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Women younger than age 40 with advanced breast cancer often experience more aggressive disease and worse prognoses than their older counterparts. Knowing which types of genetic mutations these patients tend to have may inform treatment strategies and improve outcomes. In a recent study, researchers ...
Although women of African descent experience a higher incidence and mortality from triple-negative breast cancer than women of other races or ethnicities, research findings presented by Hall et al at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting showed that the magnitude of gene-specific risks of triple-negative...
A new study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society showed physician, practice, and patient characteristics were associated with oncologists’ ratings of the importance of patient health insurance and out-of-pocket costs for genomic testing in treatment decisions. The findings are being...
New findings from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center published by Shukla et al in Nature Communications reported the results of using a comprehensive sequencing approach on 114 pediatric, adolescent, and young adult patients with solid tumors. The researchers found that their...
Matthew L. Meyerson, MD, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses study findings that suggest the variation in frequency of EGFR and KRAS mutations in lung cancer may be associated with genetic ancestry in patients from Latin America. The results indicate it may be possible to identify germline alleles underpinning this link. Finding a germline locus or loci may impact the development of lung cancers with these mutations and may improve lung cancer prevention and screening for populations of Latin American origin, as well as others.
The first bladder cancer drug targeting a cancer-driving gene mutation has been used relatively little despite its clear efficacy in a clinical trial, suggests a report published as a research letter by Nimgaonkar et al in JAMA Oncology. Researchers analyzed a large, nationwide database of cancer...
The first-in-human, first-in-class trial of the next-generation PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase) 1–selective inhibitor AZD5305 suggests this drug may be a welcome advance over its U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved predecessors in the treatment of solid tumors with alterations in...
Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses early detection as the key to reducing cancer mortality and the lack of tests for many malignancies. Liquid biopsies have the potential to screen for various tumor types, albeit with varying levels of sensitivity. Dr. Papadopoulos discusses his research on such blood tests, following patients prospectively to find the best combination of genetic and epigenetic biomarkers to increase sensitivity (Abstract PL02).
In a single-institution case series reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Terrero et al found that the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab was active in patients with chemotherapy-refractory metastatic pancreatic or biliary cancer with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD)...
Christine A. Iacobuzio-Donahue, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses her research on the evolutionary features of advanced stage pancreatic cancers and the insights that may be used to help improve patient outcomes (Abstract PL05).
The human epidermal growth factor (HER) family of receptors are a well-established therapeutic target. Indeed, seminal studies conducted nearly 2 decades ago identified a key association between activating mutations in the kinase domain of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, also known as...
In a phase II trial (DESTINY-Lung01) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Bob T. Li, MD, PhD, MPH, of the Thoracic Oncology and Early Drug Development Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues found that fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Zeng et al found that germline pathogenic variants in 23 hereditary cancer genes were associated with an increased risk of cancers not previously associated with the variants, as well as an increased risk of multiple non-neoplastic diseases. Study Details The...
Charles L. Sawyers, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the battle against treatment resistance and how to overcome it, as well as the power of observational clinical data in precision oncology, derived largely from his experience with Project GENIE, and the role of genetic ancestry (Abstract PL02).
Using whole-genome sequencing to contrast genomic alterations in patients with stable Barrett’s esophagus compared to patients whose Barrett’s progressed to esophageal adenocarcinoma, Paulson et al reported that DNA changes presaging esophageal cancer can be spotted years before cancer develops....
Priscilla K. Brastianos, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, talks about her efforts to better understand how brain metastases evolve genomically and to test such agents as abemaciclib, paxalisib, and entrectinib, which may stop their growth. Palbociclib, a CDK inhibitor, has already shown potential benefit. A national cooperative group trial is underway in multiple centers to identify novel treatments for patients with brain metastases, who typically have a poor prognosis (Abstract SY38).
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses results from the PETRA study, a first-in-class, first-in-human trial of the next-generation PARP1-selective inhibitor AZD5305 in patients with BRCA1/2, PALB2, or RAD51C/D mutations in advanced or metastatic ovarian cancer, HER2-negative breast cancer, pancreatic, or prostate cancer. Target engagement was demonstrated across all dose levels, and antitumor activity was observed in selected tumor and molecular subtypes.
In a Japanese case-control study reported in JAMA Oncology, Momozawa et al found that germline BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants were associated with an increased risk of biliary tract, esophageal, and gastric cancers, in addition to an increased risk of cancers that have well-established associations...
