Kamal Chamoun, MD, on Multiple Myeloma: Insurance Status and Survival
2019 ASCO Annual Meeting
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).
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).
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
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).
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah Health Care, and Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, discuss phase III study findings on outcomes with combination therapy for intermediate/poor-risk and sarcomatoid subgroups of renal cell carcinoma (Abstract 4500).
Joseph A. Sparano, MD, of the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein Cancer Center, discusses how clinical risk stratification provides additional prognostic information to the 21-gene recurrence score and may be used to identify premenopausal women for more effective antiestrogen therapy (Abstract 503).