Ajay K. Nooka, MBBS, of Winship Cancer Center of Emory University, discusses phase II findings showing that, in patients with high-risk myeloma, maintenance therapy with carfilzomib, pomalidomide, and dexamethasone deepened responses. Measurable residual disease negativity was attained in 80% of patients.
Jonathan W. Riess, MD, of the University of California, Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, explores the findings of three important clinical trials in lung cancer treatment: whether to incorporate immune checkpoint inhibitors into the treatment of EGFR-mutated lung cancer, the importance of central nervous system activity in EGFR-mutant lung cancer, and new therapies for disease with EGFR exon 20 insertion.
Enrique Grande, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses new findings that show initial responses to induction therapy with atezolizumab plus platinum and gemcitabine did not seem to impact overall survival for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Cisplatin-treated patients appeared to derive a greater benefit with atezolizumab than did carboplatin-treated patients (Abstract 4503).
Sarah K. Tasian, MD, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, summarizes three studies presented at ASCO: genomic determinants of outcome in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a phase III trial of inotuzumab ozogamicin for high-risk B-cell ALL, and preliminary results from the first-in-child phase II trial of bosutinib in pediatric patients with newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia (Abstracts 10015, 10016, and 10017).
Rana R. McKay, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, and Toni K. Choueiri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, discuss results from the phase III CONTACT-03 study, showing that, for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), adding the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab to cabozantinib did not improve clinical outcomes compared with treatment with cabozantinib alone. In addition, higher toxicities were observed in the combination arm (Abstract LBA4500).
Georgina V. Long, MD, PhD, of Melanoma Institute Australia and The University of Sydney, discusses new data showing that patients with resected stage IIB/C melanoma who were treated with adjuvant nivolumab had prolonged recurrence-free survival compared with placebo across all biomarker subgroups. The baseline biomarkers most predictive of prolonged recurrence-free survival with nivolumab were high interferon gamma score, high tumor mutational burden, CD8 T-cell infiltration, and low C-reactive protein (Abstract 9504).
