Howard M. Sandler, MD, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses prospective clinical trials as the gold standard of clinical decision-making and examines the infrastructure needed for future cancer research. (Abstract PS 3)
A new study indicates that adolescent females with acute leukemia have low rates of pregnancy screening prior to receiving chemotherapy that can cause birth defects. These findings were published by Rao et al in Cancer. Although many chemotherapy drugs can cause birth defects, there are no...
Today, Vice President Joe Biden announced a series of new steps focused on increasing access to information about clinical trials and improving the efficiency of our clinical research system. These steps include making it easier for participants to find clinical trial opportunities as quickly as...
Federally funded research continues to spur progress against cancer; however, accelerating the pace of progress will require robust, sustained, and predictable annual funding increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the Food and Drug...
A first-of-its-kind joint report from the American Cancer Society and Alliance for Childhood Cancer has compiled the latest information related to pediatric cancer, including statistics and trends; a current list of drugs used to treat pediatric cancers; ongoing pediatric cancer clinical trials;...
The Chinese Journal of Cancer (CJC) is soliciting the 150 most important questions in cancer research and clinical oncology from cancer researchers around the world. The editors of CJC believe this will help provide important insights and guidance in future efforts to advance cancer research...
In 1997, Oregon enacted a voter initiative allowing terminally ill residents to self-administer physician-prescribed medication to end their lives called the Oregon Death With Dignity Act (ORDWDA). Statute requires prescriptions written for lethal medications be reported; the state also collects...
There are limited data on the illness understanding and perception of curability among patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care around the world. In a study led by Sriram Yennu, MD, MS, Associate Professor in the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine at The...
Randy L. Wei, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine, discusses findings from a survey that focused on ASTRO members who assessed their ability to deliver palliative and supportive care, and their access to continuing medical education on the topic (Abstract 105).
Sriram Yennu, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses findings from a study of an international cohort of patients with advanced cancer who received palliative care. Nearly half the patients incorrectly believed their cancer was curable (Abstract 5).
Jennifer S. Temel, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses increasing prognostic uncertainty in light of targeted treatments and immunotherapies, and the difficulty predicting who will benefit.
Emily Haozous, PhD, RN, of the University of New Mexico, discusses health disparities and cultural differences in palliative and end-of-life care, with case study examples drawn from American Indian communities.
J. Nicholas Dionne-Odom, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discusses the “hidden” health-care workforce of family caregivers and what clinicians can do to help ease the burden on families.
Charles D. Blanke, MD, of the Oregon Health & Science University and Southwest Oncology Group, discusses the nearly 20 years’ experience with Oregon’s Death With Dignity (DWD) Act, a voter initiative that led to the first such law enacted in the United States (Abstract 44).
Patients with cancer have heightened risks of unintentional and intentional injuries during the diagnostic process, revealed findings from a large study published by Shen et al in The BMJ. A range of injuries are common, and some are potentially life-threatening, the study showed. The authors...
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) identified 14 genes regulating genome integrity that were consistently overexpressed in a wide variety of cancers. They then created a scoring system based upon the degree of gene overexpression. For...
Pediatric stem cell transplant and cancer patients often are discharged from the hospital with an external central venous line for medications that parents or other caregivers must clean and flush daily to avoid potentially life-threatening infections. If an outpatient develops a bloodstream...
A group of University of North Carolina (UNC) Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers is calling for an overhaul of the process that determines which cancer drugs used off-label—or beyond their approved use—are reimbursed by federally funded health insurance in the United...
A study of women receiving hormone therapies such as tamoxifen as part of their treatment for breast cancer found that the number and seriousness of side effects they experienced were influenced by their expectations. The study, published by Nestoriuc et al in Annals of Oncology, found that women...
As scientists learn more about which genetic mutations are driving different types of cancer, they're targeting treatments to small numbers of patients, with the potential for big payoffs in improved outcomes. But even as we learn more about these driver mutations, a new study published by Spratt...
Parents are more likely to support laws that would make the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine mandatory for school entry if their state offers opt-out provisions, according to a study published by Calo et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. However, opt-out provisions may...
The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group has received federal approval to add a quality-of-life research study, COMmunication and Education in Tumor Profiling, or COMET (EAQ152), to the NCI-MATCH (EAY131) trial already underway. Using feedback surveys before and after a patient undergoes tumor gene...
Computers can be trained to be more accurate than pathologists in assessing slides of lung cancer tissues, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers found that a machine-learning approach to identifying critical disease-related features...
The chemotherapy drug etoposide may have adverse effects on the developing ovaries of female fetuses, according to a preclinical study of mouse cells published by Stefansdottir et al in BMC Cancer. Norah Spears, DPhil, the corresponding study author and Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the...
Prostate cancer and lung cancer have been the number 1 and 2 cancers among men. Stomach cancer, the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, has been on a steady decline among Koreans and Japanese. Black men had the highest overall rates of cancer. Thyroid cancer has been on the rise, and...
