Thomas J. George, MD, on Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer: Total Neoadjuvant Therapy
2019 ASCO Annual Meeting
Thomas J. George, MD, of NRG Oncology and The University of Florida Health Cancer Center, discusses the initial phase II results from a clinical trial using total neoadjuvant therapy (including veliparib and chemoradiation treatment) for locally advanced rectal cancer (Abstract 3505).
Josep Tabernero, MD, PhD, of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, discusses phase III findings of the KEYNOTE-062 study showing that, for some patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer, pembrolizumab may improve survival and may be an effective alternative to chemotherapy, with fewer side effects (Abstract LBA4007).
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).
Jonathan E. Rosenberg, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses results from the phase III Alliance trial, which showed that adding bevacizumab to gemcitabine and cisplatin did not improve overall survival in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma, but did improve progression-free survival (Abstract 4503).
Toni K. Choueiri, MD, and Sarah Abou Alaiwi, MD, both of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discuss the association of polybromo-associated BAF-type mutations with overall survival in patients with different solid tumors treated with checkpoint inhibitors (Abstract 103).
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).