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Showing 9701 - 9750Radiotherapy Reduces Risk of Recurrence by More Than 70% in Some Patients With Ductal Carcinoma in Situ
Radiation therapy after breast-conserving surgery reduced the already-low risk of recurrence by more than 70% in patients with defined “good-risk” breast cancer, according to a long-term clinical trial report presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology...
Dealing With the Challenges Presented by the Parenteral Opioid Shortage
The opioid drug problem in the United States is a crisis, with unprecedented numbers of overdose deaths. The reaction to this has resulted in new federal laws and regulations aimed at restricting overuse and overprescribing of opioids. However, these well-intentioned actions, along with other...
Lung Cancer Screening: Proven Effective but Still Fighting for Acceptance
In 2010, the long-awaited findings from the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) revealed that participants who received low-dose helical computed tomography (CT) scans had a 15% to 20% lower risk of dying of lung cancer than participants who received standard chest x-rays. In response, the U.S....
Expert Point of View: Nadia Harbeck, MD, PhD, and Fatima Cardoso, MD
Serving as European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) expert at a press briefing, Nadia Harbeck, MD, PhD, Head of the Breast Center at the University of Munich, called the findings “practice-changing” in some parts of the world and “practice-reinforcing” in others. She said the 10-month...
NCRI 2018: HiLo Trial: Rate of Thyroid Cancer Recurrence After Adjuvant Lower-Dose Radiation
Patients with thyroid cancer whose disease is at low risk of returning can be treated safely with a smaller amount of radiation following surgery, according to results from the HiLo trial presented by Wadsley et al at the 2018 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference (Abstract...
NCRI 2018: COMPARE Study: Side Effects and Quality of Life Associated With Prostate Cancer Care
Men who have been newly diagnosed with prostate cancer say they would trade some improvement in their odds of survival for improvements in side effects and quality of life, according to research presented by Ahmed et al at the 2018 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference...
Effect of Donor Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential in Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Frick et al found that allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) from donors with clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) appears safe and not associated with poorer survival when donors are older, related...
ME STRONG Joins With ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation to Support Research for Men’s Cancers and Neuroblastoma
ME STRONG, a nonprofit public charity in Deland, Florida, is one of the newest supporters of Conquer Cancer. Linda Ryan, ME STRONG co-founder and 16-year cancer survivor, understands the importance of research: it saved her life decades ago, and she’s relying on experimental treatment as she...
First Oncology Practice in Romania Certified by U.S. Quality Cancer Care Program
THE NUMBER of international practices certified in delivering high-quality cancer care based on rigorous standards established by ASCO is increasing. The Medisprof Cancer Center in Romania joins six other practices in Brazil, Greece, and Spain in achieving ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice...
ASCO in the Community: Listening and Learning From Our Patients in Appalachia
2018–2019 ASCO President Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, is putting the words of her presidential theme— “caring for every patient, learning from every patient” —into action. During her term, she and other ASCO leaders will be traveling to local communities around the United States to...
Risk Factors for Late Recurrence After Resection for Hepatocellular Carcinoma
In a Chinese retrospective study reported in JAMA Surgery, Xu et al found that risk of late recurrence (> 2 years) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after curative liver resection was associated with male sex, presence of cirrhosis, and aggressive characteristics of the initial HCC. The study...
Outcomes in Melanoma With Active Brain Metastases After Treatment With Pembrolizumab
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Kluger et al, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) showed activity in brain metastases in patients with melanoma enrolled in a phase II study. The study included 23 patients with melanoma with one or more asymptomatic untreated 5- to 20-mm brain metastasis...
FDA Pipeline: What’s New in Biosimilars, Drug Reviews, Designations, and More
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued the following new approvals and designations: Approval for Pegfilgrastim Biosimilar The FDA recently approved a pegfilgrastim biosimilar, pegfilgrastim-cbqv (Udenyca). The biosimilar has been approved to decrease the incidence...
PERSIST-5: 5-Year Adjuvant Imatinib in Resected Intermediate- or High-Risk Primary Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor
In the phase II PERSIST-5 study reported in JAMA Oncology, Raut et al found that 5 years of adjuvant imatinib therapy was associated with little risk of recurrence in patients with resected intermediate- or high-risk primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST). As noted by the investigators, 3...
Patient-Reported Cosmetic Outcomes With Radiotherapy in Early Breast Cancer
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Shaitelman et al, 3-year outcomes of a phase III noninferiority trial indicate that hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation (HF-WBI) followed by a tumor bed boost is not inferior to conventionally fractionated whole-breast irradiation (CF-WBI)...
Molecular and Clinical Heterogeneity in Histologically Diagnosed CNS-PNET
As reported by Hwang et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, subsequent molecular profiling of histologically diagnosed central nervous system supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumors (CNS-PNET) in patients showed molecular and clinical heterogeneity that strongly affected prognosis. The ...