A study at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health showed that obesity was more prevalent in patients with a history of cancer than in the general population, and survivors of colorectal and breast cancers were particularly affected. The study is among the first to compare rates of...
Tumor shrinkage is not the only measure of a successful anticancer therapy. A University of Colorado Cancer Center article published by Serkova et al in Frontiers in Oncology describes a promising alternative: metabolic imaging. Tumors rush their metabolism to grow and proliferate. By recognizing a ...
Although a majority of states are still missing important opportunities to pass and implement legislative solutions proven to prevent and fight cancer, there is progress being made to move the nation closer to ending cancer as we know it, according to a report recently released by the American...
Men with testicular cancer who were uninsured or on Medicaid had a higher risk of death from what is normally a curable disease than insured patients, a new study found. The findings, published by Markt et al in Cancer, add to growing evidence that differences in health insurance status can affect...
More imaging after thyroid cancer treatment identifies recurrence, but it does not always improve survival, a new study published by Banerjee et al in The BMJ suggests. Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center looked at 28,220 patients diagnosed with...
A new study indicates that delirium is relatively frequent and underdiagnosed by physicians in patients with advanced cancer visiting the emergency department. Delirium was similarly common among older and younger patients, which suggests that in the setting of advanced cancer, all patients should...
Most adolescent survivors of childhood cancer have no reported psychological symptoms, but an analysis led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital found that those who do often have multiple symptoms and distinct symptom profiles. The findings, published by Krull et al in the Journal of Clinical...
The liquid biopsy may be a welcome reprieve from typical biopsies. The minimally invasive test could reduce the need for the sometimes painful and risky procedures involved in sampling tumors, particularly those that reside deep within the body. However, thus far, the utility of the test has been...
Misunderstandings about prognosis between patients with advanced cancer and their doctors was common, according to a study by Gramling et al in JAMA Oncology—and the vast majority of patients didn't know that their doctors held different opinions about how long they might live. “We've...
Patients who develop heart failure after their first heart attack have a greater risk of developing cancer when compared to first-time heart attack survivors without heart failure, according to a study published by Hasin et al in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Heart failure...
Case reports on 13 patients with cancer suggest that patients taking the immunotherapeutics ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo) may be at higher-than-normal risk of developing autoimmune joint and tissue diseases, including inflammatory arthritis, according to a preliminary study by Johns...
A phase II, multicenter trial published by Alvarnas et al in Blood challenges the generally held belief that individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and aggressive lymphoma are not candidates for standard treatment. According to the researchers, people with HIV-associated lymphoma who...
A clinical trial conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has found that the use of patient navigators—individuals who assist patients in receiving health care services—may improve comprehensive cancer screening rates among patient populations not likely to...
A new report shows that people caring for a loved one with cancer often have more intense, episodic caregiver responsibilities than those caring for someone with other health needs. The report, from the National Alliance for Caregiving in partnership with the National Cancer Institute and the...
Patients with cancer often experience significant fluctuations in weight and lean body mass. Neglecting to account for these changes can prevent clinicians from obtaining precise data from molecular imaging, but a new method of measuring lean body mass takes changes in individual body...
Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black cancer patients between ages 15 and 29 may be more likely than same-aged white patients to die of their disease, according to a University of Colorado Cancer Center study presented by Colton et al at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 6557). The finding is...
Primary immunodeficiency disorders are a group of more than 300 single gene defects that affect the role of the immune system and prevent it from functioning properly. When Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) researchers evaluated the overall and site-specific incidence of cancer among patients...
Patricia J. Goldsmith, Chief Executive Officer of CancerCare, which provides free, professional support services to anyone affected by cancer, discusses findings from six distinct surveys with input from more than 3,000 individuals at varying stages of their cancer experience.
An analysis of health claims data from 2007–2014 on more than 28,000 patients under the age of 65 found that a large proportion of patients with advanced solid tumors received at least one form of aggressive care within the last 30 days of life. The study was presented by Chen et al at...
Eric Roeland, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, and Timothy E. Quill, MD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, discuss the debate on whether physician-assisted death should be a legally available option at the end of life when neither palliative nor hospice care is...
Maria Clemence Schwaederle, PharmD, of the University of California, San Diego, discusses an analysis of 13,203 patients in phase I clinical trials, which showed that a personalized strategy led to improved response rate and progression-free survival (Abstract 11520).
Lee S. Schwartzberg, MD, of The West Clinic, reports on progress of the now year-old ACCC initiative to speed adoption of immunotherapeutics in community practices.
Yousuf Zafar, MD, of Duke Cancer Institute, summarizes his educational lecture on the financial toxicities of treatment and the need to focus on both short- and long-term interventions to reduce the burden on patients.
ASCO today published an updated framework for assessing the relative value of cancer therapies that have been compared in clinical trials. The framework, published by Schnipper et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, defines value as a combination of clinical benefit, side effects, and...
Among nearly 35,000 initially healthy women who were followed for about 20 years, those with new-onset atrial fibrillation had an increased risk of cancer, according to a study published by Conen et al in JAMA Cardiology. Atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia, is associated with...