Researchers have completed the first comprehensive analysis combining full genomic sequencing and gene-expression profiles of more than 1,300 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). The research was presented by Iacobucci et al during the 2019 American Society...
Treatment with an investigational oral form of azacitidine, CC-486, improved overall survival in older patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were in remission following standard induction chemotherapy with or without consolidation therapy, according to a phase III study...
Scott A. Gerber, PhD, has been named the Kenneth E. and Carol L. Weg Distinguished Professor at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Dr. Gerber is the first to hold this newly established professorship. Dr. Gerber is Professor of Molecular and Systems Biology and of Biochemistry and...
In the pilot phase of an ongoing randomized trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Partha Basu, MD, and colleagues found that thermal ablation and cryotherapy produced similar treatment success rates in Zambian women positive for cervical precancer on visual inspection with acetic acid. The...
As reported in The British Medical Journal (BMJ) by Lise M. Helsingen, MD, PhD, and colleagues, a clinical practice guideline on colorectal cancer screening published as a BMJ Rapid Recommendations guideline indicates that previously unscreened individuals aged 50 to 79 years old with 15-year...
In the spring of 2005, I was launching a new career as a sales consultant for a startup graphics company and wanted to cross off a few essential things on my to-do list, including getting my annual mammogram and physical, before I started my new job. Although I was surprised when I got a call from ...
Patients with cancer who report on their own quality of life can provide information important in predicting the outcome of their disease, according to researchers from the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). Until recently, reports from clinicians on issues such as...
On November 14, 2019, the oral Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor zanubrutinib was granted accelerated approval in the treatment of adult patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) who have received at least one prior therapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data The approval was based on findings from...
Only one in five people (22%) disagrees with the statement “generally, patients with lung cancer have caused their illness through their lifestyle choices and behaviors,” according to a global, omnibus survey conducted by Ipsos MORI and sponsored by the Lung Ambition Alliance. The results were...
Due to the rarity of advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, staying current with the latest information on diagnosing, treating, and supporting patients with this diagnosis can be challenging for clinicians who do not often encounter it in practice. To support the multidisciplinary cancer team ...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) recently announced publication of the newest genetic risk assessment recommendations for breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) for Genetic/Familial High-Risk Assessment:...
Recent studies show that at least one-quarter of our nation’s health-care expenditures are being consumed by waste, fraud, and abuse. Moreover, since 2004, annual reports from the Commonwealth Fund have consistently rated the performance of our health-care system last among high-income countries,...
Although pancreatic cancer survival rates have slowly improved over the past few decades for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined, the 1-year rate is 20%, and the 5-year rate is about 9%. There is no single diagnostic test to detect pancreatic cancer, and less than 20% of tumors are confined to ...
Despite the unprecedented improvement in clinical outcomes with the advent of immune checkpoint blockade for cancer,1,2 robust biomarkers for therapeutic success as well as novel strategies to increase their efficacy are urgently needed. In addition to exploring novel immune checkpoints and other...
In a study presented in a brief report in JAMA Oncology,1 David J. Pinato, MD, PhD, of the Imperial College London, and colleagues found that past—but not concurrent—use of broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy was associated with poorer treatment outcomes in patients receiving immune checkpoint...
Multiple myeloma expert Nina Shah, MD, was born and reared in the Northeast. During grade school, she developed a passion for science that would lead to an early decision to pursue a career in medicine. “My ninth-grade biology class really got me interested in human biology, and that’s when I...
On April 19, 2019, pembrolizumab was approved for use in combination with the small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor axitinib for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the open-label phase III...
There is an urgent need to develop new drugs for the treatment of urothelial cancer. Chemotherapy was the only approved treatment in advanced disease for 40 years, which was associated with response rates of between 30% and 50% in the front-line setting.1-3 However, durable remissions were...
In the phase II EV-201 trial, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jonathan E. Rosenberg, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues found high activity of the antibody-drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma who had...
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) has named Chandra P. Belani, MD, as its new Chief Science Officer. In this position, Dr. Belani will direct, guide, and support the IASLC scientific strategy, including, but not limited to, scientific research projects,...
Cancer.Net provides timely, comprehensive, oncologist-approved information for patients from ASCO with support from Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation. Cancer.Net brings the expertise and resources of ASCO to people living with cancer and those who care for them to help patients and families make ...
Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation, hosted its fifth annual Scientific and Career Development Retreat on October 29 and 30, 2019, at ASCO Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The event encourages networking and scientific collaboration among Young Investigator Award (YIA) and Career Development...
For the country, and for me personally, 2001 was a watershed year. In May, my mother died; the following month my brother, Dom, then 57, called to tell me he had just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Except for some fatigue Dom had complained about at our mother’s funeral, there were no...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On October 23, 2019, the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase...
The treatment of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-positive lung cancer changed dramatically after the results of the FLAURA trial showed improved progression-free survival with the third-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor osimertinib as first-line therapy compared with...
