The results of the ECOG E4402/RESORT trial recently reported by Kahl and colleagues,1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, provide interesting new information on the use of maintenance rituximab (Rituxan) vs retreatment with rituximab at progression in patients with low–tumor burden...
Maintenance rituximab (Rituxan) has been shown to improve progression-free survival vs observation in low–tumor burden follicular lymphoma. In the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) E4402 Trial (RESORT), reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Brad S. Kahl, MD, of the University of...
Keck Medical Center of the University of Southern California (USC) has become the first medical center in the world to use a new robotic technology in an outpatient procedure for a patient with kidney cancer. Urologic surgeons at the USC Institute of Urology, part of Keck Medicine of USC, used a...
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. On September 4, 2014, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently launched “The Exceptional Responders Initiative,” a study to investigate the molecular factors of tumors associated with exceptional treatment responses of patients with cancer to drug therapies. Scientists will attempt to identify the molecular features ...
Each day, millions of patients with cancer around the world suffer unrelieved pain because they are denied morphine, the gold standard of cancer pain control. The World Health Organization has called access to morphine a human rights issue. Not surprisingly, the crisis in unrelieved cancer pain is...
A variety of life-threatening dermatologic adverse events may occur in association with cancer drug therapies. Here, we discuss the recognition and management of three types of such toxicities: type I hypersensitivity/anaphylaxis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis, and drug rash...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Global Health announced grants that will support the development and validation of low-cost, portable technologies. These technologies have the potential to improve early detection, diagnosis, and noninvasive or minimally invasive treatment of several...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is accepting submissions of ideas for the Stand Up To Cancer–Ovarian Cancer Research Fund–Ovarian Cancer National Alliance–National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (SU2C-OCRF-OCNA-NOCC) Translational Research Dream Team Grant that will offer up to $6...
The goal of clinical, translational, and basic research is, in the end, the betterment of life on earth. Advances in basic and clinical science ultimately should lead to information that, in turn, enables clinicians to make better treatment decisions for individual patients in order to improve...
The American Society of Clinical Oncology has released a new clinical practice guideline on chemotherapy and targeted therapy for women with advanced HER2-negative or HER2 status–unknown breast cancer. The guideline is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 In formulating the consensus...
At the Breast Cancer Symposium, William M. Sikov, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, gave a talk on the use of pathologic complete response in the clinic and summarized the CTNeoBC findings for The ASCO Post. “The...
Women who achieve a pathologic complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy rarely have local or regional recurrence of breast cancer, but this largely depends on tumor subtype, which remained an independent predictor of locoregional recurrence when pathologic response was taken into account ...
Young women with early breast cancer may be more likely to resume menses and become pregnant when treated with a luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone (LH-RH) analog (also known as a gonadotropin-releasing hormone [GnRH] analog) along with chemotherapy, according to the final follow-up of...
Subcutaneous implants containing testosterone in combination with a low dose of anastrozole can relieve menopausal symptoms in breast cancer survivors, according to research presented at the 2014 ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “Menopausal symptoms can be quite severe in breast cancer survivors in...
In the neoadjuvant treatment of breast cancer, the importance of achieving a pathologic complete response (pCR) varies substantially by breast cancer subtype. Patients are increasingly interested in this outcome, but it means different things to different patients, according to two breast cancer...
The bane of treating non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with druggable mutations has been the development of resistance to targeted agents. New compounds are meeting the challenge of treating resistant disease, according to Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair of Hematology and...
Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc, recently announced that technetium 99m tilmanocept (Lymphoseek Injection) has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for use in sentinel lymph node detection in patients with cancer of the head and neck. The designation ...
Survivors of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who never smoked or who are former smokers at the time of diagnosis have a lower risk of developing secondary primary lung cancers compared to those who are current smokers, suggesting that increased tobacco exposure is associated with a higher risk...
Radiation therapy alone was found to be as effective as chemoradiation in reducing dysphagia associated with advanced esophageal cancer in the palliative setting and was less toxic, according to results of a multinational phase III trial called the Trans-Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG) 03.01 ...
This is a provocative study, showing unexpected differences in acute skin reactions with conventional fractionation vs hypofractionation. Some studies have failed to show differences in acute toxicities between these two types of radiation therapy,” said Kenneth B. Roberts, MD, Professor of...
Adding consolidation radiation therapy to chemotherapy significantly improves 10-year survival in patients with stage I and II Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a large observational study based on the National Cancer Database (NCDB). Yet over that same 10-year period, radiation therapy use declined...
Benjamin Movsas, MD, Chair of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, served as moderator at a press conference where the two SBRT studies by Timmerman et al and Ashworth et al were reported.1,2 Dr. Movsas said that SBRT is a promising approach, noting that the therapy facilitates...
The door is open for expanded use of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in patients with inoperable early-stage lung cancer and for patients with oligometastatic stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to results of two studies presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the...
Although diverse stakeholders agree that health reform is needed, there is little consensus on the specifics of that reform. Best of ASCO Seattle attendees put a number of pointed questions to health economist Rena Conti, PhD, of the University of Chicago, asking about thorny issues such as cost...
