June 2013

Combining paclitaxel with the investigational compound neratinib increased response rates versus neratinib alone in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Acute myeloid leukemia is potentially driven by at least one genetic mutation in nearly all cases, with a complex interaction of multiple genetic events contributing to the development of the disease

An analysis of more than 13,000 patients with ovarian cancer found that only around 37% of patients receive care that adheres to the NCCN guidelines.

Less than one-third of all survivors of adult cancers in the United States had discussions with their healthcare providers about their psychosocial care needs.

Alterations in the chromosomes of two genes have been implicated in an increased risk of prostate cancer mortality, and the discovery holds promise for distinguishing which patients are candidates for more aggressive therapy.

Women with advanced ovarian cancer lived almost a year longer when treated with intraperitoneal chemotherapy instead of intravenous therapy.

Highlights of key findings from several phase I clinical trials that provide insight into new and emerging druggable targets and targeted therapies.

Women with breast cancer who are carriers of BRCA1 mutations have increased mortality compared with noncarriers, according to a retrospective study carried out in the Netherlands.

Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Sandy Truong, a Harvard Medical School student, discuss the needs of cancer survivors and their efforts to optimize survivorship care.

A two-step immunotherapy approach consisting of adoptive T-cell therapy and a dendritic cell vaccine has shown activity in a phase I advanced ovarian cancer clinical trial.

Platinum-taxane combination therapy remains the standard for treatment of advanced cervical cancer, according to results of a randomized trial.

Investigators identified three proteins that were able to predict response to treatment with a MEK inhibitor plus a PI3 kinase inhibitor-an investigational approach to NSCLC, including some KRAS-mutated cancers.

A dual-action PARP inhibitor has shown sufficient clinical activity to continue its investigation in women with recurrent BRCA-mutant ovarian cancer.

In the past year, clinical laboratories have begun determining the tumor mutational status of multiple genes simultaneously using next-generation sequencing platforms.

Squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck have different patterns of genetic alterations, some of which may be actionable or druggable with available agents or drugs in development.

Running on a parallel track to the rapid pace of discovery in oncology is another revolution: the business side of delivering oncology care. In fact, the cancer care delivery landscape may be changing faster than the science track.

Using an intermittent dosing strategy with vemurafenib, instead of continuous dosing, has the potential to overcome the development of resistance in patients with melanoma treated with the drug.

Women with the highest expression of HER2 had the most benefit from T-DM1, while the presence of PIK3CA mutations had no effect on response to T-DM1 but did interfere with response to capecitabine/lapatinib.

Ibrutinib was well tolerated and highly effective in eradicating tumor cells in both treatment-naïve and relapsed/refractory patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in an ongoing phase II study.