Peter H. O’Donnell, MD, on Urothelial Cancer: First-Line Pembrolizumab in Cisplatin-Ineligible Patients
2021 ASCO Annual Meeting
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
Taiga Nishihori, MD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, discusses the outcome of a trial that explored maintenance therapy with ixazomib after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation in patients with high-risk multiple myeloma. Toxicities unrelated to the maintenance treatment forced the trial to close prematurely (Abstract 7003).
The ASCO Post Staff
Pasi A. Janne, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses study findings that show patritumab deruxtecan is effective in patients with EGFR-mutated and inhibitor-resistant non–small cell lung cancer. Dr. Janne also explains why targeting HER3, a mutation expressed in most EGFR-altered cancers, is a beneficial treatment approach (Abstract 9007).
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
Melinda L. Telli, MD, of Stanford University, discusses results of a phase II study on neoadjuvant talazoparib in germline BRCA1/2 mutation–positive, early HER2-negative breast cancer. In this setting, talazoparib monotherapy was active and yielded pathologic complete response rates comparable to those observed with combination anthracycline and taxane-based chemotherapy regimens (Abstract 505).
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).
