ASCO Annual Meeting

Half of a small group of patients with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) had major responses to treatment with an anti-CD47 antibody plus rituximab (Rituxan).

Combining pegilodecakin with nivolumab or pembrolizumab induced an overall response rate of 41% in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

The frontline combination of ibrutinib and venetoclax demonstrated a 100% objective response rate for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, with 77% of patients testing negative for minimal residual disease in the peripheral blood after 6 cycles.

More than 40% of patients with metastatic or unresectable urothelial carcinoma responded to treatment with an investigational fibroblast growth factor receptor inhibitor.

First-line treatment with the oral AKT inhibitor ipatasertib shows a promising trend toward improving overall survival when added to paclitaxel for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Adding the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to fulvestrant significantly prolonged progression-free survival in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer who received no or 1 prior line of therapy.

Lenvatinib added to pembrolizumab demonstrated promising activity in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck in an ongoing open-label phase Ib/II clinical trial.

Adding pembrolizumab to frontline carboplatin/paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel reduced the risk of death by 36% compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer.

Adjuvant endocrine therapy alone is noninferior to adjuvant chemoendocrine therapy in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, node-negative early-stage breast cancer.

Sunitinib alone was noninferior to cytoreductive nephrectomy plus sunitinib, the current standard of care, in patients with synchronous metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

A course of low-dose maintenance chemotherapy administered after standard-of-care intensive chemotherapy led to significant improvements in disease-free and overall survival in pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma.

Patients with non-small cell lung cancer treated with frontline pembrolizuma lived 4 to 8 months longer than those who received standard of care chemotherapy.

Geoffrey R. Oxnard, MD, associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, thoracic oncologist, medical oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the design and importance of the Circulating Cancer Genome Atlas (CCGA) study in an interview with OncLive during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Luciano J. Costa, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy Program, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, discusses phase II findings with the triplet regimen of venetoclax (Venclexta), carfilzomib (Kyprolis), and dexamethasone in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. Costa shared this insight in an interview with OncLive during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Personalized therapy based on tumor molecular profiling resulted in improved overall survival for patients with advanced, hard-to-treat cancers.

Initial results from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas study strongly suggest that cell-free DNA tests can be used with a high degree of specificity to detect signs of early stage lung cancer.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) yielded inconsistent results regarding the relationship between immune-related adverse events and objective response in multiple myeloma.

Microsatellite instability-high tumors are more likely to be associated with the presence of Lynch syndrome. Yet, 45% of patients with cancers not typically identified with Lynch syndrome actually qualify for germline genetic testing.

Treatment with taselisib in combination with fulvestrant provided a modest progression-free survival benefit of 2 months compared with fulvestrant alone in patients with estrogen receptor–positive, PIK3CA-mutant locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer

Carfilzomib (Kyprolis) administered once weekly at 70 mg/m2 with dexamethasone resulted in a prolonged PFS compared with the standard twice-weekly schedule in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The addition of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) to frontline carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) delayed the risk of progression or death by 29% compared with chemotherapy alone for patients with advanced squamous NSCLC.

The highly-selective RET inhibitor LOXO-292 demonstrated robust clinical activity across RET-altered solid tumors, including in patients with brain metastases and the RET V804M gatekeeper mutation.

Adding ibrutinib to rituximab lowered the risk of disease progression or death by 80% versus rituximab alone in patients with Waldenström macroglobulinemia.

bb2121 had a median progression-free survival of 11.8 months and a median duration of response of 10.8 months for patients with relapsed/refractory heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

Supriya Gupta Mohile, MD, MS, professor of medicine and surgery, James Wilmot Cancer Institute, director, Geriatric Oncology Clinic, University of Rochester, discusses pooled findings with a geriatric assessment for older patients with cancer in an interview with OncLive during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Daniel J. George, MD, professor of medicine, surgery, member, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses the results of the prospective multicenter Abi Race trial, which compared outcomes of African-American and Caucasian patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) treated with abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and prednisone.

Adding pomalidomide (Pomalyst) to bortezomib (Velcade) and low-dose dexamethasone reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 39% in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma with prior exposure to lenalidomide.

The addition of venetoclax to carfilzomib and dexamethasone demonstrated a 100% objective response rate with a very good partial response or better rate of 86% for patients with relapsed/refractory t(11;14) multiple myeloma.

A study that compared costs of treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer in Western Washington and the province of British Columbia in Canada found that prices were more than twice as high for the US patients than for their Canadian counterparts, with no significant difference in outcomes.

Evaluating health-related concerns as part of routine care for elderly patients with advanced cancer significantly improved doctor-patient communication and patient satisfaction.