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The much-anticipated SWOG S1505 trial has failed to show that one preoperative regimen is better than another in resectable pancreatic cancer.1 “Perioperative modified FOLFIRINOX and gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel appear to have similar efficacy, with acceptable safety and resectability rates,”...
In a single-institution retrospective study reported in JAMA Surgery, Perri et al found that first-line FOLFIRINOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin) was associated with a higher response rate and subsequent pancreatectomy vs gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel in patients with...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to relugolix for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer; Fast Track designation to a radioimmunotherapeutic treatment for marginal zone lymphoma; and Orphan Drug designation to a novel monoclonal antibody for...
According to an additional analysis from the POLO trial, safety of maintenance olaparib in patients with a germline BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 mutation and metastatic pancreatic cancer is consistent, irrespective of age. Patients aged ≥ 65 years derived long-term progression-free survival benefit and...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Fast Track designation to agents designed to treat colorectal and pancreatic cancers, in addition to lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma/Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia; accepted a new drug application for a treatment for relapsed or...
Patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had germline or somatic mutations in DNA repair genes had better clinical outcomes after platinum-based chemotherapy compared to patients without these mutations, according to results from a study published by Park et al in Clinical Cancer Research....
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...
Positive results from two cohorts of the Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) study provide real-world evidence to support recent clinical trial data that demonstrate a role for olaparib in the treatment of advanced prostate and pancreatic cancers with BRCA1/2-inactivating...
Over the past 2 weeks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to a treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML); Fast Track designations for agents in pancreatic cancer and pancreatic/nonpancreatic neuroendocrine tumors; approvals for companion diagnostic tests;...
A risk-prediction model that combined genetic and clinical factors with circulating biomarkers may help to identify people at a significantly higher-than-normal risk of developing pancreatic cancer, according to results of a study published by Peter Kraft, PhD, and colleagues in Cancer...
Aspirin may be associated with a reduction in the risk of developing several cancers of the digestive tract. The largest and most comprehensive analysis to date of the link between aspirin and digestive tract cancers, published by Bosetti et al in Annals of Oncology, found reductions in the risk of ...
I have been a radiologic technologist for 47 years, so after going to the bathroom one Sunday morning in October 2018 and finding my urine had suddenly turned dark, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t in any pain and did not have a urinary tract infection, which would explain the discoloration of...
Semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D, and its receptor, plexin B1) is broadly expressed in malignant tumors. Aside from other “normal functions” in tumors, SEMA4D influences the infiltration and distribution of leukocytes into the microenvironment, and its inhibition promotes functional immune infiltration....
A novel class of inhibitors may hold some promise for boosting responses to checkpoint inhibitors and for sensitizing poorly immunogenic tumors, such as pancreatic cancer, to immunotherapy. The drug targets semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D), a glycoprotein expressed on the cell membranes of many tumor types....
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of ASCO, called the 74% response rate to cisplatin/gemcitabine “remarkable.” “What’s impressive to me is the high response rate, as well as the progression-free and overall survival data—these data are...
In patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation, first-line therapy with cisplatin plus gemcitabine yielded high response rates and encouraging survival, according to Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who presented the findings...
Routine genetic counseling and multigene testing of patients with pancreatic cancer result in the detection of mutations that are actionable, not only for patients, but also for at-risk family members. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, the use of a systemized, automated referral system ...
Health-related quality of life was preserved during maintenance olaparib in patients with BRCA 1/2-positive pancreatic cancer, as evidenced by a low symptom burden over time.1 POLO investigators reported their findings in posters presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. Other...
This past January, the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium was held in San Francisco. More than 3,600 individuals attended and more than 900 abstracts and posters were presented. Among the highlights presented at the meeting and reported in the pages of The ASCO Post, several studies in...
Although bacteria are predominant in the gastrointestinal tract, they also reside on and in other parts of the body, including some unexpected places, such as malignant tumors. There are numerous reports of this phenomenon, but most have not identified a functional role for the microbes. In the...
In a retrospective study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Michael J. Pishvaian, MD, and colleagues found that overall survival was better in patients with pancreatic cancer with actionable molecular alterations who received matched therapies compared with those who received only unmatched therapies ...
In the Dutch phase III PREOPANC trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Versteijne et al found that preoperative chemoradiotherapy did not improve overall survival vs immediate surgery in patients with resectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer. Benefits of preoperative...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Talia Golan, MD, and colleagues identified geographic and ethnic heterogeneity of germline BRCA1/2 mutation prevalence among patients screened for entry into the phase III POLO trial, which examined the efficacy of olaparib maintenance...
In posters presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, POLO investigators reported that health-related quality of life was preserved during maintenance olaparib in patients with BRCA 1/2-positive pancreatic cancer, as evidenced by a low symptom burden over time.1 Other studies...
Routine genetic counseling and multigene testing of patients with pancreatic cancer result in the detection of mutations that are actionable, not only for patients, but also for at-risk family members. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the use of a systemized, automated referral system that does ...
