Evan T. Hall, MD, on Merkel Cell Carcinoma: Tuvusertib With or Without Avelumab
ASCO 2026
Evan T. Hall, MD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, discusses findings from the randomized phase II MATRiX trial, which evaluated the efficacy of the ATR inhibitor tuvusertib with or without avelumab in patients with anti–PD-(L)1–refractory Merkel cell carcinoma (Abstract LBA9514).
The ASCO Post Staff
Linda R. Mileshkin, MD, MBBS, FRACP, of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, shares results from the phase I/IIA BLUESTAR study on the safety and efficacy of puxitatug samrotecan, a B7-H4–directed topoisomerase I inhibitor antibody-drug conjugate, in patients with endometrial cancer or ovarian cancer (Abstract 5515).
Rami Manochakian, MD, FASCO, of Mayo Clinic Florida, summarizes an educational session at ASCO that reviewed the state of the field of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) treatment. After decades of limited treatment progress, advances are being seen in immunotherapies, radiation therapy, bispecific T-cell engagers, antibody-drug conjugates, and radionuclide therapies.
Jamie E. Chaft, MD, FASCO, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses findings from ECOG-ACRIN EA5142/ALCHEMIST, a phase III randomized trial that evaluated the efficacy of adjuvant nivolumab after standard-of-care adjuvant therapy in patients with resected lung adenocarcinoma without sensitizing EGFR and ALK alterations and squamous cell carcinoma (Abstract 8000).
The ASCO Post Staff
Veronica Diermayr, PhD, of EDDC and A*STAR, discusses the use of artificial intelligence (AI) driven strategy called H&E 2.0 in gastric and esophageal cancer. Researchers tested the feasibility of training deep-learning models on hematoxylin and eosin images of gastroesophageal carcinomas and their ability to predict EBC-129 antigen expression directly from these images. EBC-129 is an experimental antibody-drug conjugate that targets N256-glycosylated CEACAM5/6, which is highly expressed on solid tumors, including gastroesophageal cancers (Abstract 4018).
The ASCO Post Staff
Sanjay Popat, PhD, FRCP, of the Royal Marsden Hospital & Institute of Cancer Research, talks about the findings of the phase III AcceleRET-Lung study, which looked at the oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor pralsetinib as first-line therapy for patients with RET fusion–positive advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (Abstract 8504).