The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) has announced two open access gateways, the MMRF Researcher Gateway, which will upload genomic data as it becomes available and make it accessible to all researchers, and the MMRF CoMMunity Gateway, which will aggregate subtypes of myeloma patients...
The American Society of Radiologic Technologists has provided a preparation checklist to assist women in preparing for their annual mammograms. Tips include: Schedule your mammogram just after your menstrual period, when your breasts are less tender. Wear a two-piece outfit on the day of your...
1945: Hugh J. Creech, PhD, begins his 31-year career at the Institute. Dr. Creech would become widely recognized for pioneering work in developing chemotherapy agents. 1959: Peter C. Nowell, MD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and his research fellow David A. Hungerford, Fox Chase...
On October 8, 1904, a group of Philadelphia physicians and businessmen who were concerned about the escalating incidence of cancer in the city signed a charter that established the American Oncologic Hospital, one of the nation’s first hospitals solely devoted to cancer care. Seven decades later—2...
More active support and interventions by physicians are required to get patients who still smoke to stop, according to two articles published online by the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP),1,2 and to prevent school-aged children and adolescents from starting to use tobacco, according to a U.S....
Patients with stage I non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are medically inoperable have an excellent chance at full local tumor control and long-term survival with stereotactic body radiation therapy. Hak Choy, MD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at The University...
Survivors of childhood cancer are at risk for long-term adverse physical and mental effects, but little is known about the effects of illness in siblings of these patients. In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Lasse Wegener Lund, MD, of the Danish Cancer Society Research Centre and...
“It was a very exciting session this year, particularly for cervical cancers,” said Paul Haluska MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in speaking of the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting’s gynecologic oncology session and the abstracts highlighted recently at Best of ASCO in Chicago. In one...
At the Best of ASCO Meeting in Los Angeles, Tony Reid, MD, PhD, Director of the Early Phase Clinical Research Program and Professor of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Diego, reviewed important findings in metastatic colorectal cancer presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual...
Pathologic complete response as assessed surgically after neoadjuvant treatment is being touted by some researchers as a stand-alone endpoint justifying early drug approval for breast cancer. They argue that it provides a more efficient means of testing the value of agents that might be useful in...
Monica Morrow, MD, the Anne Burnett Windfohr Chair of Clinical Oncology and Chief of the Breast Service, Department of Surgery, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, congratulated Christiane K. Kuhl, MD, and colleagues for “an innovative approach to making screening magnetic...
In an e-mail interview, E. Shelley Hwang, MD, an expert who has coauthored several papers on ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), weighed in on the two abstracts about management of DCIS featured in this issue of The ASCO Post—one presented by Melissa L. Pilewskie, MD (perioperative MRI in DCIS, page...
One of the more significant problems in modern oncology practice is to provide increased value at a time when costs are spiraling upward, and new parameters of “success” are being introduced into the equation—most visibly, inside the Beltway in Washington, DC. Thus, oncologists will need to address ...
Evidence has long been accumulating that radiotherapy involving the heart can result in premature ischemic heart disease, but interest peaked last spring when a case control study published in The New England Journal of Medicine1 found an increased risk for cardiac-related deaths in breast cancer...
Women who are currently using calcium channel blockers and have been doing so for 10 or more years are at increased risk of the two most common histologic types of breast cancer, invasive ductal carcinoma and invasive lobular carcinoma, according to a population-based case control study. “While...
Cutaneous melanomas are mostly an immunogenic group of tumors, but they are also heterogeneous. Therefore, therapeutic specificity and autogenetic approaches are essential to secure beneficial results. The objective of sentinel lymph node biopsy, at the time of diagnosis, is to identify patients...
Ten cancer programs that have developed pioneering solutions to address the challenges of treating cancer patients have received the Association of Community Cancer Centers’ (ACCC) 2013 Innovator Awards. Established in 2011, ACCC’s Innovator Awards are sponsored by GE Healthcare. The award...
This recent paper in The New England Journal of Medicine outlines the details of the clinical outcomes with two incidence screens that were conducted as part of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST).1 In the wake of the positive review of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) draft...
Results of the two rounds of annual incidence screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) vs radiography in the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) were recently reported by Denise R. Aberle, MD, Professor of Radiology and Bioengineering at the University of California at Los Angeles and...
Celgene Corporation recently announced the two recipients of Celgene’s inaugural Innovation Impact Awards: The Aplastic Anemia & Myelodysplastic Syndromes International Foundation (AA&MDSIF) and the Lung Cancer Alliance. The Innovation Impact Awards program recognizes effective, innovative, ...
Armstrong et al evaluated the prevalence of self-reported hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and obesity and the incidence of self-reported major cardiac events such as coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular disease, and arrhythmias in adult survivors of childhood cancer in...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gregory T. Armstrong, MD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, and colleagues assessed the frequency of major cardiac events and cardiovascular risk factors among adult survivors of childhood cancer and their siblings.1 They...
Cancer advocates and clinical trialists, for some time, have been proposing a radical change to the laborious drug development process—that industry, academia, funding sources, and other stakeholders actually pool their brain power and financial means and work together, not separately, to develop...
1. September 30, 2013: Pertuzumab (Perjeta) Accelerated approval in combination with trastuzumab and docetaxel for the neoadjuvant treatment of HER2-positive, locally advanced, inflammatory, or early-stage breast cancer. 2. September 6, 2013: Paclitaxel protein-bound particles (albumin-bound)...
Cost of Care and Federal Funding How can ASCO address the high cost of cancer care and diminishing federal resources for basic and translational research? We need to work with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, private insurers, and health-care systems to encourage evidence-based...
