Clifford A. Hudis, MD, ASCO Chief Executive Officer, talks about extending the reach and impact of ASCO by partnering with patients who play a key role in advancing science through clinical trial participation. With near-record numbers of registered attendees, the 2023 Annual Meeting fostered new connections and plans for collaborations.
Allison Betof Warner, MD, PhD, of Stanford University Medical Center, and Adnan Khattak, MBBS, FRACP, PhD, of Australia’s Hollywood Private Hospital & Edith Cowan University, discuss the use of the mRNA-4157 vaccine in combination with pembrolizumab as adjuvant therapy for resected high-risk melanoma, which prolonged distant metastasis–free survival compared with pembrolizumab alone. These results provide further evidence that a personalized neoantigen approach is potentially beneficial (Abstract LBA9503).
Tycel J. Phillips, MD, and Alex F. Herrera, MD, both of the City of Hope National Medical Center, discuss results from the SWOG S1826 study, which showed that nivolumab and AVD (doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine) improved progression-free survival vs brentuximab vedotin plus AVD in patients with advanced-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma. Longer follow-up is needed to assess overall survival and patient-reported outcomes. This trial may be a key step toward harmonizing the pediatric and adult treatment of advanced-stage disease (LBA4).
Omid Hamid, MD, of The Angeles Clinic & Research Institute, discusses study findings on fianlimab plus cemiplimab-rwlc, which showed clinical activity in patients with advanced melanoma, comparing favorably with other approved combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the same clinical setting. This is the first indication that dual LAG-3 blockade may produce a high level of activity with significant overall response rate after adjuvant anti–PD-1 treatment. A phase III trial of this regimen in treatment-naive patients with advanced melanoma is ongoing (Abstract 9501).
Arlene O. Siefker-Radtke, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the combination of erdafitinib and cetrelimab, which demonstrated clinically meaningful activity and was well tolerated in cisplatin-ineligible patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma and fibroblast growth factor receptor alterations (Abstract 4504).
Carmen E. Guerra, MD, MSCE, of the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center, discusses three key abstracts presented at ASCO: strategies to increase accrual of underrepresented populations in Alliance NCTN trials, how patient-clinician education can strengthen partnerships and improve diversity in breast and lung cancer trials, and mediators of racial and ethnic inequities in clinical trial participation among U.S. patients with cancer from 2011 to 2022 (Abstracts 6509, 6510, 6511).
