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Landmark changes in the treatment of genitourinary cancers have occurred over the past year, as summarized in this year’s Genitourinary Oncology Almanac from The ASCO Post. Starting with our area of focus, metastatic renal cell carcinoma, the saga continues with two more positive phase III trials...
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment for many advanced cancers, but short-term clinical trials and small observational studies have linked the medications with various side effects, most commonly involving the skin. A more comprehensive, population-level analysis now provides a...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued regulatory decisions related to treatments for urothelial cancer, cervical cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, solid tumors, and colorectal cancer. Acceptance of Two Supplemental Biologics License Applications for Enfortumab Vedotin-ejfv in...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Nancy Y. Lee, MD, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Head and Neck 100 trial showed no improvement in progression-free survival with the addition of the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab to chemoradiotherapy in patients with previously untreated locally advanced...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved nivolumab (Opdivo) in combination with fluoropyrimidine- and platinum-containing chemotherapy for advanced or metastatic gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma. CheckMate 649 The efficacy of the...
Georgina V. Long, MD, PhD, of the Melanoma Institute Australia, University of Sydney, discusses results of the CheckMate 915 trial, which may reinforce nivolumab as an adjuvant standard of care in patients with stage IIIB–D/IV melanoma, with or without complete lymphadenectomy (Abstract CT004).
Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the challenges in developing CAR T-cell therapy, as well as the progress being made, such as creating hybrid CAR and T-cell receptors that should enable T cells to recognize much lower levels of antigens. The field, he says, is poised to take on a range of solid tumors to extend the successes in hematologic malignancies.
In an analysis from the phase III KEYNOTE-177 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Thierry André, MD, and colleagues found that pembrolizumab was associated with clinically meaningful improvements in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) compared with chemotherapy in the first-line treatment of...
Charlotte E. Ariyan, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses improved outcomes with metastasectomy in the setting of checkpoint inhibitors, with the removal of residual disease and “escape” lesions. Surgical outcomes may also be better than targeted treatments, although long-term data and biomarkers are needed to confirm these findings.
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Metzger et al found that the integration of brentuximab vedotin into front-line treatment of pediatric patients with high-risk classical Hodgkin lymphoma resulted in avoidance of radiotherapy in many patients, as well as high rates of...
In an Israeli case-control study reported in a commentary in The Lancet Oncology, Waissengrin et al found that the short-term safety of the Pfizer BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was similar in patients with cancer receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors compared with healthy controls. Study Details...
Melinda L. Telli, MD, of Stanford Cancer Institute, discusses highlights of the new NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology®, including nonanthracycline, taxane-based regimens as preferred treatments for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer; newly approved combination therapies such as tucatinib plus capecitabine plus trastuzumab, margetuximab plus chemotherapy, and neratinib plus capecitabine; and recommendations for third line and beyond.
Richard S. Finn, MD, of UCLA Medical Center, discusses updated efficacy and safety data from the IMbrave150 trial of patients receiving atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sorafenib as first-line treatment for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (Abstract CT009).
Katelyn T. Byrne, PhD, of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the first in-depth analysis of the impact of selicrelumab, an anti-CD40 antibody, which was found to enrich T cells in pancreatic tumors, activate the immune system, and alter the tumor stroma (Abstract CT005).
Carey K. Anders, MD, of the Duke Cancer Center, discusses the ways in which treatment of brain metastases arising from solid tumors has moved into a new era of patient care and how the field may advance.
In the Chinese phase III RATIONALE 307 trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Wang et al found that tislelizumab plus chemotherapy significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs chemotherapy alone in the first-line treatment of patients with advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). As...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Ronan J. Kelly, MBBCh, MBA, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase III CheckMate 577 trial has shown a significant improvement in disease-free survival with adjuvant nivolumab vs placebo in patients with resected esophageal or...
Lower levels of cancer aneuploidy were associated with more favorable outcomes after immune checkpoint inhibition in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to data presented by Alessi et al at the virtual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2021...
Tumor mutational burden (TMB) was an accurate predictor of response to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors for female patients with melanoma, but not for male patients, according to results of a study presented by Sinha et al during the virtual American Association for Cancer Research...
On April 13, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to sacituzumab govitecan-hziy (Trodelvy) for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who previously received a platinum-containing chemotherapy and either a PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitor....
Brian I. Rini, MD, of Vanderbilt University, discusses the IMmotion151 trial results on overall survival and the association of gene expression and clinical outcomes with atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sunitinib in patients with locally advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma (Abstract CT188).
In a phase I trial reported at the virtual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2021 (Abstract CT018) and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Friedman et al found that oncolytic virotherapy with genetically engineered herpes simplex virus-1...
In a long-term follow-up of a National Cancer Institute (NCI) phase I trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nirali N. Shah, MD, and colleagues found that autologous CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy followed by allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can...
Patrick M. Forde, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, discusses results from the CheckMate 816 trial, which showed that adding nivolumab to chemotherapy as a neoadjuvant treatment for patients with resectable non–small cell lung cancer improved the pathologic complete response rate to 24%, compared to 2.2% with chemotherapy alone (Abstract CT003).
Rita Nanda, MD, of the University of Chicago, discusses the latest data on novel treatment strategies for triple-negative breast cancer, including immune checkpoint, PARP, and ATK inhibitors; antibody-drug conjugates; and targeting the androgen receptor.
