Suneel Kamath, MD, on Correlation Between Blood and Tissue Tumor Mutation Burden
ASCO 2026
Suneel Kamath, MD, of Cleveland Clinic, discusses a study that found tissue tumor mutation burden (TMB) was a stronger predictor of immunotherapy outcomes than blood-based circulating tumor DNA testing, with high tissue TMB associated with a longer time to treatment failure (Abstract 2580).
The ASCO Post Staff
Colton Jones, MD, of The University of Texas at San Antonio, talks about the results of a global, multicenter analysis that sought to determine the safety and efficacy of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) for the primary prevention of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in a pan-etiology high-risk cohort (Abstract 10522).
The ASCO Post Staff
Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, of Cleveland Clinic, provides an update on the DESTINY-Breast05 trial, which is an ongoing phase III trial investigating postneoadjuvant trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) as compared with trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer with residual invasive disease and node-positive disease at surgery or inoperable disease at diagnosis. Dr. Abraham makes special note of rates of interstitial lung disease seen in the trial and methods of management.
Paolo Tarantino, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, reviews the results of a large clinicogenomic database study that looked at overall survival by genomic profile among patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. Patients with mutations in key DNA repair genes experienced a numerically worse prognosis, representing an unmet need for drug development, say researchers (Abstract 1045).
The ASCO Post Staff
Evan T. Hall, MD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, discusses findings from the randomized phase II MATRiX trial, which evaluated the efficacy of the ATR inhibitor tuvusertib with or without avelumab in patients with anti–PD-(L)1–refractory Merkel cell carcinoma (Abstract LBA9514).
Elizabeth Smyth, MD, of Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Churchill Hospital, discusses three major studies presented at this year’s meeting: the antibody-drug conjugate izalontamab brengitecan in recurrent or metasatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (Abstract 4008); the ATTRACTION-6 study of chemoimmunotherapy in HER2-negative advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer (Abstract 4006); and an investigational EP4 antagonist in combination with chemoimmunotherapy as a first-line strategy for HER2-negative gastric/GEJ cancer (Abstract 4007).