Lakshmi Nayak, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, reviews two key abstracts on newly diagnosed primary central nervous system lymphoma and treatment with whole-brain radiotherapy, methotrexate, temozolomide, rituximab, procarbazine, vincristine, and cytarabine (Abstracts 2500 and 2501).
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).
Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, discusses data from a phase II study of pevonedistat plus azacitidine vs azacitidine alone in patients with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, or low-blast acute myeloid leukemia (Abstract 7506).
Scott Kopetz, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses phase III results of the BEACON CRC study, which confirmed that, compared with standard chemotherapy, encorafenib plus cetuximab with or without binimetinib improved overall survival and objective response rate in previously treated patients with BRAF V600E–mutated metastatic colorectal cancer (Abstract 4001).
Sarah A. Holstein, MD, PhD, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, discusses top myeloma abstracts from the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program: the ENDURANCE trial on carfilzomib, lenalidomide, dexamethasone, and bortezomib; the STaMINA study on transplantation strategies; a first-in-human study on the novel CELMoD agent CC-92480 plus dexamethasone; the CARTITUDE-1 trial on CAR T-cell therapy; and a phase I study of teclistamab (Abstracts LBA3, 8506, 8500, 8505, and 100).
Farhad Ravandi-Kashani, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses updates from a phase I dose-escalation study of AMG 330, a bispecific T-cell engager molecule. It showed early evidence of an acceptable safety profile, drug tolerability, and antileukemic activity, supporting further dose escalation in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (Abstract 7508).