2018 Palliative Care: Can an AI-Based App Help Manage Cancer-Related Pain?
A study of 112 patients with metastatic solid tumors found that the use of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based smartphone app reduced both the severity of patients’ reported pain and hospital admissions. After an 8-week period, patients who used the AI-powered app to monitor and address...
2018 Palliative Care: Immunotherapy-Related Adverse Events May Be More Common Than Initially Reported
An analysis of nearly 2,800 patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received the immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab (Opdivo), pembrolizumab (Keytruda), or atezolizumab (Tecentriq) found that adverse events may be more common than reported in the initial trials that led...
Overall Survival After Minimally Invasive Radical Hysterectomy for Early-Stage Cervical Cancer
In a cohort study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Melamed et al found that minimally invasive radical hysterectomy was associated with poorer overall survival compared with open radical hysterectomy in women with early-stage cervical cancer. Study Details The study involved...
Prevalence of Lynch Syndrome in Solid Tumors According to Microsatellite Instability Status
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Latham et al found that microsatellite instability (MSI) and/or mismatch repair deficiency (MMR-D) is predictive of Lynch syndrome across a greater than heretofore recognized breadth of the solid tumor spectrum. As noted by the...
Effect of Early Cardiotoxicity on Outcomes in Pediatric AML
In an analysis from the Children’s Oncology Group AAML0531 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Getz et al found that early treatment-related cardiotoxicity may be associated with poorer event-free and overall survival in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Study Details...
FDA Approves Pembrolizumab for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Previously Treated With a Kinase Inhibitor
On November 9, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who have been previously treated with the kinase inhibitor sorafenib. KEYNOTE-224 Approval was based on KEYNOTE-224, a single-arm,...
Novel Physician-Driven Practice Model Offers Alternative to Community Oncologists
Three leading oncology practices have united with partners in technology and finance to launch OneOncology, a physician-driven company that aims to unite more than 225 community oncology providers from 60-plus locations. Altogether, OneOncology will treat nearly 158,000 cancer patients a year. The...
Corticosteroids and Immunotherapy: Guilty or Guilt By Association?
FIRST-LINE TREATMENT options for advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) include single- agent immunotherapy for patients with a programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) tumor proportion score of at least 50% or in combination with chemotherapy in unselected patients.1-3 Single immunotherapy is...
Corticosteroid Use at Start of PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitor Therapy Affects Outcomes in NSCLC
IN A STUDY reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kathryn C. Arbour, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues found that baseline treatment with corticosteroids was associated with poorer efficacy of programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death ligand 1...
Developing Patient-Centered Palliative Care From Diagnosis to End of Life
In December, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School will launch an innovative cancer care model called the CaLM (cancer life re-imagined) Clinic as part of its new cancer center, the Livestrong Cancer Institutes. The goal of the Livestrong Cancer Institutes and the CaLM Clinic is to...
Tackling Financial Toxicity: One Institution’s Roadmap Forward
ALTHOUGH FINANCIAL toxicity has become an important issue in the oncology community, evidence suggests the subject is rarely addressed by oncologists, exacerbating its grave effects on patients with cancer and their families.1 “But I don’t think it’s because health-care providers don’t want to...
Do Incident Learning Systems Prevent Medical Errors?
ACCORDING TO a study by Johns Hopkins, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.1 Lakshmi Santanam, PhD, tackled such sobering data at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium. “Incident learning systems are not just about medical errors or data; it’s kind of a first...
Challenges and Successes of Adopting an Oncology Care Model
IN ORDER TO rein in the untenable rise in costs while delivering high-value cancer care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation developed a new payment system—the Oncology Care Model. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Cardinale B. Smith, MD, PhD, shed light on the system’s...
End-of-Life Dashboard Drives Transformation With Actionable Personalized Data
A NUMBER OF STUDIES from the palliative care literature have shown that nonbeneficial health-care interventions actually may harm patients’ quality of life, increase patient and caregiver distress, and drive costs. Yet, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 30% of all cancer spending...
Atezolizumab Plus Chemotherapy Improves Outcomes in Small Cell Lung Cancer
ATEZOLIZUMAB (TECENTRIQ), an anti–program cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody, combined with carboplatin/ etoposide as first-line treatment for extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) improved overall and progression-free survival and may represent a new standard of care, according to...
Adding the Patient’s Voice to Collaborative Clinical Trial Efforts
THE INTERNATIONAL Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer was the largest in its history. One of the key themes of the meeting was to focus on the patient. Here are highlights of presentations from this conference that demonstrate the role of the...
Pembrolizumab Shows Antitumor Activity in Non–Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer
THE ANTI–PROGRAMMED cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was found to have antitumor activity in patients with high-risk non–muscle invasive bladder cancer who were nonresponsive to bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), according to the preliminary results of the ...
Radiation to Primary Tumor Improves Survival in Subset of Men With Metastatic Prostate Cancer
MEN WITH newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer do not typically receive treatment to the primary tumor with radiation or surgery. A new analysis of the STAMPEDE trial found that radiation administered to the prostate can improve overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate...
