Positron-emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging with the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radiotracer fluorine F-18 DCFPyL (PyL) successfully identified areas of occult metastasis in men with biochemically recurrent metastatic castration-resistant prostate...
On May 8, 2020, olaparib was granted an expanded indication to include use in combination with bevacizumab for first-line maintenance treatment of adult patients with advanced epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer who are in complete or partial response to first-line...
According to the results of a European case-control study published by Molina-Montes et al in the journal Gut, one of the most recently identified types of diabetes—type 3c, or pancreatogenic diabetes—could also be an early manifestation of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer has a high mortality...
Between 2001 and 2016 in the United States, Asian/Pacific Islander men experienced the greatest increase in the incidence of testicular germ cell tumors, followed by Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native men, according to a study published by Ghazarian et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers...
A safety and patient-reported outcome analysis from the IMpower150 trial, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Martin Reck, PhD, and colleagues, indicated that atezolizumab plus bevacizumab and chemotherapy appeared to be a manageable and tolerable regimen when compared with atezolizumab ...
Nurse-scientists from the Phyllis F. Cantor Center for Research in Nursing and Patient Care Services at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, received more than $1.3 million in funding for two separate research projects. The American Association for Cancer Research announced that in partnership...
The University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center announced that medical sociologist Pamela Hull, PhD, will join the center as Associate Director of Population Science and Community Impact. She will also serve as the William Stamps Farish Endowed Chair in Cancer Research and join the University of...
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Markar et al found that routine use of minimally invasive vs open esophagectomy for esophageal cancer was associated with increased risk of pulmonary complications and other adverse outcomes, contrary to the findings of the clinical...
In a commentary published in The Lancet Oncology, Vasquez et al presented results of a survey of pediatric oncologists/hematologists across Latin America, which showed an adverse early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric cancer care. Study Details The study included a cross-sectional...
The addition of the checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to enzalutamide failed to improve overall survival compared with enzalutamide alone in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the phase III IMbassador250 trial, according to results presented at the 2020 American Association ...
In a recent article in JAMA Oncology, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Dess et al present an important analysis to help guide decision-making in the setting of salvage radiotherapy in prostate cancer.1 This secondary analysis assessed the association of prostate-specific antigen (PSA)...
In an analysis from the NRG/RTOG 9601 trial reported in JAMA Oncology,1Robert T. Dess, MD, of the Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues found that men with higher prostate-specific antigen (PSA) presalvage radiotherapy levels after prostatectomy had a...
Geneticist and physician Francis Collins, MD, PhD, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and career-long advocate for the integration of faith and reason, was recently announced as the 2020 Templeton Prize Laureate. Dr. Collins was selected as the 2020 Laureate by the prize judges...
The treatment approaches to multiple myeloma have significantly changed over the past decade with the introduction of many new active agents. Among them, the monoclonal antibodies have been one of the most exciting advances in myeloma, complementing their success in other hematologic cancers. In...
Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®, has named Dawn L. Hershman, MD, MS, FASCO, as the 2020 Hologic, Inc Endowed Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award recipient, and Lillian L. Siu, MD, FRCPC, FASCO, as the International Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award recipient. The 2020 Women Who ...
Women Who Conquer Cancer (WWCC) is a groundbreaking program that is committed to supporting early-career women researchers by funding research grants through Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®. Since its inception 7 years ago, the program has raised nearly $5 million, funded 27 Young Investigator ...
An analysis of 59 prostate cancer clinical trials based in North America and Europe found that the vast majority of enrollees were non-Hispanic white men, according to a study published by Rencsok et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. The proportion of white participants in...
The addition of trastuzumab to radiotherapy did not reach the protocol objective of a 36% reduction in the ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence rate for women with HER2-positive ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in the NRG Oncology clinical trial NSABP B-43. The trial did find a modest (19%) reduction ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mark Bustoros, MD, and colleagues identified genomic features of smoldering multiple myeloma associated with a higher risk of progression to multiple myeloma and found that alterations that drive disease progression are already present at the ...
This week, we’ll be hearing from the authors of three late-breaking abstracts presented in the Plenary program at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program. Their findings highlight significant advances in lung cancer, bladder cancer, and colorectal cancer.
The RET inhibitor pralsetinib showed activity in patients with a broad variety of tumors harboring RET gene fusions, according to results from the phase I/II ARROW trial, presented by Vivek Subbiah, MD, and colleagues during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 109). “This trial shows...
Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah presented the first outcomes evaluation of an adult oncology hospital-at-home program during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 7000). The study evaluated patients participating in HCI's Huntsman at Home program....
Discussant Scott T. Tagawa, MD, MS, of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, congratulated Dr. Hofman and coauthors on this first randomized trial any PSMA-targeted therapy, and was cautiously optimistic about the targeted radioligand treatment being adopted as post-docetaxel therapy in men with...
Initial results of the randomized phase II TheraP trial show that therapy directed to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) with lutetium-177–labeled PSMA-617 (LuPSMA) significantly improved prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response compared with cabazitaxel in men with metastatic...
Disparities in cancer mortality rates between black and white Americans date back more than 60 years. Now, a study by the American Cancer Society comparing person-years of life lost and lost earnings due to premature cancer mortality by race/ethnicity has quantified the economic burden due to...
