In March, ASCO published its second annual report, The State of Cancer Care in America: 2015.1 Its findings show a mixed landscape, on the one hand, spotlighting advances in therapy and improving survival rates, but on the other, describing a cancer care system under stress from increasing demand...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that U.S. health-care spending will reach $4.3 trillion and account for 19.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product by 2019.1 Although cancer care represents a small fraction of overall health-care costs, the cost of cancer care is rapidly...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) proved superior to ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the treatment of unresectable advanced melanoma in the global phase III KEYNOTE-006 trial. Pembrolizumab significantly improved overall survival, progression-free survival, and overall response rate compared with ipilimumab, which...
At this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO, will begin her term as the Society’s 51st President. It is fitting that the meeting will be held in Chicago, the city where the first seven visionaries met over lunch in 1964 to formulate a medical organization centered on cancer...
BOOKMARKTitle: p53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer CodeAuthor: Sue ArmstrongPublisher: Bloomsbury PublishingPublication date: November 20, 2014Price: $19.98; hardcover, 288 pages Completed in April 2003, the Human Genome Project was one of the greatest feats of scientific exploration, an inward ...
“Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a neglected disease in patients with cancer,” Harrys A. Torres, MD, and colleagues from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston noted in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. To rectify that situation, the researchers...
Using a novel polymerase chain reaction assay “to efficiently assess” epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations in circulating free DNA (cfDNA) from blood samples of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the Spanish Lung Cancer Group has “shown that the EGFR L858R...
Emergency room visits and hospitalizations are common among patients with early breast cancer receiving chemotherapy, particularly among those receiving a regimen containing docetaxel, according to a study supported by the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research, Toronto. “In this population-based...
I first met Michael Katz, MBA, in 2004, 3 years after my brother, Dom, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and we were at a crossroads in his care and needed advice. Although an experimental regimen of thalidomide (Thalomid) and dexamethasone had successfully put Dom in remission for a year (the...
Alan Alda, Co-Founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and Visiting Professor at Stony Brook University, suggests these steps to improve scientific communication. The ability to be empathic and imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling is the key to becoming a more...
Alan Alda’s passion and appreciation for science extend nearly as far back to his early life as his love of acting. The son of actor Robert Alda, Mr. Alda began his acting career at the age of 16. Although he has appeared in such widely acclaimed films as The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Crimes and...
BOOKMARKTitle: Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical CareAuthor: H. Gilbert Welch, MDPublisher: Beacon PressPublication date: March 3, 2015Price: $24.95; hardcover, 241 pages He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines. —Benjamin Franklin...
The process of delivering novel treatments for patients with cancer involves a multifaceted and long-term interaction between three distinct entities: clinical researchers, who conduct the trials which test treatments; drug developers, including the pharmaceutical industry, which takes cancer drugs ...
Getting a cancer diagnosis and going through treatment are difficult for patients of any age, but the experience can be especially traumatizing for the nearly 16,000 infants, children, and adolescents diagnosed each year with cancer,1 especially during the early days of treatment. Young cancer...
Roche announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the cobas KRAS Mutation Test for diagnostic use. The real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is designed to identify KRAS mutations in tumor samples from patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and aid...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for filing and review Bristol-Myers Squibb’s supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for nivolumab (Opdivo) for the treatment of previously untreated patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. The FDA also granted Priority...
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 April 24, the monoclonal antibody ramucirumab (Cyramza) was...
Geriatrics for the Oncologist is guest edited by Stuart Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, and developed in collaboration with the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG). Visit SIOG.org for more on geriatric oncology. The Task Forces of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) are ...
In a phase II study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that adjuvant paclitaxel and trastuzumab (Herceptin) was associated with high invasive disease-free survival in women with small, node-negative,...
Ever since the early application of adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer decades ago, it has been recognized that there is always a price to pay for its success in reducing breast cancer mortality. Most of that “cost” is commonly considered in terms of the potential morbid short- and long-term...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
ASCO has announced the second class of oncology practices for its Quality Training Program. Twelve practices across the United States will participate in this 6-month comprehensive course, which will guide them through quality improvement activities using proven innovative learning techniques....
On March 31, 2015, Harold Varmus, MD, left his position as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to join the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York as its Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine. Dr. Varmus was also named Senior Associate Core Member of the New York...
Although the idea of using viruses to target cancer cells dates back more than 100 years, technologic advances in the genetic engineering of viruses are now making it possible to safely test oncolytic virotherapy as a valid strategy against cancer cells. One type of genetically engineered virus...
Question 1: In the current era of tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, which prognostic model is best to assess the prognosis of a person with a new diagnosis of CML? Correct Answer: D. All of the above Expert Perspective Despite not being perfect, all of these scores are reasonably effective at...
Prostate cancer survivors currently approach 3 million in number and comprise 43% of all male cancer survivors in the United States.1 These men face myriad unique oncologic, functional, emotional, and psychological issues that require evaluation and management throughout the survivorship phase of...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Matthew J. Resnick, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and colleagues, ASCO has endorsed the 2014 American Cancer Society Prostate Cancer Survivorship Care Guidelines.1,2 The ASCO endorsement panel was co-chaired by Dr. Resnick and David...
