Alok A. Khorana, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, and Hedy L. Kindler, MD, of The University of Chicago, discuss phase III findings on olaparib as maintenance treatment following first-line platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer and a germline BRCA mutation (Abstract LBA4).
Amy J. Davidoff, PhD, of Yale University School of Public Health, discusses study findings on how expanding access to Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reduced racial disparities among patients with advanced cancer. Before the ACA was implemented in 2014, black patients with cancer were less likely than white patients to receive timely treatment, but in states that did not adopt Medicaid expansion, racial disparities persist (Abstract LBA1).
Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, of the Taussig Center Institute, Cleveland Clinic, discusses phase II findings on the efficacy and immunogenicity of SurVaxM, a novel cancer vaccine targeting the tumor-specific antigen survivin in newly diagnosed glioblastoma (Abstract 2016).
David J. Kwiatkowski, MD, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses an interim analysis and biomarker data from a multicenter study showing that 19% of patients with NSCLC had a major pathologic response to preoperative treatment with atezolizumab (Abstract 8503).
Michael A. Thompson, MD, PhD, of Advocate Aurora Health, discusses the implications of the revised diagnostic criteria for multiple myeloma, which removed patients at the highest risk of disease progression from the smoldering group, and a new model for smoldering disease that incorporates revised cutoffs for the previously used parameters (Abstract 8000).
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah Health Care, and Thomas W. Flaig, MD, of the University of Colorado, discuss phase II findings on a novel predictive biomarker of response to the two accepted neoadjuvant regimens for muscle-invasive bladder cancer: methotrexate/vinblastine/doxorubicin/cisplatin and gemcitabine/cisplatin (Abstract 4506).