Andrea Wang-Gillam, MD, PhD, Clinical Director of the GI Oncology Program and Director of Developmental Therapeutics at Washington University in St. Louis, was the invited discussant of SEQUOIA and HALO 109-301. She tried to make sense of the two negative studies of pegylated agents in advanced...
Two novel treatments once thought to hold promise in the treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer have not proved to be effective in phase III trials, investigators reported at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. When combined with standard chemotherapy, a pegylated form of human...
Luis I. Ruffolo, MD, of the University of Rochester, discusses preclinical studies showing that semaphorin 4D blockade may sensitize pancreatic tumors to chemoimmunotherapy combinations (Abstract 26).
Danielle S. Bitterman, MD, of the Harvard University Radiation Oncology Program and Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses an analysis of genomic and clinical data from 97 patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma with circulating tumor DNA. Mutations were most frequently detected in patients with locally advanced and metastatic disease (Abstract 753).
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of ASCO, who is also a gastrointestinal oncologist, called the 74% response rate to cisplatin/gemcitabine “remarkable.” “What’s impressive to me is the high response rate, as well as the progression-free ...
As first-line treatment of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation, cisplatin plus gemcitabine yielded high response rates and encouraging survival, establishing this doublet as a standard approach in this subset of patients, according to Eileen M....
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses phase II trial findings showing that cisplatin and gemcitabine, with or without veliparib, exceeded a prespecified response rate for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation (Abstract 639).
In a study presented by Picozzi et al at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, researchers found that even as drug costs increased over the past decade, total inflation-adjusted pancreatic cancer care expenses declined, as did costs related to quality of life (Abstract 773). Health...
On December 27, 2019, the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib was approved for the maintenance treatment of adult patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA-mutated metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma, as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration...
Researchers have discovered detailed new genetic information about the subtypes of pancreatic cancer. A better understanding of the disease groups may lead to new treatment options and improved clinical outcomes for this lethal disease, Chan-Seng-Yue et al reported in Nature Genetics. The study...
On December 27, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olaparib (Lynparza) as a maintenance treatment for adult patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA-mutated metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma as detected by an FDA-approved test whose disease has not ...
Glioblastoma multiforme, colorectal cancer, and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma represent some of the most difficult-to-treat cancers and collectively cause more than 114,000 deaths each year in the United States. A trio of recently published basic research studies in these cancers have found...
When the CXCR4 inhibitor BL-8040 was combined with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy in the second-line setting, the regimen showed promising antitumor activity in patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. These findings were...
The ESMO Congress continues to grow as a pivotal platform for research in clinical oncology. At the ESMO Congress 2019, important findings were showcased in more than 2,200 studies, including 93 late-breaking abstracts. The ASCO Post summarized much of that news in separate articles over several...
Advances in systemic therapy and supportive care, as well as ongoing improvements in surgical techniques, have led to improved survival for many patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. We have observed increased survival with FOLFIRINOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil, irinotecan,...
The incidence and mortality rates of pancreatic cancer have increased in 195 countries and territories over a 27-year period, according to a systematic analysis performed within the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 and published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The study is the...
In a phase Ib/II pilot study reported in JAMA Oncology, Jameson et al found that treatment with nab-paclitaxel, gemcitabine, and cisplatin was active in patients with previously untreated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Study Details In the study, 25 patients were enrolled between...
A study investigating the utilization of hospice care among racial/ethnic minority patients following treatment for pancreatic cancer has found that African American and Hispanic patients who underwent surgical removal of the pancreas were less likely than white patients to use hospice services at...
New results from ASCO’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) Study demonstrated that single-agent palbociclib has no meaningful clinical activity in patients with CDKN2A-mutated or -deleted advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma. The results, based on data...
Induction chemotherapy with nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine or sequential FOLFIRINOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan) followed by surgical exploration induced high conversion rates in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer, and conversion was associated with...
Volker Kunzmann, MD, of the University of Würzburg/Comprehensive Cancer Center Mainfranken, discusses the final results of a phase II multicenter trial on the conversion rate in locally advanced pancreatic cancer after nab-paclitaxel/gemcitabine- or FOLFIRINOX-based induction chemotherapy (Abstract 671O).
The deadly nature of most pancreatic tumors is well known, with less than 10% of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma estimated to survive 5 years after diagnosis. Recent molecular analyses of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma have shown that a patient’s prognosis changes depending on the...
A new clinical guideline from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) provides recommendations on the use of radiation therapy to treat patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, including when radiation treatments are appropriate, as well as the optimal dosing, timing, and...
New results from ASCO’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) study have demonstrated that single-agent palbociclib has no meaningful clinical activity in patients with CDKN2A-mutated or -deleted advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma. These findings were...
Researchers have decoded a chain of molecules that are critical for the growth and survival of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. They say their findings, published by Murakami et al in Developmental Cell, suggest that inhibiting the YAP biologic network may effectively regress early-stage...