Combination therapy with the programmed cell death ligand 1 inhibitor atezolizumab and the vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitor bevacizumab significantly improved overall and progression-free survival in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma compared with sorafenib, according...
Patients with follicular lymphoma who have been treated and are in remission for at least 2 years may no longer be incurable based on highly sensitive testing. This may mean they no longer need therapy or active follow-up, according to findings presented by Sarraf Yazdy et al at the 2019 American...
The trastuzumab biosimilar HLX02—manufactured in China—achieved a similar overall response rate to reference trastuzumab in women with HER2-positive recurrent or previously untreated metastatic breast cancer, according to a large, randomized phase III study. Binghe Xu, MD, PhD, of the Department of ...
A study of more than 1,000 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) revealed that African Americans were more likely to have evidence of abnormal kidney functioning than whites, but this was not associated with any difference in overall survival. The findings, presented by Statler et al at the...
At the recent 2019 Symposium on Clinical Interventional Oncology (CIO) in Miami, course directors Constantino Peña, MD, FSIR, and Ripal Gandhi, MD, FSIR, FSVM, had a lot to say about this burgeoning field of oncology. In particular, interventional oncology is making inroads in therapeutic...
Angela Lamarca, MD, PhD, of the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom, served as European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) commentator for the ClarIDHy trial in a press briefing held during the ESMO Congress 2019. Dr. Lamarca acknowledged, “The reported median...
Two studies reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019—ClarIDHy and FIGHT-202—demonstrated clinical benefits with novel molecularly targeted agents in the treatment of advanced cholangiocarcinoma. Currently, first-line treatment for locally advanced or metastatic...
About 4 decades ago, as a young physician, I observed that most surgeons were numerator doctors; they remembered their successes and their failures, but they did not remember the frequency of either. There was no denominator. Worse, the approach to any specific surgical problem was always the...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Kazuhiko Nakagawa, MD, of the Department of Medical Oncology, Kindai University Faculty of Medicine, Osaka, and colleagues, the phase III RELAY trial has shown that the addition of the VEGFR2 inhibitor ramucirumab to the EGFR inhibitor erlotinib improved...
Joshua Richter, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in New York, offered his thoughts on the CANDOR study, noting that the findings point to “a new and exciting treatment regimen for our patients with relapsed and...
In patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, the addition of daratumumab to carfilzomib plus dexamethasone improved multiple outcomes, compared with carfilzomib/dexamethasone alone, in the international phase III CANDOR trial.1 “Overall, carfilzomib/dexamethasone/daratumumab was...
A new analysis of Medicare claims data presented by Kilgore et al at the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition (Abstract 793) has provided the first real-world evidence using claims data available after the approval of autologous anti-CD19 chimeric antigen...
Even though autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHCT) is an effective treatment for multiple myeloma, only 4 out of 10 patients receive this therapy. A new study presented by Munshi et al at the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition (Abstract 782) ...
Children from lower-income neighborhoods were 2.4 times more likely to die during treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) than children from middle- and high-income neighborhoods, according to findings from a study that analyzed nearly 1,500 clinical trial participants. While previous research...
For patients with high-risk myeloid malignancies undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant, adding the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax to a reduced-intensity drug regimen prior to transplant is safe and does not impair the ability of the donor cells to engraft. The phase I study was...
More than three out of four patients with relapsed multiple myeloma, or myeloma that was refractory to at least two therapies, remained in remission 7 months after treatment with a novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy targeting two proteins that are frequently found on myeloma...
The investigational bispecific antibody mosunetuzumab is showing activity in preliminary studies of patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), including those who are refractory to or relapsed after third-line chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. If preliminary findings are validated by...
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that women who use permanent hair dye and chemical hair straighteners may have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who do not use these products. The study, published by Eberle et al in the International Journal of Cancer, ...
Clinical trials continue to demonstrate that combining immunotherapy with chemotherapy and other targeted therapies can improve survival for patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to results presented at the 21st Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago. Nearly 700...
For opioid-tolerant patients with advanced cancer experiencing pain, relief does not necessarily have to come from a higher dose of opioids, according to findings presented at the 2019 Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium.1 The results of a retrospective analysis of 300 patients with advanced...
Does nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer really exist? Although it is considered a disease category, it turns out that the definition depends on the type of imaging used. Many patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer who were categorized as “nonmetastatic” on conventional...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Richard T. Lee, MD, describes the symptoms associated with colorectal cancer...
An unanticipated result of a randomized phase II study was the improvement in overall survival achieved with the investigational CDK4/6 inhibitor trilaciclib in women with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. The drug was not being evaluated for its anticancer effects, but rather as a means of ...
In a health-related quality of life analysis from the phase III KEYNOTE-407 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mazières et al found that the patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received pembrolizumab in addition to chemotherapy had better...
High-dose brachytherapy for elderly patients with nonmelanoma skin cancer produces excellent cure rates and cosmetic outcomes, according to a new study presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) (Abstract SSM24-02). “For elderly patients [with...