Results Reported for Olaparib Maintenance in Ovarian Cancer
TWO-YEAR MAINTENANCE therapy with olaparib (Lynparza), a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor, achieved a significant improvement in progression-free survival in patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer and a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, according to results of the phase III SOLO-1...
Cancer Taught Me to Help Patients Find Healing Hope
AS AN INTERNIST, I strived to give patients hope by prescribing therapies that increased their chance—their hope—of the best outcome and by encouraging them with hopeful words. My own hope was to care for patients until I was old. Just weeks after celebrating my 36th birthday, I was diagnosed with ...
Brigatinib Improves Outcomes Over Crizotinib in ALK-Positive Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
THE FIRST-LINE USE of brigatinib (Alunbrig) was superior to standard-of-care crizotinib (Xalkori) in patients with advanced anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the first report of the phase III ALTA-1L trial presented at the International...
Immunotherapy Improves Survival in a Subset of Patients With Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
IMMUNOTHERAPY APPEARS to be the new upfront standard of care for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, based on a late-breaking presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress1 and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.2 In ...
Trifluridine/Tipiracil in Heavily Pretreated Metastatic Gastric Cancer
In the phase III TAGS trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Shitara et al found that trifluridine/tipiracil (Lonsurf) significantly improved overall survival vs placebo in patients with heavily pretreated metastatic gastric cancer. In the double-blind trial, 507 patients with nonresectable...
Surveillance Imaging Modality and Survival After Recurrence in Favorable-Histology Wilms Tumor
Findings in a study reported by Mullen and colleagues for the Children’s Oncology Group in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggest that routine computed tomography (CT) surveillance may not be necessary for recurrence detection in favorable-histology Wilms tumor. The study was a...
Increased Survival in Patients With Metastatic NSCLC Receiving Treatment in Academic vs Community Centers
Patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving treatment at academic centers have an increased 2-year survival compared to patients treated at community-based centers, according to findings published by Ramalingam et al in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. An...
Five-Year Risk of Cervical Precancer With p16/Ki67 Dual-Stain or Cytology Triage in HPV-Positive Women
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Clarke et al found that triage with p16/Ki-67 dual-stain testing (DS) was associated with better risk stratification for cervical precancer than Papanicolaou cytology testing over 5 years among human papilloma virus (HPV)–positive women. Study Details...
Activity of Vemurafenib in BRAF V600–Mutant Gliomas
In a multicohort study (VE-BASKET study) in patients with BRAF V600–mutant nonmelanoma cancers in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kaley et al found evidence of activity of vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in gliomas that appeared to vary by glioma subtype. Study Details In the study, 24...
Incidental Germline Mutations in Patients With Advanced Solid Tumors Identified by Cell-Free Circulating Tumor DNA Testing
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Slavin et al determined the prevalence of a set of germline cancer predisposition gene mutations incidentally identified by cell-free circulating tumor DNA (cfDNA) testing in patients with advanced solid tumors. Study Details The study...
Combining Genetic and Sun Exposure Data May Improve Prediction of Skin Cancer Risk
By combining data on individuals’ lifetime sun exposure and their genetics, researchers may be able to generate improved predictions of their risk of skin cancer, according to findings presented by Fontanillas et al at the 2018 American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting (Abstract PgmNr ...
Combination of Macrophage Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor and Rituximab in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
In a phase Ib study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Advani et al found that the combination of rituximab (Rituxan) and the CD47-blocking monoclonal antibody Hu5F9-G4 (or 5F9), a macrophage immune checkpoint inhibitor, was active in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. CD47, which is ...
PURE-01 Trial: Neoadjuvant Immunotherapy in Muscle-Invasive Bladder Carcinoma
In the Italian phase II PURE-01 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Necchi et al found that neoadjuvant pembrolizumab (Keytruda) before radical cystectomy in muscle-invasive bladder carcinoma produced complete pathologic response (pT0) in 42% of patients, with pT0 being more common...
Samuel Waxman, MD, Receives China’s ‘Friendship Award’
The Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation (SWCRF), an international nonprofit organization that funds cancer research, recently announced that its founder and Chief Executive Officer, Samuel Waxman, MD, has received China’s highest honor granted to a foreigner. The Vice-Premier of the People’s...
Early PSA Testing Could Help Predict Prostate Cancer Among Black Men
In a study published by Mark A. Preston, MD, MPH, and colleagues in European Urology, researchers demonstrated that a baseline prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level obtained from black men between 40 and 60 years old may predict the future development of prostate cancer for years after testing....
Thomas J. Dougherty, PhD, Father of Photodynamic Therapy, Dies at Age 85
Thomas J. Dougherty, PhD, the developer of modern photodynamic therapy and Chief Emeritus of Roswell Park’s Photodynamic Therapy Center, died October 2, 2018, in Buffalo, New York. “He was undoubtedly the major influence in bringing [photodynamic therapy] into the realm of cancer therapy,” said...
