William D. Tap, MD, on Soft-Tissue Sarcomas: ANNOUNCE Trial on Doxorubicin and Olaratumab
2019 ASCO Annual Meeting
William D. Tap, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses negative study findings on doxorubicin plus olaratumab vs doxorubicin plus placebo, which showed no difference in overall survival between the two treatments in patients with advanced soft-tissue sarcomas. The manufacturer is currently withdrawing olaratumab from the global market (Abstract LBA3).
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).
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).
Kamran A. Ahmed, MD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, reports on a trial in progress that is investigating whether treatment with atezolizumab plus hypofractionated radiation therapy will improve the objective response rate compared with atezolizumab alone in patients with recurrent, persistent, or metastatic cervical cancer (Abstract TPS5596).
Paul G. Richardson, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses findings from the phase III ICARIA-MM trial showing that isatuximab, pomalidomide, and low-dose dexamethasone significantly improved progression-free survival and overall response vs pomalidomide and dexamethasone (Abstract 8004).
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).