Neoadjuvant nivolumab plus platinum-doublet chemotherapy significantly improved pathologic complete response (pCR) rates compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with resectable stage IB to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to results of the randomized, phase III, open-label...
Bispecific anti-CD19/CD20 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy was well tolerated and showed signs of clinical efficacy in patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell lymphoma, according to phase I clinical trial data presented by Ghafouri et al during week 1 of the virtual American...
Xin Gao, MD, a medical oncologist at Mass General Hospital and Instructor at Harvard Medical School, said these were important findings. “Analyses of patient-reported outcomes pertaining to health-related quality-of-life measures from CheckMate 9ER showed significantly improved quality-of-life...
Results of the CheckMate 9ER phase III trial showed significantly improved patient-reported outcomes in quality of life for first-line treatment with nivolumab plus cabozantinib compared with sunitinib for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.1 These findings are in line with the previously...
Invited discussant, Ursula Matulonis, MD, Chief of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, applauded the improved outcomes favoring lenvatinib/pembrolizumab in the confirmatory KEYNOTE-775 trial. “This represents the start of a new era in endometrial cancer...
In the first report from the pivotal phase III KEYNOTE-775/Study 309 trial, the combination of lenvatinib, a multikinase inhibitor of VEGFR1, VEGFR2, and VEGFR3 kinases, and pembrolizumab significantly improved multiple outcomes compared with standard single-agent chemotherapy in patients with...
In a single-institution study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Menjak et al found that a nurse-led telephone surveillance program for toxicity associated with ipilimumab in patients with metastatic melanoma led to earlier identification of toxicities and earlier intervention, with an apparent...
On April 7, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted regular approval to sacituzumab govitecan-hziy (Trodelvy) for patients with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who have received two or more prior systemic therapies, at least one of them...
For the treatment of breast cancer, antibody-drug conjugates are emerging as effective players that could impact all subtypes of this disease, according to Kevin Kalinsky, MD, MS, Director of the Glenn Family Breast Cancer at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Atlanta. In the...
In an analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Joseph Chao, MD, and colleagues found improved outcomes with pembrolizumab treatment in patients with microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer, irrespective of line of treatment. The findings suggest that...
In a letter to the editor published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Benoit Rousseau, MD, and colleagues presented evidence that high tumor mutational burden (TMB) alone is not sufficient to predict improved outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in patients with solid tumors. As...
Crystal S. Denlinger, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Mary F. Mulcahy, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, discuss biomarkers for determining treatment; immune checkpoint inhibitors; when to employ such treatments as platinum/fluoropyrimidine and fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki; and other second- or later-line therapies such as paclitaxel, ramucirumab, irinotecan-based regimens, and trifluridine/tipiracil.
In a single-institution retrospective analysis reported in the journal Blood, Moik et al found a substantial risk of thromboembolic events in patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for cancer, as well as an increased risk of mortality among those experiencing venous ...
Immunotherapy is not only significantly less effective in patients with liver cancer who previously had nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, but it actually may fuel tumor growth, according to a study published by Pfister et al in Nature. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis affects as many as 40 million people...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Patrinely et al found that chronic immune-related adverse events occurred in a high proportion of patients receiving adjuvant PD-1–targeted therapy for high-risk resected melanoma and frequently persisted even during prolonged follow-up....
On March 31, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved isatuximab-irfc (Sarclisa) in combination with carfilzomib and dexamethasone for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received one to three prior lines of therapy. IKEMA The efficacy...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Cobleigh et al, the phase III NRG Oncology/NSABP B-43 trial did not show a significant reduction in ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence with the addition of adjuvant concurrent trastuzumab to radiotherapy in women undergoing lumpectomy for...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by John Kuruvilla, MD, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-204 trial has shown significantly improved progression-free survival with pembrolizumab vs brentuximab vedotin in patients with relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma....
Adjuvant nivolumab is the first therapy to provide a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in disease-free survival in patients with resected esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancer, according to research presented by Guillaume Piessen, MD, PhD, and colleagues at...
On March 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved idecabtagene vicleucel (Abecma) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma after four or more prior lines of therapy, including an immunomodulatory agent, a proteasome inhibitor, and an anti-CD38 ...
The FIGHT study’s invited discussant, Rutika Mehta, MD, MPH, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, noted the emergence of new biomarkers and their targeted agents in HER2-negative gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer. Two important ones are FGFR2b—now...
Gastric cancer appears to have a new druggable target: fibroblast growth factor receptor 2b (FGFR2b). Targeting FGFR2b with bemarituzumab plus chemotherapy led to clinically meaningful and statistically significant improvements in progression-free survival, overall survival, and response rate in...
The overall survival benefit for PD-L1 CPS ≥ 5 tumors in CheckMate 649 is a game-changer. An oxaliplatin doublet plus chemotherapy should become a standard of care for these patients,” according to Elizabeth Smyth, MD, an oncology consultant at Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in...
As first-line treatment for advanced gastric cancer, nivolumab plus chemotherapy leads to significantly improved progression-free and overall survival over chemotherapy alone, investigators reported during a Presidential Symposium of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress ...
In 2007, sorafenib became the first approved systemic therapy for hepatocellular cancers and the first agent to improve overall survival in these patients.1 In a similar multikinase inhibitor strategy, lenvatinib was found to be noninferior to sorafenib in overall survival in the same patient...