All Oncology News

Adding enzalutamide to abiraterone acetate failed to improve progression-free survival versus abiraterone alone in chemotherapy-naïve patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who progressed on enzalutamide.

Excitement continues to surround the potential role of immunotherapy agents in the treatment of patients with sarcoma, according to Breelyn Wilky, MD.

Several challenges remain in the treatment landscape of soft tissue sarcoma, a disease whose diagnosis can range from one that is quite indolent for patients, to a more life-threatening, metastatic, aggressive cancer.

The combination of TRC105, an endoglin antibody, and pazopanib demonstrated promising antitumor activity in patients with advanced angiosarcoma

Even with 1 FDA approval of an immunotherapeutic agent in urothelial carcinoma—and more expected in the coming months—chemotherapy regimens will continue to play a pivotal part in the treatment of patients with this disease.

Though testing for mutations in EGFR, ALK, and ROS1 is a standard approach in patients with non–small cell lung cancer, the same is not true for less common genetic abnormalities, including RET, BRAF, c-MET, and NTRK.

Researchers are exploring VEGF and EGFR inhibitors in combination with other therapies for patients with non–small cell lung cancer in hopes of maximizing clinical outcomes while keeping toxicity levels low.

Three recent drug approvals have shifted the landscape in the second-line setting for renal cell carcinoma, and researchers are now setting their sights on transforming upfront care.

To great fanfare, Hackensack Meridian Health of New Jersey and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center announced a co-branding partnership that they say would lead to highly fruitful collaborative research and make hundreds of clinical trial opportunities available to their patients.

Treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab showed promising results in patients with recurrent malignant pleural mesothelioma.

The NCCN recently published new guidelines for myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), with an emphasis on diagnosis, treatment, and supportive care strategies for myelofibrosis. Subsequent editions will focus more on other MPNs, including essential thrombocythemia, polycythemia vera.

Treatment for patients with aggressive lymphomas needs to be intensified with more effective strategies, potentially including an infusion, dose-adjusted regimen of etoposide phosphate, prednisone, vincristine sulfate, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin hydrochloride, and rituximab.

President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act into law today, earmarking $6.3 billion over 10 years for advancements in precision medicine development, brain research, heroin and prescription drug abuse prevention, and mental health.

Although randomized phase III clinical trials often lead to groundbreaking drug approvals and offer novel therapeutic regimens, Maurie Markman, MD, insists that the search for validated, actionable biomarkers is more important than initiation of new studies.

The European Commission has approved ofatumumab in combination with fludarabine and cyclophosphamide as a treatment for adult patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Immunotherapy may be having a moment in the changing landscape of bladder cancer, but expert Gopa Iyer, MD, advises that there is much research to be done before physicians replace chemotherapy with these agents upfront.

For patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, the radiopharmaceutical radium-223 dichloride has proven to be an efficacious bone-targeted agent.

The field of lung cancer has undoubtedly seen notable advances over the past year—especially with the game-changing November 2016 approval of pembrolizumab for the frontline treatment of patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

Beyond the strong efficacy outcomes observed with single-agent immunotherapies in non–small cell lung cancer—including pembrolizumab, nivolumab, and atezolizumab—the field is now awaiting the next phase: combination regimens.

The combination of elotuzumab, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone has excellent activity and is well-tolerated in the treatment of high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM), providing hope that it can delay or even halt progression to MM.

The combination of nab-paclitaxel and carboplatin reduced the risk of progression or death by 40% compared with 2 other chemotherapy doublets as a frontline therapy for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Treatment with pembrolizumab continued to show a consistent durable benefit with an additional year of follow-up for heavily pretreated patients with recurrent PD-L1-positive metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a biologics license application for the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma whose disease has progressed on standard platinum‑based chemotherapy.

Regorafenib (Stivarga) has demonstrated the first survival benefit for a systemic therapy in the second-line setting for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have progressed on sorafenib (Nexavar), according to results from the phase III RESORCE trial published in The Lancet.1

Prophylactic treatment with the combination of loperamide and budesonide reduced the rate of grade ≥3 diarrhea associated with neratinib to 15% compared with 39.9% observed in the ExteNET trial.

There has been renewed interest in eribulin mesylate following its FDA approval for advanced or unresectable liposarcoma and with the introduction of a growing body of preclinical work suggesting the agent has a novel anti–mesenchymal mechanism of action.

The HER2-enriched subtype of HER2-positive breast cancer is a strong predictor of sensitivity to dual HER2 blockade without the use of chemotherapy.

The addition of an aromatase inhibitor (AI) to pertuzumab and trastuzumab improved progression-free survival by 3.09 months, when compared with trastuzumab plus an AI.

Patients with myelofibrosis and thrombocytopenia had significantly greater reductions in spleen volume and symptoms when treated with the multikinase inhibitor pacritinib, compared with the best available therapy.

The sweeping, $6.3 billion 21st Century Cures Act, designed to create a 10-year pool of money for precision medicine development and social health initiatives, gained overwhelming Senate approval Wednesday and goes next to President Obama, who has said he will sign the bill.