© 2023 HSP News Service, L.L.C.
The treatment of colorectal cancer has always been something of an art—but never more so than during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, The ASCO Post asked three experts in this malignancy to share their concerns and their approaches to achieving good patient outcomes while minimizing...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has compiled a selection of resources for radiation oncology professionals. The resources were developed by clinical teams and based on the best available information at the time they were posted. Physicians and their patients must make the...
A novel strategy of combining a drive-by flu vaccination clinic with an opportunity for participants to use a take-home fecal immunochemical test (FIT) increased access to colorectal screening among Black Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results related to access to colorectal cancer...
Patients with cancer are at an increased risk of death due to COVID-19 compared with the general population. And hematologic cancers carry an even greater risk than solid tumors, according to a comprehensive meta-analysis from the Reboot: COVID-Cancer Project presented at the 2021 AACR Virtual...
Most people with cancer who are infected with COVID-19 produce antibodies at a rate comparable to the rest of the population—but their ability to do so depends on the type of malignancy and the treatments they’ve received, according to a new study published by Thakkar et al in Nature Cancer. The...
In a single-institution study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Hawrot et al found that there was no increase in time to treatment initiation after histologic diagnosis in patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, they did find...
Updated findings from a cohort of patients with cancer infected with COVID-19 included in the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) were published by Petros Grivas, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Annals of Oncology. Authors identified factors associated with a more severe viral infection among...
Brian M. Slomovitz, MD, of Florida International University, describes how emphasizing diversity and shifting away from clinical trials at universities helped The GOG Foundation, Inc., increase patient accrual by 50% in 2020 (ID # 10215).
Although some studies show that patients with cancer have a greater risk of health complications from COVID-19, a new study has found that recent chemotherapy or immunotherapy for gynecologic cancer does not raise the risk of hospitalization or death due to COVID-19. The study results were...
A survey of more than 6,500 U.S. patients with blood cancer and survivors revealed that only half are very likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine, while one in three is either unlikely or unsure about it. The nationwide survey was a collaboration between The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), Boston...
As of this writing, no drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of COVID-19, although several have received emergency use authorization and many others are being used off-label during the pandemic. In addition to searching for novel therapies, David...
A new study found that more than half (56.4%) of cancer survivors in the United States reported having additional underlying medical conditions associated with severe COVID-19 illness.1 The report, appearing in JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggests that the prevalence of...
Ana Maria Lopez, MD, Professor and Vice Chair of Medical Oncology and Chief of Cancer Services for the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Jefferson Health New Jersey, commented on Dr. Reid’s presentation. “Dr. Reid presented a report about a robust cancer program that addresses the needs of rural...
Various studies at institutions in the United States and abroad have shown a substantial decline in cancer screening rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that fewer cancers will be detected by screening and when they do manifest, they will be at more advanced stages. Indeed,...
Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, of Mount Sinai Medical Center, invites his colleagues to enroll their patients in a large prospective study, for which he serves as Principal Investigator. The study is searching for solutions for treating patients with lung cancer who also have the coronavirus, because so many experience an aggressive course of infection.
David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, of the University of Pennsylvania, talks about his research efforts to find an already-approved drug that could treat his orphan disease—multicentric Castleman disease—and how that methodology may be applied to the coronavirus and the cytokine storm it can cause (Symposium 5).
When the COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person medical checkups last year, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center offered video visits for the first time for long-term follow-up appointments for childhood cancer survivors. Due to the pandemic, virtual visits were adopted...
Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, of the University of Milan and Istituto Europeo Oncologico, talks about designing public health measures focused on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality for cancer patients, defining treatment and vaccine priorities, and creating a model to assess the impact of control measures (Symposium 6).
Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and President of the American Association for Cancer Research, talks about why the meeting was held, how the coronavirus has affected cancer care and will impact long-term survivorship, as well as health-care disparities and changes to clinical trials.
Patients with lymphoma hospitalized for severe COVID-19 infection were at higher risk for prolonged hospital stay and death if they were treated with B-cell–depleting therapies (eg, rituximab, obinutuzumab) within the previous 12 months. The risk of persistent COVID-19 infection was also higher in...
In 2020, ASCO established the Steering Group on Cancer Care Delivery and Research in a Post-Pandemic Environment to evaluate the changes made in oncology care delivery, clinical research, and regulatory oversight in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to make recommendations on how to...
On February 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the third vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19. The EUA allows the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to be distributed in the United States for use in individuals 18 years of age and older. The FDA...
When advising the younger members of our medical community on career decisions, I always list “access to the best mentorship” as the most important priority. By the time we hit residency, we have all proven ourselves able to extract from a book or a journal the facts essential to the practice of...
COVID-19 has caused 475,000 deaths in America, disproportionately among communities of color, poverty, immigrants, and older age. It has exposed a variety of inequities within our health-care system. However, the patients at greatest risk of death from COVID-19 are those with cancer. While 1.8% of...
The ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been felt in every area of health care. In our medical specialty, oncology, clinical trials of new treatments were upended by COVID-19. In the early months of the pandemic, widespread interruptions in trial enrollment prevented some patients...
