Compared to young adults, adolescents with the same types of cancer have far less access to immunotherapy and/or targeted therapies, according to findings presented at the TAT 2019–International Congress on Targeted Anticancer Therapies in Paris. In addition, young adults could be included in ...
Among patients with melanoma treated with anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) immunotherapy, consumption of a high-fiber diet was associated with higher gut microbiome diversity and better response to treatment, according to data presented by Spencer et al at a presscast in advance of ...
Sumit K. Subudhi, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the initial results from a phase II study of nivolumab plus ipilimumab in the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (Abstract 142).
Rana R. McKay, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, discusses phase II study findings on atezolizumab and bevacizumab in non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma and clear cell renal cell carcinoma with sarcomatoid differentiation (Abstract 548).
Laurence Albiges, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, discusses findings on the safety and efficacy of nivolumab used in a “real world” prospective study on metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). This research was conducted after nivolumab was approved for the treatment of mRCC following failure of one or ...
Toni K. Choueiri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses a subgroup analysis from the JAVELIN Renal 101 study on outcomes for avelumab plus axitinib vs sunitinib in advanced renal cell carcinoma (Abstract 544).
Brian I. Rini, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, discuss their study findings on pembrolizumab plus axitinib vs sunitinib as first-line therapy for locally advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma (Abstract 543).
Some patients with metastatic prostate cancer respond to a combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors after treatment with hormonal therapy and chemotherapy has not been successful in treating their disease, according to early results from the phase II CheckMate 650...
On February 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the adjuvant treatment of patients with melanoma with lymph node involvement following complete resection. Approval was based on the phase III EORTC1325/KEYNOTE-054 trial, a randomized, double-blind,...
A combination of two drugs could become a new standard first-line treatment for patients with metastatic kidney cancer, according to results from the JAVELIN Renal 101 trial presented at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (Abstract 544) and simultaneously published in The New England...
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed coverage of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy under its “coverage with evidence development” paradigm. Currently, there is no national...
Over the past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted multiple Priority Reviews: Pembrolizumab in Combination With Axitinib as First-Line Treatment for Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma Today, the FDA accepted and granted Priority Review for a new supplemental biologics license...
The 2019 Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research will be awarded to Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, of the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The prize, awarded annually by the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), recognizes Dr....
Results from the randomized, phase III KEYNOTE-426 clinical trial show that first-line therapy with a combination of pembrolizumab and axitinib extended both overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) for patients with clear cell metastatic renal cell carcinoma compared with the...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a split-dosing regimen for daratumumab (Darzalex), a CD38-directed antibody, providing health-care professionals and patients with multiple myeloma an option to split the first infusion over 2 consecutive days. The approval is based on...
A study published by Cook et al in JAMA Oncology focused on whether treatment with checkpoint inhibitors is both safe and effective in patients with advanced cancer who are also human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive. Because checkpoint inhibitors manipulate the immune system, the concern has...
A research team is using a branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning to better target immunotherapy to those who will benefit. In a recent study published by Leiserson et al in PLOS One, the team used data from a clinical trial of patients with bladder cancer to...
The approval of several new agents for metastatic melanoma in the past several years has led to changes in how the disease is treated and managed. Treatments such as the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitors pembrolizumab, ipilimumab, and nivolumab; BRAF inhibitors; and MEK inhibitors...
The Lung Cancer Master Protocol (Lung-MAP), the first precision medicine trial in lung cancer supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), is undergoing a major expansion to include patients with all non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs). The trial previously tested treatments for people ...
Injection of a genetically modified virus that induces the body’s own immune cells to attack metastatic melanoma effectively treated almost 40% of patients with tumors that could not be surgically removed, according to findings published by Louie et al in the Journal of the American...
The recently reported results of ANNOUNCE, the phase III study of olaratumab in combination with doxorubicin in patients with advanced or metastatic soft-tissue sarcoma, did not confirm the clinical benefit of olaratumab in combination with doxorubicin as compared to doxorubicin, a...
Takashi Kojima, MD, of the National Cancer Center Hospital East, discusses phase III study findings on pembrolizumab vs chemotherapy as second-line treatment for advanced esophageal cancer (Abstract 2).
Jonathan R. Strosberg, MD, of the Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses phase II study findings on pembrolizumab as a treatment for advanced neuroendocrine tumors (Abstract 190).
Carl C. Schimanski, MD, PhD, of the Municipal Hospital Darmstadt, discusses phase II study findings on adjuvant immunotherapy with tecemotide after colorectal cancer liver metastasectomy (Abstract 480).
Ahmed Omar Kaseb, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses phase II study findings on nivolumab alone vs nivolumab plus ipilimumab in patients with resectable hepatocellular carcinoma (Abstract 185).
