All Oncology News

Filip Janku, MD, PhD highlighted a dose-escalated approach of ripretinib and how it yielded a progression-free survival benefit in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor across all lines of treatment in a phase 1 study.

December 15, 2020 — The sequence in which hormonal therapy is given to men with localized prostate cancer should be considered as it can significantly affect outcomes.

December 15, 2020 - The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has adopted a positive opinion for fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki for use as a single agent in adult patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer who have previously received 2 or more anti-HER2–based regimens.

December 15, 2020 - The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has adopted a positive opinion for an additional dosing option of durvalumab, a fixed dose of 1500 mg every 4 weeks, in the approved indication of locally advanced, unresectable non–small cell lung cancer in adults whose tumors have a PD-L1 expression of at least 1% and who did not have progressive disease after platinum-based chemoradiation treatment.

Neelima Vidula, MD, highlights some of the pivotal trials evaluating immunotherapy combination regimens in triple-negative breast cancer, some of the challenges faced in practice, and areas for further exploration.

TP53-mutant myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia represent a molecularly distinct, poor-risk patient subgroup frequently associated with complex karyotypes, high propensity for relapse, and inferior overall survival.

Balazs Halmos, MD discusses the year 2021 and how it will encompass a bigger focus on neoadjuvant and adjuvant trials, more novel molecular compounds for more select subgroups, and a migration of circulating tumor DNA into a more minimal residual disease–based setting.

The emergence of checkpoint inhibitors has transformed the second-line treatment of patients with metastatic bladder cancer. However, questions regarding the utility of immunotherapy in the frontline setting remain unanswered, leaving chemotherapy as the standard-of-care option.

Checkpoint inhibitors have failed to improve progression-free survival and overall survival as second-line therapy and maintenance therapy in small cell lung cancer, but this class of agents continue to show encouraging activity worthy of a paradigm shift up front.

Mario Sznol, MD, discusses the critical importance of being aware of the immune-related toxicities that could arise when treating patients with cancer, along with the best ways to manage them.

Following the results of the SOLO-1 trial, maintenance PARP inhibitors have become the standard of care for patients with BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer but overall survival data are needed to confirm their potentially curative benefit.

December 14, 2020 - The combination of neratinib and capecitabine showed a 34% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared with lapatinib and capecitabine in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who had central nervous system metastases at baseline.

December 14, 2020 — A link between tumor growth rate and clinical outcomes was established in patients with sarcoma who received treatment with immunotherapy or targeted therapy.

December 14, 2020 - Microsatellite instability–high tumors in patients with endometrial, colorectal, and stomach carcinomas were found to be enriched in recurrent shared, immunogenic, tumor-specific frameshifts expressed on RNA and protein levels.

December 14, 2020 - Immunotherapy agents have shown efficacy in malignant melanoma, kidney cancer, and non–small cell lung cancer, and investigators are examining the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors in less immunogenic tumors such as colon cancer, particularly in tumors with high microsatellite instability and deficient mismatch repair genes.

Circulating tumor DNA positivity identified patients with high-risk muscle-invasive urothelial cancer who were likely to derive improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival from adjuvant atezolizumab vs observation.

December 11, 2020 - The FDA has authorized the first vaccine for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019.

December 11, 2020 - Tucatinib in combination with trastuzumab and capecitabine significantly prolonged the time to deterioration of health-related quality of life in patients with HER2- positive metastatic breast cancer with brain metastases.

December 11, 2020 - The addition of 1 year of palbociclib to endocrine therapy failed to improve invasive disease-free survival in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer who are at high risk of relapse following neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

The clinical tool RSClin™, which integrates the 21-gene expression assay and clinical pathologic features, was shown to provide more prognostic information than the 21-gene recurrence score or clinical pathologic features alone and a more precise prediction of absolute chemotherapy benefit in node-negative early breast cancer.

December 11, 2020 - Gastrointestinal adverse events that occurred in patients with metastatic breast cancer who were treated with oral paclitaxel and encequidar can be managed by the use of 5- HT3 inhibitors and early intervention with loperamide.

December 11, 2020 - Sacituzumab govitecan increased response rates and improved progression-free survival vs chemotherapy in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer with stable brain metastases, although no overall survival improvement was observed.

December 11, 2020 - The presence of circulating tumor DNA following neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without pembrolizumab was a biomarker for response and distant recurrence-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage breast cancer.

December 11, 2020 - The European Medicine Agency’ s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has granted a positive opinion to avelumab as a single agent, frontline maintenance option for adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who are free of disease progression after platinum-based chemotherapy.

December 11, 2020 - Patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer who were treated with tesetaxel and a reduced dose of capecitabine experienced improvements in progression-free survival compared with those treated with the FDA-approved dose of capecitabine alone.

December 11, 2020 - The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has granted a positive opinion to tucatinib in combination with trastuzumab and capecitabine for use in adult patients with HER2-positive, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who had received at least 2 previous anti-HER2 therapies.

December 11, 2020 - The combination of plinabulin and pegfilgrastim was 53% more effective in reducing the incidence of profound neutropenia compared with pegfilgrastim alone in patients undergoing chemotherapy, according to full findings of the phase 3 PROTECTIVE-2 trial.

December 11, 2020 - The European Medicine Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has adopted a positive opinion for pembrolizumab monotherapy for the frontline treatment of adult patients with metastatic microsatellite instability–high or mismatch repair deficient colorectal cancer.

December 11, 2020 - Use of a novel HER2 quantitative continuous score was better able to provide an objective and quantitative assessment of HER2 expression to identify patients who are most likely to respond to fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki.

December 11, 2020 - Oncolytic viral therapy has been heavily investigated across oncology, but plenty of work still lies ahead to determine how this treatment approach can be applied in gastrointestinal malignancies.