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.
Amer Methqal Zeidan, MBBS, MHS, of Yale University and Yale Cancer Center, discusses phase III findings on the first-in-class telomerase inhibitor imetelstat, which was given to patients with heavily transfusion-dependent non-del(5q) lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes that are resistant to erythropoiesis-stimulating agents. Imetelstat resulted in a significant and sustained red blood cell (RBC) transfusion independence in 40% of these heavily transfused patients. The response was also durable and accompanied by an impressive median hemoglobin rise of 3.6 g/dL, and seen in patients with and without ring sideroblasts. Importantly, reduced variant allele frequency was observed in the most commonly mutated myeloid genes which correlated with duration of transfusion independence and hemoglobin rise, therefore suggesting a disease-modifying potential of this agent (Abstract 7004).
Narjust Florez, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Ferdinandos Skoulidis, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discuss results of a biomarker subgroup analysis, showing that sotorasib demonstrated consistent clinical benefit vs docetaxel in all molecularly defined subgroups of patients with pretreated KRAS G12C–mutated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although no predictive biomarkers were confirmed, novel hypothesis-generating signals were observed (Abstract 9008).
Alicia K. Morgans, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Karim Fizazi, MD, of Institut Gustave Roussy, University of Paris-Saclay, discuss findings from the TALAPRO-2 study, which showed that talazoparib plus enzalutamide improved radiographic progression–free survival over standard-of-care enzalutamide as first-line treatment for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and HRR gene alterations. This regimen also delayed the time to deterioration in global health status and quality of life (Abstract 5004).
Muhit Özcan, MD, of Turkey’s Ankara University School of Medicine, discusses phase II findings from the waveLINE-004 study. It showed that the antibody-drug conjugate zilovertamab vedotin had clinically meaningful antitumor activity in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) who experienced disease progression after, or have been ineligible for, autologous stem cell transplantation and/or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (Abstract 7531).
Cathy Eng, MD, of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, and Lars Henrik Jensen, MD, PhD, of the Danish Colorectal Cancer Center South and the University Hospital of Southern Denmark, discuss phase III results from the Scandinavian NeoCol trial, which showed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy is not superior to standard upfront surgery in terms of disease-free and overall survival in patients with colon cancer, although there are certain circumstances when this approach may have more favorable outcomes (Abstract LBA3503).
