Peter C. Black, MD, on Prostate Cancer Health-Care Disparities: Expert Perspective
2021 ASCO Annual Meeting
Peter C. Black, MD, of the Vancouver Prostate Centre, University of British Columbia, reviews three studies on early detection and treatment of Black patients with prostate cancer: a large-scale analysis of genomic profiling; the use of PSA screening; and integrating a patient-specific genomic classifier to improve risk classification and treatment recommendations for Black men (Abstracts 5003, 5004, and 5005).
The ASCO Post Staff
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).
The ASCO Post Staff
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).
The ASCO Post Staff
Debora S. Bruno, MD, of Seidman Cancer Center at Cleveland Medical Center, discusses study findings that show Black patients with advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer tend to be less likely to undergo biomarker testing or to be treated in clinical trials than White patients. Recommended broad-based testing, says Dr. Bruno, may help ensure equal access to quality care and clinical trials (Abstract 9005).
The ASCO Post Staff
Cathy Eng, MD, of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses two abstracts from a session she co-chaired: the phase II DEEPER trial, which explored the use of FOLFOXIRI plus cetuximab vs FOLFOXIRI plus bevacizumab as first-line treatment in metastatic colorectal cancer with RAS wild-type tumors; and the phase II FIRE-4.5 study, which investigated FOLFOXIRI plus either bevacizumab or cetuximab as first-line treatment of BRAF V600E–mutant advanced disease (Abstracts 3501 and 3502).
The ASCO Post Staff
Priya Rastogi, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh, discusses results from the NRG Oncology/NSABP B-42 trial, which evaluated the utility of the 70-gene MammaPrint assay in predicting the benefit of extended letrozole therapy in patients who had completed 5 years of adjuvant endocrine therapy (Abstract 502).