As reported at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 5602) and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Shore et al, the phase III HERO trial showed sustained castrate testosterone levels and lower risk of major cardiovascular events with the oral gonadotropin-releasing hormone...
In a phase I/II Children’s Oncology Group study (AAML1421) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cooper et al identified the phase II dose of CPX-351, a liposomal preparation of daunorubicin and cytarabine, and found that a regimen consisting of CPX-351 followed by fludarabine, cytarabine,...
The 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was jointly awarded to three researchers. Their discoveries paved the way for promising new strategies to treat anemia, cancer, and many other diseases. One of the three Nobel Laureates is William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD, who continues his research at his...
The Revolutions of 1989 that resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond began in Poland. Perhaps if not for that social upheaval, the career of internationally renowned oncologist Jacek Jassem, MD, PhD, would have taken a very different path. Dr. Jassem had fled...
F. Stephen Hodi, MD, Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, was born in Framingham and grew up in the town of Acton, a western suburb of Boston. “My dad was an engineer, and I was influenced by puzzle-solving and using...
The desire to pursue a career in medicine took root when Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO, was a young child visiting family in segregated Ahoskie, North Carolina. She witnessed firsthand the impact the town’s lone African American family physician had on the community. When it came time to...
ASCO President-Elect Everett E. Vokes, MD, FASCO, is the John E. Ultmann Professor, Chair of the Department of Medicine, and Physician-in-Chief of University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences. After a journey from the United States to Germany and back again, Dr. Vokes arrived at the...
In the final overall survival analysis of the phase III PROSPER trial reported at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 5515) and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Cora N. Sternberg, MD, and colleagues found that enzalutamide plus androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT)...
Genetic testing for cancer risk can significantly improve the prevention or treatment of hereditary cancers, but studies have shown that people who might have a genetic risk often don't get tested. A collaborative team of researchers have tested a possible solution through a clinical trial aimed at ...
Results of the NRG Oncology phase III clinical trial NRG-GY004 indicated that the addition of the investigational agent cediranib to olaparib and standard platinum-based chemotherapy did not improve progression-free survival outcomes for women with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer; however,...
Although ‘paradigm shifts’ are frequently referenced in oncology, these are really few and far between. They occur when new data either partially invalidate previously accepted theory or are at complete odds with the existing paradigm. Moving away from the Halsted radical mastectomy, a standard of ...
Internationally recognized immune-oncology melanoma expert Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, FASCO, was born and reared in Staten Island, not far from where he would shape his noted career at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York, New York. “I went to Princeton University and, during my ...
In 2019, at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Ian Tannock, MD, PhD, DSc, FASCO, was honored with the Allen S. Lichter Visionary Award for his contributions to the fields of genitourinary and breast cancers as well as his efforts to optimize clinical trial design. The title of his lecture was “Clinical...
Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, FASCO, knew from the start of his medical career that if treatments for cancer were to become curative, research in new therapies would have to move away from the mainstay one-size-fits-all approach of systemic chemotherapy to an innovative, personalized strategy that ...
When oncology luminary Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, was in her early teens, her youngest sister, Teri, developed acute lymphocytic leukemia at age 5. Dr. O’Shaughnessy, the oldest of four girls, recalled that her sister’s struggle with the disease had a profound effect on her worldview. “Teri went...
The combination of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) did not show superior efficacy in patients with newly diagnosed myeloma absent a high-risk disease prognosis, compared with the standard of care: bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (VRd). Data from a planned interim...
Women who present at diagnosis with advanced breast cancer have faced an unanswered question: will local therapy, consisting of surgery and radiation to the tumor in the breast, prolong survival compared to the traditional treatment of systemic treatment alone? Now, data from the randomized phase...
Combination therapy with the isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) inhibitor ivosenidib plus the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax with or without the chemotherapeutic agent azacitidine showed activity in patients with IDH1-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in a phase Ib/II trial. The results of the...
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, Chief Medical Officer of ASCO, talks about some of the most important and practice-changing findings presented this year at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, including the use of targeted and immunotherapies in earlier lines of therapy, where they have made a...
In an international trial, treatment with MK-6482, a small-molecule inhibitor of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-2a, was well tolerated and resulted in clinical responses for patients with von Hippel-Lindau disease–associated renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The results of the phase II trial were shared ...
Geriatric assessment–driven interventions—such as physical therapy, nutritional recommendations, and social support, among others—can reduce toxicity due to chemotherapy in adults with cancer aged 65 years and older, according to results from a randomized clinical trial presented as part of ASCO20...
Patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and a mutation that leads to mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) exon 14 skipping had a 46.5% objective response rate to the targeted therapy drug tepotinib, as shown in a study presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program...
Howard A. Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, President of ASCO, talks about what to expect from this year’s ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program and its many offerings.
David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, of the University of Pennsylvania, who trained as an oncologist, summarizes his opening lecture, a dramatic story of his battle against Castleman, a disease of the lymph nodes, his multiple near-death experiences, and the path that led him to develop a cooperative...
In a study of patients with early-stage cervical cancer presented by Balaya et al during the Gynecologic Cancer Oral Abstract Session of the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 6006), researchers assessed disease-free and disease-specific survival to determine whether sentinel lymph node...