May 10, 2024 (View All Issues)
Two Studies Support Deintensification of Treatment for HPV-Associated Oropharyngeal Cancer
Two studies presented at the 2024 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium added support for the deintensification of radiotherapy in early-stage oropharyngeal squamous cell cancers associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV), a subtype typically more responsive to therapy compared to...
ASCO Survey Finds Oncologists’ Well-Being Worsened Over the Past Decade—but Steps Can Be Taken to Mitigate Burnout
A recent survey by ASCO measuring postpandemic burnout among oncologists in the United States shows that professional satisfaction and work-life balance have significantly deteriorated over the past decade, with 59% of respondents reporting one or more symptoms of burnout, compared with 34% in...
AI in Cancer Care: Embrace the Change
According to Google Chief Executive Officer Sunder Pichai, artificial intelligence (AI) is “the most profound technology humanity is working on—more profound than fire or electricity or anything that we’ve done in the past.” The impact of AI on health care and especially cancer care will not be ...
Bispecific Antibody Plus Chemotherapy Improves Survival in Patients With Gastric or Gastroesophageal Junction Cancer
Treatment with the first-in-class PD-1/CTLA-4 bispecific antibody cadonilimab plus XELOX (capecitabine, oxaliplatin) chemotherapy demonstrated a survival advantage for patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma as first-line treatment, regardless of PD-L1...
Selective Targeting of PARP1 in Early-Phase Study Shows Activity in Breast Cancer
Saruparib, a first-in-class PARP1-selective inhibitor, was reported to have favorable safety and anticancer activity in heavily pretreated patients with breast cancer harboring homologous recombination–repair (HRR) mutations, according to the results of the phase I/II PETRA study presented at the...
For Detection of Measurable Residual Disease in Ovarian Cancer, Are Two Methods Better Than One?
In patients with ovarian cancer, second-look surgery may find a role again. The evaluation of measurable residual disease (MRD) using second-look laparoscopy identified more women who had detectable MRD after front-line treatment than did circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), according to a study...
DUO-E Trial: Results Support New Treatment Options in Endometrial Cancer
New research findings have highlighted the importance of personalized treatment approaches with the monoclonal antibody durvalumab based on mismatch repair (MMR) status in newly diagnosed patients with advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer, according to data presented during the Society of...
KEYNOTE-756 Additional Findings: Pembrolizumab Shown to Be Beneficial Regardless of Age, Menopausal Status
In updated findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-756 trial, the addition of pembrolizumab to chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting improved the rates of pathologic complete response for patients with high-risk estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, regardless of their age or...
Bishoy Faltas, MD, Named Chief Research Officer of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine
Olivier Elemento, PhD, Director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine (EIPM) at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, recently announced that Bishoy M. Faltas, MD, has been named Chief Research Officer of EIPM effective immediately. EIPM is a large multidisciplinary institute that uses...
America’s Cancer Doctors Demand Action From Congress: Address Drug Shortages
Cancer doctors from across the United States are lending their voices to a new advocacy campaign to end drug shortages. Led by the Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), nearly 500 oncology professionals have signed an open letter to Congress and the administration highlighting the severe impact ...
New Policy Statement Addresses Social, Economic, and Environmental Factors Influencing Cancer Care, Outcomes
ASCO’s new policy statement highlights the need for formalized efforts to address health-related social needs and outlines ways to address social determinants of health (SDOH) in cancer care.
Social determinants are defined as conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, which...
Cell-Free DNA Blood-Based Test and Next-Generation Multitarget Stool DNA Test in Colorectal Cancer Screening
In two studies reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, investigators found that a cell-free DNA (cfDNA) blood-based test (ECLIPSE study)1 and a next-generation multitarget stool DNA test (BLUE-C study)2 both showed high sensitivity for colorectal cancer and high specificity for advanced...
Enfortumab Vedotin-ejfv Plus Pembrolizumab Improves Survival vs Platinum-Based Chemotherapy in Advanced Urothelial Cancer
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Thomas Powles, MD, Barts Cancer Institute Biomedical Research Centre, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, the phase III EV-302 trial has shown that the combination of the antibody–drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin-ejfv, which is...
Alectinib Approved as Adjuvant Treatment for ALK-Positive Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
On April 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the tyrosine kinase inhibitor alectinib (Alecensa) for adjuvant treatment after tumor resection in patients with ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as detected by an FDA-approved test. Alectinib is an orally...
FDA Grants Accelerated Approval to Lifileucel for Unresectable or Metastatic Melanoma
On February 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to lifileucel (Amtagvi), a tumor-derived autologous T-cell immunotherapy, for adult patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma who were previously treated with a PD-1 blocking antibody, or, if they have...
Belzutifan in Previously Treated Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma
On December 14, 2023, the hypoxia-inducible factor inhibitor belzutifan (Welireg) was approved for patients with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma with disease progression on previous treatment with a PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitor and a vascular endothelial...
Pembrolizumab/Chemotherapy for Advanced Biliary Tract Cancer
On October 31, 2023, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was approved for use with gemcitabine/cisplatin in first-line treatment of patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic biliary tract cancer.1
Supporting Efficacy Data
Approval was based on the double-blind KEYNOTE-966 trial...
Pirtobrutinib in Patients With Previously Treated Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia/Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma
On December 1, 2023, pirtobrutinib (Jaypirca), a selective, noncovalent Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor that inhibits both wild-type and C481-mutant BTK with equal low nanomolar potency and is designed to address several of the limitations of covalent BTK inhibitors, was granted...
NIH’s New Cancer Screening Research Network and Cancer Screening Technologies
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched the Cancer Screening Research Network, a clinical trials network to evaluate emerging cancer screening technologies. The new network will support the Biden-Harris Administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative by investigating how to identify cancer ...
Breast Cancer With Sentinel Node Metastases: Axillary Dissection vs Sentinel Node Biopsy Alone
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by de Boniface et al, the phase III SENOMAC trial showed noninferiority in recurrence-free survival with sentinel node biopsy alone vs completion axillary node dissection in patients with breast cancer and sentinel node metastases.
Study Details
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Model for Predicting Outcomes After Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Melanoma
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Stassen et al developed a model for the prediction of recurrence-free and melanoma-specific survival after sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in patients with melanoma.
Study Details
The study involved a development cohort of 4,071 patients aged > 13...
A Delay in Diagnosis Led to Advanced Prostate Cancer
Cancer is not an unfamiliar disease to me. My mother died of cancer when I was 12. My oldest sister died of breast cancer, an aunt died of cancer (I don’t know which type), and my older brother is a prostate cancer survivor. So, when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in October 2021, the news...