Cost of Care and Federal Funding How can ASCO address the high cost of cancer care and diminishing federal resources for basic and translational research? In answer to the first part of this question, the rising cost of cancer care has certainly become a focus of national conversation given the...
In September, ASCO announced the names of 14 ASCO members who have been selected by the ASCO Nominating Committee as candidates for open leadership positions within the Society for the 2014 ASCO Election. The two candidates nominated for President-Elect are Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, and Julie...
Even as oncologists try to tackle the changing landscape of health care in the United States, many realize that both physicians and patients in this country are still in a better position than those fighting cancer abroad in low- and middle-income countries. In 2009, ASCO joined with Health...
Bone health is critical in patients with multiple myeloma, since up to 85% will suffer bone damage. Options for management include two FDA-approved bisphosphonates—pamidronate and zoledronic acid—and possibly the RANK-L inhibitor denosumab (Xgeva, investigational use). Importance of Supportive ...
As the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) 8th Annual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies was drawing to a close, The ASCO Post spoke with Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, about the themes of the meeting and the take-home messages for attendees and for our readers. Dr. Zelenetz is Vice Chair...
Although upfront therapy can achieve remission in multiple myeloma, most patients will ultimately relapse. Newer targeted therapies and genomic analysis are moving the management of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma forward, according to Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, Director, Jerome Lipper Multiple...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Cunningham and colleagues and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, the AVEX trial was an open-label randomized phase III trial limited to patients over the age of 70 years with previously untreated, unresectable metastatic colorectal cancer who were not...
Elderly patients are often underrepresented in clinical trials of metastatic colorectal cancer. In the phase III AVEX trial reported in The Lancet Oncology,1 David Cunningham, MD, of Royal Marsden Hospital in London and colleagues assessed the addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to capecitabine in...
At the European Cancer Congress (ECC), Josep Tabernero, MD, PhD, Head of the Medical Oncology Department at Vall d’Hebron University in Barcelona, Spain, noted that the ASPECCT study asks a “reasonable question about the efficacy and safety of the two clinically approved anti-EGFR antibodies” and...
For the treatment of wild-type KRAS metastatic colorectal cancer in previously treated patients, a head-to-head comparison of the two antibodies—cetuximab (Erbitux) and panitumumab (Vectibix)—that target the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) concluded that they convey similar overall survival ...
At the 2013 European Cancer Congress, two investigative teams attempted to explain how aspirin may protect against colorectal cancer recurrences, with one study showing PIK3CA mutations associated with protection from aspirin, but not a COX-2 inhibitor, and the other study implicating HLA class I...
S1-01. Piccart-Gebhart M, Holmes AP, de Azambuja E, et al: The association between event-free survival and pathological complete response to neoadjuvant lapatinib, trastuzumab or their combination in HER2-positive breast cancer. Survival follow-up analysis of the NeoALTTO study (BIG 1-06) S1-02....
The Co-Directors of the 2013 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which will be held December 10–14, 2013, have highlighted what they consider to be the most important abstracts to be presented at the Symposium. In a telebriefing in advance of the December meeting, C. Kent Osborne, MD,...
The good news about HER2-positive breast cancer is that recurrent disease is plummeting, owing to the impact of adjuvant trastuzumab [Herceptin]. Hopefully, first-line metastatic treatment is becoming a thing of the past,” said Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston....
We are just 7 months into the $1 trillion in automatic federal budget spending cuts known as sequestration, and the impact on scientists in all areas of research is already so great, some say its full effects may be irreversible. The ASCO Post recently interviewed ASCO President Clifford A. Hudis, ...
The engineered monoclonal antibody MPDL3280A achieved encouraging and durable responses in a phase I study in metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in both smokers and nonsmokers, as well as in cancers of squamous and adenocarcinoma histology. Responses were more robust in smokers than...
Based on true events, Decoding Annie Parker follows the parallel stories of two women obsessed with finding a genetic link to breast cancer. And from the film’s opening frame until the closing credits roll, the absorbing tale never allows your mind to wander. Attempting to Elude Fate One woman is...
I think one of the most frightening—and embarrassing—things that can happen to an adult is losing control of your bladder and wetting the bed. When that happened to me in the spring of 2012 while I was on a camping trip with my wife Kimberly and our two teenage daughters, I knew something was very...
The National Institutes of Health has awarded 10 new grants totaling up to $17 million over the next 4 years to support genomics research in Africa, as part of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) program. This set of grants is the second disbursement of H3Africa awards and brings the ...
It is estimated that 30% to 90% of patients with cancer experience impairment of sleep quality post-treatment, and such impairment can be severe enough to increase morbidity and mortality. Preliminary evidence indicates that yoga may improve sleep in cancer patients. In a study reported in the...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Zhang and colleagues used integrated metabolomics and transcriptomics to investigate gene-metabolic networks and identify metabolic pathways that are perturbed in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. A global metabolite profiling analysis was performed ...
In a phase III study (REGAL trial) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tracy T. Batchelor, MD, MPH, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and colleagues compared oral monotherapy with the investigational pan–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor tyrosine kinase ...
Subcutaneous trastuzumab (not available in the United States) has been shown to have noninferior efficacy and similar pharmacokinetic and safety profiles compared with intravenous trastuzumab (Herceptin) in patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer. In the PrefHer trial reported in...
The worldwide data from prospective studies of the relationship between levels of endogenous sex hormones and breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women show multiple and complex relationships.1 Nine prospective studies (different from those reported here) of women not taking exogenous sex hormones ...
In a study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Arjun Sahgal, MD, of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, and colleagues evaluated the occurrence of vertebral compression fractures in patients undergoing spinal stereotactic body radiotherapy.1 Vertebral compression fractures occurred in ...