Joseph M. Unger, PhD, on the Impact of NCI-Sponsored Treatment Trials
ESMO Congress 2021
Joseph M. Unger, PhD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses findings from his study of the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Trials Network, which has conducted publicly funded cancer research for more than 50 years. The substantial gains in life years for patients with cancer, he says, supports the critical role of government-sponsored cancer research (Abstract 1503O).
The ASCO Post Staff
Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the Istituto Europeo Oncologico, discusses phase III results that showed improvements in progression-free and overall survival with a combination of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, compared with placebo and chemotherapy, for patients with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer. These benefits were seen regardless of PD-L1 expression and concomitant bevacizumab use, suggesting that pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, with or without bevacizumab, may be a new standard of care for this population (Abstract LBA2).
The ASCO Post Staff
Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, of the Institut Gustave Roussy, discusses phase III results from the PEACE-1 study, which showed that androgen-deprivation therapy plus docetaxel and abiraterone provided 2.5 years of additional time without radiographic disease progression or death and 1.5 additional years of survival in men with de novo high-volume metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer (Abstract LBA5).
The ASCO Post Staff
Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses results from the MONALEESA-2 trial, which showed that adding the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to first-line hormonal therapy prolongs survival by 1 year for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. As a result, he believes it should be considered the preferred treatment option (Abstract LBA17).
The ASCO Post Staff
Jenny F. Seligmann, MBChB, PhD, of the University of Leeds, discusses phase II findings that suggest adavosertib improved progression-free survival, compared with active monitoring, by inhibiting the WEE1 kinase in patients with RAS- and TP53-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer. In the trial, adavosertib’s activity tended to be even greater in left-sided tumors (Abstract 382O).
The ASCO Post Staff
Toni K. Choueiri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses patient-reported outcomes for quality of life in the KEYNOTE-564 study, which previously met its primary endpoint of disease-free survival with adjuvant pembrolizumab vs placebo following surgery for renal cell carcinoma (Abstract 653O).
