Jennifer A. Ligibel, MD, on Early Breast Cancer and Weight Loss: Results From the BWEL Trial
2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
Jennifer A. Ligibel, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses a telephone-based weight loss intervention that induced clinically meaningful weight loss in patients with breast cancer who had overweight and obesity, across demographic and tumor factors. Additional tailoring of the intervention may possibly enhance weight loss in Black and younger patients as well (Abstract 12001).
The ASCO Post Staff
Marie Plante, MD, of Canada’s Université Laval and the CHUQ Hotel Dieu de Québec, discusses phase III results from a study that compared radical hysterectomy and pelvic node dissection vs simple hysterectomy and pelvic node dissection in patients with low-risk early-stage cervical cancer. The pelvic recurrence rate at 3 years in the women who underwent simple hysterectomy is not inferior to those who had radical hysterectomy. In addition, fewer surgical complications and better quality of life were observed with simple hysterectomy (LBA5511).
The ASCO Post Staff
Shailender Bhatia, MD, of the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, discusses phase I/II results on the efficacy of nivolumab with or without ipilimumab in patients with recurrent or metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma. The study found that, for this rare and aggressive skin cancer, nivolumab showed clinical activity in advanced disease. However, these results from CheckMate 358 do not suggest an additional benefit with ipilimumab added to nivolumab (Abstract 9506).
The ASCO Post Staff
Bobbie J. Rimel, MD, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Isabelle L. Ray-Coquard, MD, PhD, of Centre Léon Bérard and the University Claude Bernard Lyon Est, discuss findings from the COLIBRI trial, which showed that, for patients with cervical squamous cell carcinoma, neoadjuvant nivolumab plus ipilimumab is safe and orchestrates de novo immune responses. The 82.5% complete response rate for primary tumors 6 months after standard chemoradiation therapy suggests favorable clinical outcomes (Abstract 5501).
The ASCO Post Staff
Paula Aristizabal, MD, MAS, of the University of California, San Diego, and Rady Children’s Hospital, talks about using a health systems strengthening approach to improve leukemia care and survival in a public Mexican hospital in the region of the border between the United States and Mexico. The demonstrated increase in overall survival across a decade after implementation of the program seems to validate the use of such models, not only to improve clinical outcomes, but also to build sustainable hospital capacity, financially and organizationally (Abstract 1502).
The ASCO Post Staff
Rami Manochakian, MD, of Mayo Clinic Florida, offers his perspective on the new phase III findings on osimertinib, a third-generation, central nervous system EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, which demonstrated an unprecedented overall survival benefit for patients with EGFR-mutated, stage IB–IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after complete tumor resection, with or without adjuvant chemotherapy (Abstract LBA3).