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors are one of the most exciting new classes of agents in development for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Olaparib (Lynparza), the lead oral PARP inhibitor, received accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of...
In April 2015, the American College of Physicians (ACP) released its clinical advice guideline, Cervical Cancer Screening in Average-Risk Women: Best Practice Advice From the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians.1 The guideline aims to reduce the overuse of cervical...
PARP inhibitors offer a promising alternative for targeted therapy in ovarian cancer” and have “clear benefit in BRCA-mutation carriers,” but questions remain about when is the best time to use them and the cost-effectiveness of maintenance therapy, Elizabeth M. Swisher, MD, of the University of...
Since 1990, we have seen an approximate 35% reduction in breast cancer mortality among women in the United States. Three protagonists can share this clinical success story: prevention, early detection, and better therapies. To shed light on the current state of breast cancer research and therapy,...
The PARP enzyme functions in aiding cells as they repair DNA. Olaparib hits the target. The question is how best to use it,” said William Nelson, MD, Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Dr. Nelson moderated a press conference where these data were...
The ability to do genomic analysis of patients’ tumors holds great promise for revolutionizing cancer treatment, and genomics has already made some great strides. However, the Individualized Molecular Pancreatic Cancer Therapy (IMPaCT) trial is a cautionary tale about the hurdles involved in...
Add lung cancer to the growing list of cancers that may derive benefit from immunotherapy. The KEYNOTE-001 trial found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) achieved durable responses in a proportion of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and high levels of expression of the protein PD-L1...
A new study presented at The International Liver Congress™ 2015 in Vienna, Austria, showed that by using genomic analyses to understand how and when carcinogenic mutations occur in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, it is possible to identify specific molecular profiles. It is hoped that these ...
For 2 decades, the NCCN Guidelines® have been recognized as the standard of cancer care in the United States, combining evidence, experience, and choice, so that multidisciplinary cancer treatment teams—including patients—are empowered to make informed decisions about cancer care,” said Robert W....
Another exciting multiple myeloma treatment will be presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting,” Philip L. McCarthy, MD, Professor of Oncology and Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Center at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, commented in an interview with The ASCO Post....
The ASCO Annual Meeting is our Society’s premier event and without a doubt one that is highly anticipated by the oncology world. The success of the meeting stems from the desire to share with each other our data and the knowledge we have gleaned from those data over the course of the past year. The ...
These latest results of STAMPEDE lend further support to the early use of chemotherapy in men with advanced prostate cancer. They confirm the CHAARTED trial results reported last year by Christopher J. Sweeney, MBBS, which were practice-changing. Men with newly diagnosed metastatic...
One of the early giants in the field of cancer prevention, Lee W. Wattenberg, MD, published in 1966 what would be regarded as a landmark paper in the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) journal Cancer Research. During his research, he reviewed 36 years of animal studies, looking at the...
Eddie Reed, MD, was a pioneer in the molecular pharmacology of DNA-damaging anticancer agents and the clinical development of paclitaxel for ovarian cancer. He graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1979, completed his internship and residency at Stanford University in 1981, and was...
Robert C. Young, MD, ASCO Past President, longtime leader of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and an internationally recognized expert in lymphoma and ovarian cancer, is a forward-looking doctor who is confident about something not in his future: retirement. “I’ll never quit working; I’m just not wired...
John L. Marshall, MD, a global leader in the research and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers, grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, in a family that put high value on education. As a young boy, science was already on his mind; he enjoyed the explorative nature that chemistry and biology offered....
As a young boy growing up in the Bronx, Vincent T. DeVita, Jr, MD, admired the local iceman, a thick-muscled guy known as Nunzi, who used to carry a big block of ice on his shoulder with a set of tongs, and effortlessly slide it into the DeVitas’ icebox. “A friend once asked me what I wanted to be...
Numerous challenges and milestones mark the course of an oncology career. Community doctors remember special patients, often speaking about a singular bond that is unique among a profession that deals with life and death daily. Researchers recount long hours of seeming futility and then the...
At the 2007 ASCO Annual Meeting, Lodovico Balducci, MD, received the inaugural B.J. Kennedy Award and Lecture for Scientific Excellence in Geriatric Oncology. Called the “patriarch of geriatric oncology,” Dr. Balducci is widely known in the oncology community for his warm humor and thick Italian...
In 1985, Carolyn R. “Bo” Aldigé founded the Prevent Cancer Foundation in honor of her father, who had died the previous year of head and neck cancer. She started the Foundation in her kitchen with a typewriter, a sheath of carbon copy paper, and a telephone. “I quickly rented an office because a...
ASCO announced its first-ever clinical trial, which will offer patients with advanced cancer access to molecularly targeted cancer drugs and collect “real-world” data on clinical outcomes, to help learn the best uses of these drugs outside of indications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug...
Using imatinib to treat chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CP-CML) first line, with selective switching to nilotinib (Tasigna) “leads to excellent molecular response and survival” and “may be preferable to universal first-line use of more potent agents, considering efficacy, toxicity, and...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Chacon and colleagues found that ex vivo manipulation of the tumor microenvironment could enhance expansion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes for use in adoptive cell therapy. The addition of an agonistic anti–4-1BB antibody during initial tumor...