This is Part 3 of Updates in Prostate Cancer, a four-part video roundtable series. Scroll down to watch the other videos from this Roundtable. In this video, Drs. Celestia (Tia) Higano, Julie Graff, and Neal Shore discuss the first-line therapy for BRCA2-mutated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The patient is a 69-year-old man with new castration-resistant prostate cancer who was previously treated with androgen-deprivation therapy plus docetaxel for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer and has a known BRCA2 mutation. The faculty discuss their choices for first-line therapy for this patient, reviewing the current NCCN recommendations, the role of PARP inhibitors, and recent data from the PROpel and MAGNITUDE trials.
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Heesterbeek et al found that results of noninvasive prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidy screening using cell-free DNA derived from maternal plasma raised suspicion of maternal malignancy in a very small proportion of pregnant women....
Cheryl L. Willman, MD, of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the profound cancer health disparities among Native Americans, exacerbated by low rates of screening and limited access to care. Dr. Willman is heading an effort to promote community engagement in comprehensive genomic sequencing with the hope that researchers will discover novel mutations and genome-wide mutational signatures that can ultimately be translated to improved screening and therapy in this population (Abstract PL03).
Jia Luo, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the emerging class of cancer therapies for allele-specific KRAS inhibitors and the importance of their distinct clinical, genomic, and immunologic features. Because KRAS G12D–mutated non–small cell lung cancer is associated with worse responses to immunotherapy, Dr. Luo believes drug development will need to take these differences into account (Abstract 4117).
John Mascarenhas, MD, Director of the Adult Leukemia Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, New York, commented on the implications of the FIGHT-203 trial, which evaluated pemigatinib in myeloid or lymphoid neoplasms. Pemigatinib is an oral small-molecule receptor tyrosine kinase...
In patients with myeloid or lymphoid neoplasms with FGFR1 rearrangements, pemigatinib produced high and durable response rates, despite patients’ extensive use of prior treatments or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), according to the early results of the multicenter phase II FIGHT-203 ...
In a phase II trial (arm E of the NCI-COG Pediatric MATCH trial) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Eckstein et al found that the MEK inhibitor selumetinib showed little activity in pediatric and young adult patients with tumors harboring activating MAPK pathway mutations or fusions. As...
Following an analysis of over 12,000 human genes, research from Yale Cancer Center indicates there is cancer-relevant importance in a much larger proportion of human genes than current cancer research models suggest. Much of cancer biology research focuses on a few dozen well-studied genes called...
In a single-center study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Ceballos et al identified turnaround times for request and receipt of melanoma BRAF testing results. They also analyzed factors in differences in turnaround times and effects on time to initiation of treatment. The study included 66...
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have developed a new bioinformatics platform that predicts optimal treatment combinations for a given group of patients based on co-occurring tumor alterations. In retrospective validation studies, the tool selected combinations that...
Patricia M. LoRusso, DO, of the Yale University School of Medicine, discusses how patients may benefit in the coming decade from discoveries about agents that target KRAS, and how important the approval of sotorasib turned out to be, as well as other agents in the research pipeline. Dr. LoRusso also talks about the scientific advances in tackling inhibition (Abstract SY20).
A variant of the CTLA-4 gene associated with autoimmune disease was found to be more frequent in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who experienced an exceptionally high response to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy and a higher rate of immune-related side effects than in a comparable cohort of ...
“OlympiA is clearly a practice-changing trial, and olaparib should be offered to patients meeting the entry criteria for the study,” said Mark E. Robson, MD, Chief of the Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Dr. Robson was invited to discuss the findings of...
The OlympiA trial of adjuvant olaparib in patients with HER2-negative, high-risk early-stage breast cancer and BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations has now demonstrated a significant overall survival benefit, reducing the risk of death over placebo by 32% and yielding an absolute improvement of 3.8% at 3...
On April 5, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to alpelisib (Vijoice) for adult and pediatric patients aged 2 years and older with severe manifestations of PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum (PROS) who require systemic therapy. PROS encompasses a group of rare...
Alexander T. Pearson, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, commended the artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented, ultrasound-based platform for screening and staging of thyroid cancer. “In this study, Dr. Chan and colleagues processed high-resolution ultrasound...
