Javier Sastre, MD, PhD, of Hospital Clinico San Carlos, discusses phase III findings on the assessment of circulating tumor cells as a prognostic factor and FOLFOXIRI plus bevacizumab combination outcomes for patients with poor-prognosis colorectal cancer (Abstract 3507).
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).
Toni K. Choueiri, MD, and Ziad Bakouny, MD, both of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discuss a retrospective review of genomically profiled patients with sarcomatoid/rhabdoid renal cell cancer who were found to have better outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibitors and to harbor mutations associated with poor prognosis (Abstract 4514).
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).
Matteo Lambertini, MD, PhD, of the University of Genova and Policlinico San Martino Hospital, and Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discuss findings from the SOPHIA trial on margetuximab plus chemotherapy vs trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer after prior anti-HER2 therapies (Abstract 1000).
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).
