Kamal Chamoun, MD, of University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, discusses how better insurance coverage determines not only the ability of patients with multiple myeloma to afford high-priced oral medications, but their survival of the disease (Abstract LBA107).
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).
Panagiotis A. Konstantinopoulos, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses his phase II study on the response to avelumab in microsatellite-stable and -instable recurrent or persistent endometrial cancer with a polymerase epsilon mutation (Abstract 5502).
Hirotsugu Kenmotsu, MD, of Shizuoka Cancer Center, discusses the phase III JIPANG trial findings, which showed that pemetrexed plus cisplatin was not superior to vinorelbine plus cisplatin in terms of recurrence-free survival for patients with completely resected nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract 8501).
Gilberto Lopes, MD, MBA, of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami, offers commentary on phase III findings from the RELAY study, which showed that erlotinib plus ramucirumab led to superior progression-free survival in previously untreated patients with EGFR mutant–positive NSCLC (Abstract 9000).
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).
