Vol. 18/No. 07

The results of a recent prospective study demonstrate that circulating tumor cells can reveal disease recurrence an average of 6 months prior to conventional imaging in patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer, findings that may help support the use of liquid biopsies to monitor high-risk patients in conjunction with screening.

The past several decades have witnessed a dramatic improvement in the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma, the second most common type of hematologic malignancy. A better understanding of the biology of this disease and the introduction of a wealth of novel drug classes has more than doubled median survival times.

Clara D. Bloomfield, MD, a groundbreaking researcher in adult leukemia and lymphoma who helped define new roles for women in science, was honored in the Myeloid Neoplasms category with a 2015 Giants of Cancer Care® award, a program that OncLive® developed to recognize leaders in the field.

Experts discuss the most effective ways to use new targeted therapies for patients with advanced hormone receptor-positive breast cancer in an OncLive Peer Exchange® panel.

Axitinib was a promising newcomer in the renal cell carcinoma field when it was introduced as a second-line therapy 5 years ago. Now it is being displaced by newer therapies, a development that may serve as a harbinger for the evolution of treatment patterns in other tumor types with a bounty of novel agents.

Investigators are seeking to determine whether adding tucatinib (ONT-380), a novel small-molecule HER2 inhibitor, to standard therapies will improve outcomes for patients with progressive metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer, including those with brain tumors.

Despite the importance of clinical trial data, there are problems with the way these data are presented. There is a need to simplify what is being discussed so that it can be more easily understood or summarized by patients and their advisers in their decision-making process.

Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute are formalizing their epigenetics program across dozens of disease research groups, with the goal of understanding what changes in the epigenome lead to cancer and identifying targeted, personalized ways to address these changes.

The relentless pace of change in cancer research and care is hardly news to practicing oncologists. It is worthwhile, however, to pause at times and ponder the implications of the speed and complexity of those developments.