Hani M. Babiker, MD, on Tumor Treating Fields: A Different Approach to Therapy
2019 ASCO Annual Meeting
Hani M. Babiker, MD, of the The University of Arizona, discusses an emerging treatment that inhibits the mitotic spindle and disrupts tumor cell growth. The method has been approved by the FDA to treat some cancers and data show improved progression-free and overall survival (Abstracts 2055, 8551, e14658, e14668, e15653, e20069, e15766).
Rowan T. Chlebowski, MD, PhD, of the Los Angeles BioMedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, discusses study findings from nearly 2 decades of data, which showed a 21% reduction in deaths from breast cancer among postmenopausal women who adhered to a low-fat diet (Abstract 520).
Richard Pazdur, MD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence and Acting Director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, discusses the launch of Project Facilitate, a new pilot program to assist oncology health-care professionals in requesting access to unapproved therapies for patients with cancer.
Contact Information for Project Facilitate
Health-Care Professionals
Call: 1-240-402-0004
Patients and Their Families
Call: 301-796-3400
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).
Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, discusses 3-year outcomes from the first phase III study to test a non-conventional regimen for the neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer (Abstract 500).
Patricia A. Ganz, MD, of NRG Oncology and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, discusses the NRG/NSABP phase III findings, which showed that partial-breast irradiation was more convenient and resulted in less fatigue but slightly poorer cosmesis at 36 months in patients who did not receive chemotherapy (Abstract 508).