Latest Conference Articles

The treatment landscape for patients with ALK-rearranged non–small cell lung cancer is changing rapidly, gearing up the potential for more therapeutic options to address the heterogeneity of the mechanism of resistance in this population.

Roman Perez-Soler, MD, chairman of the Department of Oncology and chief of the Division of Medical Oncology at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, discusses the impact of osimertinib (Tagrisso) on patients with T790M-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, professor and thoracic oncologist at Yale Cancer Center, discusses molecular testing in lung cancer and how it affects treatment decisions.

Efforts are under way to further evaluate the effects of regorafenib on sorafenib-resistant HCC cells, including the role of suppressing the ERK signaling pathway.

Joaquim Bellmunt, MD, PhD, attending physician of Solid Tumor Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-045 study, which compared second- or third-line pembrolizumab with investigator-choice chemotherapy as a treatment for patients with metastatic or locally advanced, unresectable urothelial carcinoma.

Stevan A. Gonzalez, MD MS, clinical assistant professor, department of internal medicine, Texas A&M College of Medicine, medical director of liver transplantation, Simmons Transplant Institute, Baylor All Saints Medical Center, discusses a cost effectiveness analysis of treating hepatitis C patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) before or after a liver transplant.

Lung cancer treatment has undergone a game-changing transformation within the past few years, with a burst of FDA approvals of targeted agents and immunotherapies across a number of indications.

Rodabe N. Amaria, MD, assistant professor Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the results of a recent trial testing neoadjuvant and adjuvant dabrafenib plus trametinib versus standard of care in high-risk resectable BRAF-mutant melanoma.

Results from a safety, tolerability, and dose escalation phase Ib/II study involving intratumoral SD-101 and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) have demonstrated that the combination was well-tolerated with no dose-limiting toxicities.

Treatment with the combination of dabrafenib and trametinib before and after surgery demonstrated a dramatic improvement in relapse-free survival compared with the standard of care for patients with stage IIIb/c or oligometastatic BRAF-mutant melanoma.

Keith T. Flaherty, MD, director of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapy, Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses the results from the COLUMBUS trial, testing encorafenib plus binimetinib compared to vemurafenib or encorafenib as single agents.

Bin Zheng, PhD, assistant professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and assistant biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the potential for phenformin, a drug created for Type 2 diabetes, to be used for patients with melanoma.

The combination of the BRAF inhibitor encorafenib and the MEK inhibitor binimetinib reduced the risk of progression or death by 46% compared with vemurafenib (Zelboraf) for patients with BRAF-mutant unresectable melanoma.

The combination of nilotinib and trametinib proved to be synergistic in BRAF/NRAS wild-type melanoma.

The combination of dabrafenib and trametinib continued to demonstrate durable efficacy for patients with BRAF V600E/K-mutant melanoma across patient subgroups in a 3-year analysis of the phase III COMBI-d study, with baseline site of metastasis identified as a predictor of overall survival ≥36 months,

Graham Mann, MBBS, PhD, FRACP, professor of Medicine, Westmead Clinical School and co-director of the Centre for Cancer Research, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research at the University of Sydney in Australia, discusses his findings from the Australian Melanoma Genome Project, which were presented at the 2016 Society for Melanoma Research (SMR) Congress.

Stefani Spranger, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, discusses recent findings about why a certain subgroup of patients with melanoma do not have T cells within their tumor microenvironment.

Helmut Schiader, MD, discusses why drug resistance may be due to epigenetic changes and not mutation-induced changes, as well as the role of immunotherapy/targeted therapy combinations in combating resistance.

The combination of atezolizumab and cobimetinib may lead to a higher overall response and a longer progression-free survival than either agent alone in patients with metastatic melanoma.

Christian Blank, MD, PhD, Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses some of the early findings from the OpACIN trial testing a combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant setting for patients with stage III melanoma.

Neoadjuvant therapy with the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab is plausible and effective but can induce a high level of adverse events calling for further research into better tolerated dosing schemes.

Clinical research in private practice is thriving and the future is bright.

Ryan Sullivan, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses how best to treat patients with melanoma who have the BRAF mutation.

The Large Urology Group Practice Association has announced the plan to create two alternative payment models that involve bundled payments.

David Albala, MD, discusses some of the benefits of robotic surgery and the impact it has had on the field of prostate cancer, as well as methods that larger urology groups can use to better achieve compliance.

The addition of the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab to the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib and the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib induced a high response rate for patients with BRAF-mutant unresectable melanoma.

Raoul Concepcion, MD, director, Comprehensive Prostate Center, discusses the use of Eligard in the treatment of prostate cancer with OncLive during the LUGPA Annual Meeting.

Philip J. Buffington, MD, Chief Medical Officer, The Urology Group, discussed the use of fusion MRI in prostate cancer with OncLive during the LUGPA Annual Meeting.

With immunotherapy agents showing significant promise in bladder cancer, the potential for these agents in the neoadjuvant setting is wide open.

Whatever the result of the US presidential election, the era ahead will continue to be one of unprecedented change in healthcare, according to Robert Laszewski.