All Oncology News

A new clinical trial for women with clinically aggressive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) will test a novel theory: Will a diet low in an essential nutrient make TNBC cells more vulnerable to cell killing by a new cancer drug?

Immunotherapy has been a game changer in oncology, improving survival and providing long, durable responses in melanoma, lung, head and neck cancer, and others.

The European Medicines Agency has accepted and validated a marketing authorization application for avelumab as a treatment for patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma.

The FDA has has granted a priority review to a new drug application for brigatinib for patients with metastatic ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer who are resistant to prior crizotinib.

CVS Health has changed its mind about excluding physician-owned dispensaries from Medicare Part D drug distribution.

Novel agents being explored in the landscape of both peripheral and cutaneous T-cell lymphomas could lead to an expansion of treatment options for patients.

Before undergoing surgery, radiation therapy, or a systemic treatment, Clayton S. Lau, MD, advises that the active surveillance approach for some patients with early prostate cancer is likely a more effective approach—but they should be better educated on it.

First-line pembrolizumab demonstrated significant antitumor activity in cisplatin-ineligible patients with metastatic urothelial cancer.

The treatment paradigm of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has been rapidly changing. First, the FDA approved the combination of lenvatinib and everolimus in May 2016 as a treatment for patients with advanced RCC following prior antiangiogenic therapy.

As more agents are approved in the treatment paradigm of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, researchers are exploring frontline options—in addition to ibrutinib and the regimen of fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab—in ongoing trials.

Several recent trials have supported the use of chemotherapy in the frontline setting for patients with hormone-sensitive metastatic prostate cancer.

Single-agent olaparib significantly improved progression-free survival compared with placebo in the maintenance setting for patients with advanced BRCA-positive ovarian cancer.

Updated results from the CheckMate-205 trial showed that nivolumab had an objective response rate of 73% in a cohort of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma who received brentuximab vedotin before and/or after autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Results from an expansion cohort of a preliminary clinical trial have shown encouraging activity for a novel antibody-drug conjugate in patients with heavily pretreated advanced ovarian cancer.

Mark Pegram, MD, sheds light on some of the recent groundbreaking trials in HER2-positive breast cancer and how they have come to shape the current treatment paradigm.

The FDA has approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the frontline treatment of patients with metastatic non­–small cell lung cancer whose tumors have ≥50% PD-L1 expression based on an FDA-approved test and who do not harbor EGFR or ALK aberrations.

Kimberly L. Blackwell, MD, discusses the latest advances for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and provides insight on the hurdles that still remain.

Suzanne L. Topalian, MD, discusses the development of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, emerging biomarkers, and why a precision medicine approach is necessary to identify effective immunotherapy combination regimens.

Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, discusses the MONALEESA-2 trial, in which the addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to letrozole significantly improved progression-free survival in women with hormone receptor–positive advanced breast cancer.

The FDA has granted a priority review designation to nivolumab as a treatment for patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic urothelial carcinoma following progression on a platinum-containing therapy.

Denosumab is noninferior to zoledronic acid at delaying skeletal-related events for patients with multiple myeloma.

The FDA has updated the label for enzalutamide in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer to include new data from the phase II TERRAIN study.

Pembrolizumab improved survival compared with chemotherapy in previously treated patients with advanced urothelial cancer in the phase III KEYNOTE-045 trial.

The latest company to suffer a public relations and stock price crisis based on its drug pricing strategy is Ariad Pharmaceuticals, which has been blasted by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) on Twitter and in a formal letter demanding justification for the price tag Ariad has attached to the chronic myelogenous leukemia drug ponatinib.

Given the poor prognoses often seen in patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer, researchers are seeking novel therapies that may hold more promise than surgery or radiation.

Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia have an increased likelihood of developing secondary cancers and other diseases, often based on their age and gender.

Though some patients with medullary thyroid cancer can live with their disease without progression for long periods of time, the majority will eventually enter a phase in which their cancer becomes much more aggressive.

A novel HER2-targeting antibody-drug conjugate showed promising antitumor activity across multiple tumor types, including HER2-postive breast cancer.

Co-inhibition of BRAF and MEK pathways with dabrafenib and trametinib continued to be superior to sole BRAF inhibition with vemurafenib in patients with unresectable metastatic melanoma at 3 years.