All Oncology News

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.

The CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy JCAR017 demonstrated a 60% complete response rate in patients with relapsed or refractory CD19-positive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Higher levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were associated with improvements in overall survival for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer treated with docetaxel, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab in the phase III CLEOPATRA trial.

Two thirds of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that progressed on B-cell receptor pathway inhibitors had objective responses to treatment with venetoclax, results of a small open-label trial showed.

Bevacizumab has been granted FDA approval for platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer, based on findings from phase III trails: GOG-0213 and OCEANS.

Scientists at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center have been able to validate the contemporary five-tiered Gleason Grade Grouping Using Population-based Data.

When combined with psychological counseling, a single dose of a mind-altering compound contained in psychedelic mushrooms significantly lessens mental anguish in distressed cancer patients for months at a time, according to results of a clinical trial led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Robert G. Uzzo, MD, discusses the promise of immunotherapies as well as the challenges with using them across different indications in renal cell carcinoma.

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, sheds light on the emerging roles of both immunotherapy and targeted agents in the treatment of patients with bladder cancer.

Younger patients with mantle cell lymphoma lived significantly longer and without disease progression or clinical events when they received rituximab maintenance therapy after stem cell transplantation, final results of a randomized trial showed.

An investigational anti-BCMA chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy demonstrated an objective response rate of 78% in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

Viewed by some as a boon for precision medicine, an Alzheimer’s cure, brain research, and opioid abuse prevention, but also seen as weakening the FDA’s regulatory power, the $6.3 billion 21st Century Cures Act passed overwhelmingly in the House Wednesday by a vote of 392-26.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a supplemental biologics license application for pembrolizumab for use as a treatment for patients with refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma or those who have relapsed after ≥3 lines of therapy,

Sanofi Pasteur plans to discontinue production of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin for the US market by mid-2017, startling physicians and patients who fear that a shortage of the widely used bladder cancer therapy will develop.

Immunotherapy combinations have significant potential as treatment for patients with renal cell carcinoma.

The treatment landscape of renal cell carcinoma is changing at a remarkably fast pace.

It’s not often that oncologists get to be the first to utilize cutting-edge technology.

A novel immune checkpoint called PVRIG is currently in development.

Tyrosine-kinase inhibitors have considerably improved survival outcomes for patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The FDA has granted a full approval and label update to ponatinib for patients with chronic phase, accelerated phase, or blast phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) or Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL) for whom no other tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy is indicated, as well as for patients with T315I-positive CML or T315I-positive Ph+ ALL.

The observed adverse events that have been associated with immunotherapy, especially immunotherapy combinations, have to be properly assessed against their clearly improved efficacy in patients with otherwise dismal prognosis from stage IV cancers.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a biologics license application for avelumab as a treatment for patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a supplemental biologics license application for pembrolizumab for previously treated patients with advanced microsatellite instability-high cancer.

The European Commission has granted a conditional approval to ixazomib in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone for adult patients with multiple myeloma following at least 1 prior therapy.

Significant progress is being made in the treatment of gynecologic malignancies, especially in ovarian cancer, according to Douglas A. Levine, MD.

Results from the phase III PALOMA-2 study—which demonstrated a significant progression-free survival advantage with palbociclib (Ibrance) plus letrozole compared with letrozole alone in ER-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer—were recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the past decade, the addition of tyrosine kinase inhibitors has had a huge impact on the treatment of renal cell carcinoma in the first- and second-line settings. Currently available agents include sorafenib, sunitinib, pazopanib, axitinib, and the recently-added cabozantinib, and lenvatinib.

For a second time, a clinical hold has been placed on the phase II ROCKET study exploring the CD19-targeted CAR T-cell therapy JCAR015 for adult patients with relapsed or refractory B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The change of administrations in Washington, DC may undermine the future of a proposal to revise Medicare Part B drug compensation, a plan that has been widely criticized in the oncological community because of the potential reduction in profit margins it entails.

The European Commission has approved nivolumab for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma after autologous stem cell transplant and treatment with brentuximab vedotin.