On February 22, President Joseph R. Biden issued remarks to proclaim that over 500,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19 infection. He and Vice President Kamala Harris held a moment of silence and ordered flags be lowered to half-mast at federal buildings for the next 5 days to honor those who...
A new study published by Corinne Leach, MPH, MS, PhD, and colleagues in the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology reported that early in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, one-third of cancer survivors worried about treatment and cancer care disruptions. Using a mixed-methods approach,...
Toni K. Choueiri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the challenges of delivering optimal cancer treatments in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Focusing on systemic therapies, he reviews prognostic factors in people with cancer and COVID-19 (Symposium 9).
In the midst of growing concerns that patients with cancer have limited access to the COVID-19 vaccines, the Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), the advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, issued a joint letter to every...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Breakthrough Therapy designation to asciminib for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML); a Breakthrough Device designation to an assay designed to help select patients with cachexia for treatment with an investigational therapeutic; and an...
During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, several elective surgeries for renal cell carcinoma were delayed, with an unknown impact on outcomes for patients. In a retrospective study, researchers from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey explored the impact of surgical delays for these patients...
It may be possible to exploit T cells from healthy volunteers who have recovered from COVID-19 as a treatment for this viral infection. Researchers at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine have designed an off-the-shelf COVID virus–specific T-cell product (called...
HERO-TOGETHER is an opportunity for people working in health care who receive a COVID-19 vaccine to help the public understand how people fare after vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic is a once-in-a-generation challenge that health-care providers everywhere have worked together to face. On the...
In an analysis from the COVID-19 Impact Survey reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Islam et al found that U.S. adult cancer survivors were more likely to report mental health–related symptoms vs adults without cancer during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Study Details Data for the analysis ...
On February 4, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the scheduling of a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee to discuss the request for emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine from Janssen Biotech Inc. Additionally, Acting...
B-cell–depleting immunotherapy may cause B-cell aplasia and impair the body’s immune response. A retrospective, multicentric French study of patients with lymphoma and persistent COVID-19 infection has found that those treated with B-cell–depleting therapies within the previous 12 months had nearly ...
Due to concerns that patients with cancer may be at higher risk for contracting the coronavirus—and may have more severe complications if infected—during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and clinical practices have changed protocols to routine cancer care to reduce patients’ exposure to the virus....
Administering colorectal cancer screening kits through a socially distant drive-by flu vaccination clinic increased access to colorectal cancer screening among Black Americans, according to results presented by Washington et al at the AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer (Abstract S02-04)....
A recent study has found that more than half (56.4%) of cancer survivors in the United States reported having additional underlying medical conditions associated with severe COVID-19 illness. The report, published by Jiang et al in JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggested that...
More than a year since the new coronavirus crisis began, its impact on cancer care has been stark, with “50% of governments (having) cancer services partially or completely disrupted because of the pandemic,” said André Ilbawi, MD, of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Department of...
In a population-based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Spencer et al found that mean weekly radiotherapy courses for cancer and attendance for receipt of fractions declined significantly during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in England. However, use of hypofractionated radiotherapy...
Molecular profiling allows clinicians to identify the molecular and genetic signatures that help to deliver treatments that are highly specific to a tumor. This tool has made possible a number of advances in the past year that are improving care for patients with gastrointestinal cancers. In...
On February 27, 2020, the Journal of Thoracic Oncology published a case study that described two patients from Wuhan, China, who had recently underwent lung lobectomies for adenocarcinoma and were retrospectively found to have had COVID-19 at the time of surgery. Eleven months later, the lung...
Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, tobacco use remains a serious public health threat. In addition to tobacco-related death and disease, smoking also increases the risk of the most severe impacts of COVID-19. The American Lung Association has released its 19th annual “State of Tobacco Control”...
To mark World Cancer Day on February 4, the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) will give voice to and say thank you to the nurses, doctors, researchers, volunteers, advocates, and other caregivers in oncology from around the world, as well as government agencies, who have worked through...
A study published by Wang et al in JTO Clinical and Research Reports compared surgeries performed at one Chinese hospital in 2019 with a similar date range during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers found that routine thoracic surgery and invasive examinations were performed safely during the...
Patients with inactive cancer who are not currently undergoing treatment also face a significantly higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19, according to a new study published by Sun et al in JNCI Cancer Spectrum. The findings underscore the importance of COVID-19 mitigation, like social...
In November, ASCO announced that Julie R. Gralow, MD, FACP, FASCO, will succeed Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Society. Dr. Gralow will begin her new position on February 15, 2021. Dr. Gralow’s long relationship with ASCO dates back to 1995, when...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN) has released new guidance on vaccinating people with cancer against COVID-19. The nonprofit alliance of leading cancer centers created an NCCN COVID-19 Vaccine Committee that includes hematology and oncology experts with particular expertise in...
Researchers have documented a substantial decline in cancer and precancer diagnoses at the Northeast's largest health-care system (Massachusetts General Brigham) during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic due to a drop in the number of cancer screening tests performed. These findings were...