David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, on Chasing His Cure: A Physician Is Battling His Disease and Beating the Odds
ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program
David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, of the University of Pennsylvania, who trained as an oncologist, summarizes his opening lecture, a dramatic story of his battle against Castleman, a disease of the lymph nodes, his multiple near-death experiences, and the path that led him to develop a cooperative research effort making a difference for him and other patients with this idiopathic orphan illness.
The ASCO Post Staff
Michael S. Hofman, MBBS, of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discusses phase II results from the ANZUP 1603 trial, which showed that in men with docetaxel-treated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, LuPSMA was more active than cabazitaxel, with relatively fewer grade 3 and 4 adverse events and a more favorable PSA progression-free-survival (Abstract 5500).
The ASCO Post Staff
Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, of Emory University, discusses a 3-year update from the CheckMate 227, Part 1, trial, which showed that nivolumab plus ipilimumab continued to provide durable and long-term overall survival benefit vs platinum-doublet chemotherapy as first-line treatment for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract 9500).
The ASCO Post Staff
Nirav Niranjan Shah, MD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, explores whether autologous transplantation, in patients with relapsed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma who achieve only a PET/CT-positive partial remission, is appropriate in the era of CAR T-cell therapy (Abstract 8000).
The ASCO Post Staff
Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, summarizes four breast cancer studies: KATHERINE, on adjuvant trastuzumab vs trastuzumab in patients with residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer; KAITLIN, on trastuzumab emtansine and pertuzumab vs trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and taxane after anthracyclines as adjuvant therapy for high-risk HER2-positive early breast cancer; TRAIN-2, on neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without anthracyclines for HER2-positive disease; and PHERGain, on chemotherapy de-escalation using an FDG-PET/CT and pathologic response–adapted strategy in HER2-positive early breast cancer (Abstracts 500, 501, 502, and 503).
The ASCO Post Staff
Nikhil C. Munshi, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses initial results from the KarMMa tria, showing that idecabtagene vicleucel, a B-cell maturation antigen-targeted CAR T-cell therapy, demonstrated deep and durable responses in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. Efficacy and safety data support a favorable clinical benefit-risk profile across the target dose range (Abstract 8503).
