Zev A. Wainberg, MD, of the UCLA Medical Center, discusses the first subset analysis of how a combined positive score in gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancers related to the efficacy of pembrolizumab in PD-L1–positive disease (Abstract 427).
Peter R. Galle, MD, of the University Medical Center, Mainz, discusses patient-reported outcomes from this phase III study, which showed the combination of atezolizumab plus bevacizumab vs sorafenib is well tolerated and may represent a new standard of care in the first-line setting for unresectable liver cancer (Abstract 476).
Eyal Meiri, MD, of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southeastern Regional Medical Center, discusses his findings on heavily pretreated patients with colorectal cancer with high tumor mutational burden. Monotherapy with pembrolizumab showed antitumor activity, which merits further study to confirm efficacy (Abstract 133).
Brian M. Wolpin, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses a noninvasive blood test evaluating methylation of circulating free DNA. In his study, the blood test detected multiple gastrointestinal cancers at a sensitivity of approximately 81% and a prespecified specificity of > 99%. It also accurately localized the tissue of origin across more than 20 cancer types (Abstract 283).
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses phase II trial findings showing that cisplatin and gemcitabine, with or without veliparib, exceeded a prespecified response rate for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation (Abstract 639).
Van K. Morris, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the COBRA study, which is examining circulating tumor DNA and its ability to predict whether patients with resected stage IIA colon cancer may benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy (Abstract TPS261).