Findings from the phase I KEYNOTE-028 trial, which studied pembrolizumab in a number of solid tumors, showed activity of the immunotherapy in some patients with heavily pretreated neuroendocrine tumors. Now, a phase II basket trial—KEYNOTE-158—is studying the efficacy and safety of...
The phase II CCTG CO.26 trial evaluated whether the combination of durvalumab, a programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor, and tremelimumab, an anti–cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) antibody, plus best supportive care improved survival vs best supportive care ...
Pembrolizumab significantly improved overall survival in the second-line setting of advanced esophageal cancer in patients whose tumors tested positive for programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) with a combined positive score (CPS) of 10 or greater. This was compared to investigator’s choice...
Anti–programmed cell death protein 1 and anti–cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated protein 4 antibodies have shown activity in hepatocellular carcinoma. Based on these earlier findings, researchers sought to examine the safety, efficacy, and tolerability of perioperative treatment...
Researchers have identified a new potential immunotherapy target in pancreatic cancer, which so far has been notoriously resistant to treatment with immune checkpoint blockade drugs effective against a variety of other cancers. A research team from The University of Texas MD Anderson ...
Multiple recent reports have addressed the activity of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitors, such as pembrolizumab and avelumab, in Merkel cell carcinoma. However, approximately half of all patients who receive these agents do not maintain a persistent response. In an...
Treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo) did not improve response rates or survival over standard chemotherapy in patients with metastatic small cell lung cancer (SCLC) who relapsed following first-line treatment, according to findings presented by Reck et al at the European Society for Medical...
Updated data of the OpACIN study, which studied combined ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) administered as neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy in patients with high-risk stage III melanoma, demonstrated high response rates upon neoadjuvant therapy and promising long-term clinical outcome,...
Overall survival (OS) was improved across all subgroups of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received atezolizumab (Tecentriq) compared with chemotherapy, including poor prognostic factors that were evaluated in an analysis of data from the OAK trial. Additionally, this...
Patients with melanoma receiving proton pump inhibitors for comorbidities derived approximately half the clinical benefit from immunotherapy consisting of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) as patients receiving the same combination but not treated with proton pump inhibitors, according to ...
First-line immunotherapy with durvalumab (Imfinzi) or the combination of durvalumab and tremelimumab does not improve overall survival in unselected patients with lung cancer, according to late-breaking results from the MYSTIC trial presented by Rizvi et al at the European Society for Medical...
Patients with previously treated, advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received pembrolizumab (Keytruda) showed significantly longer overall survival (OS) compared to those treated with docetaxel, Herbst et al reported at the ESMO Immuno-Oncology Congress 2018 in Geneva,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued the following new approvals and designations: Priority Review for Atezolizumab in Combination With Chemotherapy for the Initial Treatment of Extensive-Stage SCLC The FDA accepted a supplemental biologics license application...
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, summarizes a spotlight session she chaired, which included discussion of new immunotherapy drug combinations, predictive factors, and the immune microenvironment.
Roisin M. Connolly, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, discusses clinical trials during the past year on studies on CDK and PI3K inhibitors in estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer and immune checkpoint agents in triple-negative breast cancer.
On December 6, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in combination with bevacizumab (Avastin), paclitaxel, and carboplatin for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic, nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with no EGFR or...
A 6-month course of chemotherapy-based treatment with FCR (intravenous fludarabine and cyclophosphamide plus rituximab [Rituxan]) has historically been the most effective treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), especially in patients 70 years of age and younger. However, results from a...
At the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, Grover et al presented preliminary results from a clinical study of an investigational cellular immunotherapy for Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma expressing the CD30 protein marker (Abstract 681). Data...
Saar I. Gill, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses findings from a prospective clinical trial on the high response rate in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who received a combination therapy of CAR T cells plus ibrutinib (Abstract 298).
Julie Vose, MD, MBA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Loretta J. Nastoupil, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discuss findings from a multicenter study of axicabtagene ciloleucel CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for relapsed or refractory aggressive B-cell lymphoma...
Julie Vose, MD, MBA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Merav Bar, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discuss study findings on the long-term effects in people with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia who received CD19-targeted ...
A follow-up analysis of patients enrolled in the multicenter ZUMA-1 trial for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) showed axicabtagene ciloleucel can induce durable responses, yield a median overall survival of more than 2 years, and has a manageable long-term safety profile. Axicabtagene...
In a new study presented by Summers et al at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition (Abstract 967), patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who received a first stem cell transplant after CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy were less...
CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been shown to be effective in patients with relapsed B-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia (B-ALL). However, in some patients, the antitumor effects of CAR T-cell treatment are short-lived, which may, in part, be caused by a reaction of...
For patients with difficult-to-treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), continuing to take ibrutinib (Imbruvica) before, during, and after receiving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy may be associated with less severe adverse effects and better responses compared with outcomes for a...