Latest Conference Articles

Adding cetuximab to concurrent chemoradiotherapy did not improve overall survival in patients with adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus

Four independent prognostic factors for improved overall survival in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer emerged from an analysis of the LAP 07 phase III trial.

Ã…ge Schultz, DVM, PhD, executive director, Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC), discusses pain management and the cost of supportive care medicine.

Eileen M. O'Reilly, MD, associate director, David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses using nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine versus FOLFIRINOX as treatment for patients with untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Margaret A. Tempero, MD, director, Pancreas Center, University of California, San Francisco, discusses the two main types of hereditary pancreatic cancer.

Continuing EGFR inhibition beyond progression with afatinib plus paclitaxel significantly improved PFS and ORR compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with heavily pretreated metastatic NSCLC.

The anti-PD-1 humanized antibody pembrolizumab has robust antitumor activity as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced PD-L1-positive NSCLC.

Adding necitumumab to standard of care with gemcitabine-cisplatin significantly improves survival compared with chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment in patients with stage IV non–small-cell lung cancer of squamous histology.

Anas Younes, MD, chief, Lymphoma Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a phase III study of ibrutinib in combination R-CHOP in patients with newly diagnosed nongerminal center B-cell subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Combining panobinostat (LBH589) with bortezomib and dexamethasone delayed disease progression by 3.9 months over bortezomib and dexamethasone alone in patients with relapsed or relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma.

The CD38-specific monoclonal antibody SAR650984 demonstrated encouraging efficacy as a monotherapy and in combination with dexamethasone and lenalidomide without reaching a maximum tolerated dose in patients with heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

Long-term follow-up results demonstrated nearly doubled median OS with the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab compared with either agent alone.

David Spigel, MD, director of Lung Cancer Research at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses current trials involving MPDL3280A in lung cancer.

The addition of the investigational hypoxia-targeted drug TH-302 to dexamethasone has demonstrated beneficial activity and a manageable adverse event profile in the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The novel agents idelalisib and ABT-199 in combination with rituximab have demonstrated impressive activity with manageable toxicity for patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

A joint analysis of two phase III trials involving a total of 4690 premenopausal women with hormone-receptor–positive (HR+) breast cancer demonstrated that adjuvant use of the aromatase inhibitor (AI), exemestane, reduced relative risk of developing subsequent invasive cancer by 28% compared with tamoxifen when both agents were combined with ovarian function suppression (OFS).

The intratumoral injection talimogene laherparepvec demonstrated promise in combinations and utility as a monotherapy in certain subsets of patients with unresectable melanoma.

Two patients with metastatic cervical cancer achieved durable complete responses that have so far lasted from 15 to 22 months through an adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) targeting the human papillomavirus (HPV) in a study that researchers say supports the concept that the experimental immunotherapy approach may be beneficial in a variety of tumor types.

The anti-PD 1 checkpoint inhibitor, pembrolizumab, continues to deliver impressive results in patients with advanced melanoma-producing long-lasting responses and improved overall survival, regardless of whether patients have been previously treated with ipilimumab.

The immunotherapy drug ipilimumab reduced the relative risk of cancer recurrence in the adjuvant setting by 25% compared to placebo for patients with high-risk, lymph-node positive melanoma.

Robert H. I. Andtbacka, MD, CM, from the Huntsman Cancer Institute, discusses OS findings from the phase III OPTiM study that explored T-VEC in patients with unresectable melanoma.

Lawrence Fong, MD, from the University of California, San Francisco, discusses the systemic antitumor effect and clinical response in a phase II trial of intratumoral electroporation of plasmid interleukin-12 in patients with advanced melanoma.

Johanna Bendell, MD, director of GI Cancer Research Program, associate director, Drug Development Program, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses two studies in BRAF-mutated colorectal cancer.

The third-generation EGFR inhibitor CO-1686 continues to demonstrate promising activity in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who developed resistance after prior treatment with an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI).

Naiyer A. Rizvi, MD, an associate attending physician, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the safety and response with plus erlotinib in patients with epidermal growth factor receptor mutant (EGFR MT) advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Frontline therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin) or cetuximab (Erbitux) combined with either FOLFOX or FOLFIRI yielded a comparable survival benefit of approximately 29 months in patients with KRAS wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer

In what was described as "an almost unprecedented improvement in median survival," the addition of the chemotherapy drug docetaxel to standard hormone therapy prolonged life for men with newly diagnosed metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer by nearly 14 months.

A dual HER2-blockade strategy that added lapatinib to trastuzumab for the adjuvant treatment of women with early breast cancer failed to demonstrate a significant improvement in DFS over the standard therapy with trastuzumab alone.

John C. Byrd, MD, from The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the promising findings from the phase III RESONATE trial that compared ofatumumab to ibrutinib in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

MPDL3280A reduced tumors in 43% of patients with previously treated PD-L1-positive metastatic bladder cancer, resulting in the first breakthrough therapy designation from the FDA for a treatment in this setting.