gathered at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco to hear the latest news about treating patients with cancers of the prostate, bladder, kidneys, and testicles. In addition to the comprehensive coverage of the meeting in The ASCO Post, here are some brief highlights...
In a phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Phillips et al found that stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) was associated with improved outcomes vs observation in men with oligometastatic prostate cancer. The benefit was augmented in patients with total consolidation of disease identified...
A case study of one patient with multiple myeloma diagnosed with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, published by Zhang et al in Blood Advances examined the efficacy of the immunosuppressant tocilizumab as a treatment for this particular patient. The report also suggested that patients with hematologic...