An artificial intelligence (AI) ultrasound platform that incorporates multiple methods of machine learning can accurately predict thyroid malignancy as well as pathologic and genomic outcomes, according to data presented at the 2022 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium.1 Findings from...
In this video, Drs. Richard Stone, Courtney DiNardo, and Eunice Wang treatment options for primary refractory FLT3-ITD–positive acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The case is a 60-year-old man with a history of hypertension and hyperlipidemia who presents with fatigue. He is diagnosed with FLT3-ITD–positive AML and is enrolled in a clinical trial where he receives 7+3 (cytarabine/daunorubicin) and midostaurin; after achieving complete remission, his disease eventually recurs. The faculty discuss potential treatment options for this patient, such as FLAG-IDA-VEN and gilteritinib both alone and in combination.
In this video, Drs. Richard Stone, Courtney DiNardo, and Eunice Wang discuss the management of newly diagnosed older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The case is a 75-year-old woman with no past medical history who presents with fever and bone pain. She is diagnosed with AML, and next-generation sequencing reveals a mutation in IDH1, among others. The faculty discuss the potential choices for induction therapy in older patients such as this, debating the merits of intensive chemotherapy vs lower-intensity options such as azacitidine/venetoclax and azacitidine/ivosidenib.
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Rebecca Kristeleit, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ARIEL4 trial has shown a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival with rucaparib vs chemotherapy in patients with relapsed ovarian cancer and deleterious BRCA1/2 mutations. Study...
Despite advances in treatment for pediatric patients, cancer remains the primary cause of disease-related mortality in children and adolescents. Data from the international clinical trial MAPPYACTS, which aims to define tumor molecular profiles in pediatric patients with recurrent/refractory...
The invited discussant of the CodeBreaK 100 data, E. Gabriela Chiorean, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Clinical Director of the Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology program at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, found the efficacy of ...
Promising activity in metastatic pancreatic cancer was shown by sotorasib, an inhibitor of the KRAS G12C mutation, in the phase I/II CodeBreaK 100 study presented by John H. Strickler, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, during the February ...
The ASCO Post invited Mandana Kamgar, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, LaBahn Pancreatic Cancer Program, Milwaukee, to comment on the KRYSTAL-1 trial. “The KRYSTAL-1 study in totality is a multiphase and multiarm ongoing study exploring the role of...
A disease control rate of 100% was achieved in gastrointestinal cancers treated with the KRAS G12C inhibitor adagrasib in the phase II KRYSTAL-1 trial, presented at the 2022 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 The population included primarily those with pancreatic cancer; other noncolorectal ...
I have always been interested in volunteering my services and helping others, so when I got an e-mail asking if I’d like to participate in the WISDOM (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk) study (www.thewisdomstudy.org) I signed on. The study plans to enroll 100,000 diverse women...
Scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified variants in two genes that may be associated with accelerated aging in childhood cancer survivors. Their research looked at the difference between the survivors’ biologic age and chronologic age. The study, published by Dong et...
Results of a biomarker analysis of the NRG Oncology NRG-GY004 trial were presented during the Society for Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. The analysis, which occurred as part of a preplanned translational endpoint for the study, concluded that homologous recombination ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Delahunty et al, an Australian pilot study of a genetic testing program (TRACEBACK) for deceased patients with tubo-ovarian cancer was successful in identifying pathogenic variants in samples from the patients, informing family, and engaging family ...
The combination of the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor niraparib plus abiraterone acetate and prednisone as first-line therapy significantly improved radiographic progression-free survival vs abiraterone and placebo alone in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer...
Adding the PD-1 inhibitor toripalimab to chemotherapy significantly improved survival compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without EGFR/ALK mutations, according to research presented by Wang et al during the March 2022 session of the ASCO...
Sumanta K. Pal, MD, of City of Hope National Medical Center, discusses some key research developments in kidney cancer, including data on nivolumab and ipilimumab with or without CBM588 in metastatic renal cell carcinoma; intestinal microbiome associated with the development of grade 3 or 4 adverse events in patients with metastatic disease who have been treated with nivolumab plus ipilimumab and probiotic support; the link between TERT promoter mutations and clinical outcome with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for advanced urothelial cancer; mutations in the androgen receptor gene in patients with prostate cancer receiving novel androgen deprivation treatments; and findings on waning antibody titers in patients who have received COVID-19 vaccinations (Roundup of Abstracts 371, 561, 374, Posters 38 and 48).