Value-based health-care reform is happening. We have to get on board,” Rena Conti, PhD, a health economist at the University of Chicago, advised attendees of the Best of ASCO Seattle meeting. She discussed highlights from Annual Meeting sessions that addressed the impact of the Affordable Care Act...
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath and this contract: To hold him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to be a partner in life...
On the face of it, the idea that a code of professional conduct dating to the ancient Iron Age could possibly retain any relevance in the current era of “Big Data,” religious and cultural pluralism, trillion-dollar government budgets, and nanotechnology seems preposterous. Yet the well-publicized...
Benjamin Movsas, MD, Chair of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, served as moderator at a press conference where the two SBRT studies by Timmerman et al and Ashworth et al were reported.1,2 Dr. Movsas said that SBRT is a promising approach, noting that the therapy facilitates...
Final results from the phase I/II GAUGUIN study showed that obinutuzumab (Gazyva) monotherapy was active in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia, European researchers reported in Blood. In phase II, median progression-free survival was 10.7 months and ...
In a study reported in Cancer Research, Ding and colleagues identified mechanisms by which cyclophosphamide induces suppressor cells that inhibit immune response and predispose to loss of tumor control. They found that cyclophosphamide treatment induces expansion of inflammatory monocytic myeloid...
The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) are partnering to launch and support a national registry for stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) treatments. The partnership was announced recently at the ASTRO Annual Meeting. The SRS...
America’s biopharmaceutical research companies are currently developing nearly 800 new medicines and vaccines for cancer, according to a report released recently by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).1 Perseverance Needed “In recent decades, we have seen great progress ...
Gifts totaling $1 million in honor of the 40th anniversary of the cure for testicular cancer were recently announced at a celebration for the physician scientist who developed the treatment. Family, friends, colleagues, and men grateful for their lives gathered at the Indianapolis Museum of Art to...
Testicular cancer is one of oncology’s true success stories. It is a highly treatable disease, usually curable, that most often develops in young and middle-aged men. Despite the success in testicular cancer, there are still clinical challenges ranging from staging to optimum therapeutic...
Use of cisplatin or cetuximab (Erbitux) with radiotherapy improves overall survival in stage III or IV head and neck carcinoma, and adding cetuximab to platinum therapy improves overall survival in metastatic disease. In the phase III Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 0522 trial reported in...
With powerful new drugs capable of achieving sustained and deep remissions in multiple myeloma, the role of upfront stem cell transplantation is being questioned by experts, who debated the pros and cons at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) 9th Annual Congress on Hematologic...
Adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) was shown to be effective in patients with breast cancers ≤ 2 cm, regardless of estrogen receptor status, in a meta-analysis1 of five chemotherapy trials, but a “pressing question” remaining is whether T1a/b, N0 tumors warrant the use of adjuvant trastuzumab, Andrew ...
Transformations in the treatment of early-stage breast cancer have shifted the therapeutic approach from a “stage-centered treatment algorithm” to a “tumor biology-centered treatment algorithm,” Priyanka Sharma, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas...
Combination chemotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer is anthracycline- and taxane-based and has not really changed much in the past 10 years, but “we are starting to see emerging data with selective activity of platinum agents,” Priyanka Sharma, MD, told participants at the Best of ASCO...
"Illumination” is a provocative word, evoking as it does the banishment of the darkness of ignorance by the light of new knowledge. Today, we are benefiting from a steady stream of new knowledge about the molecular basis of cancer and the interaction between host and tumor immunology. The concept...
The age of the Internet and worldwide connectivity has made it easier than ever to send out surveys to a wide audience quickly and easily. This ease of access can make surveys an affordable and readily available research tool for independent investigators, but it can also make surveys an...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given Priority Review designation to the New Drug Application for lenvatinib mesylate as a treatment for progressive radioactive iodine–refractory differentiated thyroid cancer. Lenvatinib is an oral multiple receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor with a...
In a new study of patients with cancer who smoke, those using e-cigarettes in addition to traditional cigarettes were more nicotine-dependent and equally or less likely to have quit smoking traditional cigarettes than nonusers.1 The rising use of e-cigarettes has raised many questions among...
Node-positive prostate cancer has typically been excluded from clinical trials, leaving oncologists with little evidence to guide management for this group of patients. A study presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress sheds light on this issue, providing the...
Final results of the COU-AA-302 trial continue to support the survival benefit of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) in men with chemotherapy-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, often referred to as the “predocetaxel space.” “The study met the overall survival endpoint and all...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved bortezomib (Velcade) injection for previously untreated patients with mantle cell lymphoma. This is the first treatment in the United States to be approved for use in previously untreated patients with mantle cell lymphoma. Bortezomib was...
Nivolumab yielded an “impressive” duration of response when used as second- or third-line treatment for patients with advanced melanoma, according to Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, who presented preliminary results of a phase III trial at the European Society...
Smoking took an $18.1 billion toll in California in 2009—$487 for each resident—and was responsible for more than one in seven deaths in the state, more than from AIDS, influenza, diabetes, or many other causes, according to the first comprehensive analysis in more than a decade on the financial...
Women with atypical hyperplasia have an absolute risk of about 1% per year for developing breast cancer—a level of risk that has been underappreciated. Not enough is being done to protect these women, according to Lynn C. Hartmann, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,...