Nicholas J. Short, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses early results from a phase II study which showed that combining ponatinib and blinatumomab in patients with Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia may prove to be an effective chemotherapy-free regimen that might reduce the need for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (Abstract 7001).
Ian Chau, MD, of Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, discusses first results of the CheckMate 648 study, which showed that nivolumab plus chemotherapy and nivolumab plus ipilimumab both demonstrated superior overall survival vs chemotherapy alone in patients with advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. These regimens may represent potential new first-line treatment options (Abstract 4001).
Bijal D. Shah, MD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses phase II results of the ZUMA-3 study, which evaluated brexucabtagene autoleucel (KTE-X19), an anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapy, in adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Abstract 7002).
Peter H. O’Donnell, MD, of The University of Chicago, discusses response and survival results from the phase II KEYNOTE-052 study, which showed that after up to 5 years of follow-up, pembrolizumab continued to elicit clinically meaningful, durable antitumor activity in cisplatin-ineligible patients with advanced urothelial cancer (Abstract 4508).
Jingxuan Zhao, MPH, of the American Cancer Society, discusses study findings that showed worse long-term survival among low-income patients with cancer who live in states that have not expanded Medicaid eligibility (Abstract 6512).