Patricia Stewart

Chicago, IL—It is well documented that clinical trials thus far have for the most part excluded underserved populations, and that means the results of these trials cannot be generalized to society at large.

Chicago, IL—The presidential theme for the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting was “Partnering With Patients: The Cornerstone of Clinical Care and Research.” In his address during the opening session of the meeting, Eric P. Winer, MD, FASCO, ASCO’s 2022-2023 President, discussed the importance of physician–patient partnerships for improving healthcare outcomes.

Chicago, IL—Interim results from the phase 3 COMMANDS trial demonstrated that first-line treatment with luspatercept-aamt (Reblozyl) increased hemoglobin levels and enabled nearly twice as many patients with transfusion-dependent, lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) to avoid red blood cell transfusions during the first 24 weeks of the study compared with standard-of-care epoetin alfa.

Chicago, IL—The addition of the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab (Avastin) resulted in a substantial and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival (OS) in patients with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer, according to the final OS analysis of the phase 3 KEYNOTE-826 trial.

Chicago, IL—The addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib (Kisqali) to endocrine therapy significantly improved invasive disease-free survival in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative, early breast cancer, according to interim results from the phase 3 NATALEE trial, which were presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

During the 2023 American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, researchers presented results from a phase 2b clinical trial demonstrating significant improvement in recurrence-free survival in patients with high-risk melanoma who were treated with a combination of an investigational personalized mRNA-based vaccine plus the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda), compared with pembrolizumab alone.

Vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) can prevent several types of cancer, including cervical, oral/oropharyngeal, penile, and anal cancers. Unfortunately, vaccination rates, as well as public knowledge regarding the link between HPV and these cancers, are lagging, according to research presented during the 2023 American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting.

Young women with early-stage, hormone receptor–positive breast cancer attempting to become pregnant can safely pause endocrine therapy and resume it later, according to initial results from the international POSITIVE trial.

Older Black and Hispanic patients with advanced cancer are less likely than White patients to receive opioid medications for pain relief in the last weeks of life, according to the results of a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Patients undergoing hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) do not derive any benefit from the restrictive diet frequently prescribed to prevent infections, according to the results of a clinical trial presented during the 64th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.

A head-to-head phase 3 clinical trial in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) has found that zanubrutinib (Brukinsa), a next-generation Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor, was more effective at preventing disease progression and is better tolerated than ibrutinib (Imbruvica), a first-generation BTK inhibitor that is the current standard of care for this population of patients.

The use of low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) did not improve the rate of live births among pregnant women with inherited thrombophilia and recurrent miscarriage, according to results of a clinical trial presented during the 64th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.

According to findings from a phase 3 trial presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting 2022, the addition of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to sorafenib (Nexavar) can lengthen overall survival (OS) and delay tumor progression in patients with unresectable advanced hepatocellular cancer (HCC) without compromising quality of life.

New results from the PATHFINDER clinical trial suggest that a multicancer early detection blood test can accurately identify the presence of cancer in apparently healthy people.

Although it is well established that air pollution is associated with lung cancer, how this occurs has not been well described.

A shortened course of radiation therapy is safe and effective for men with high-risk prostate cancer, according to the results of the phase 3 Prostate Cancer Study 5 (PCS5) trial.

Results from a new study found that radiation oncologists tend to discuss sexual side effects in women undergoing treatment for cervical cancer far less frequently than they discuss sexual side effects in men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.

Dual immune checkpoint inhibition with the anti–PD-L1 antibody durvalumab (Imfinzi) and the investigational anti–CTLA-4 antibody tremelimumab combined with platinum-based chemotherapy showed promising clinical activity and a favorable safety profile in the neoadjuvant setting for patients with advanced ovarian cancer, according to results of a single-arm phase 2 study presented during the 2022 American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting.

Endocrine therapy after breast-conserving surgery may be the only treatment needed in patients aged ≥55 years with low-grade luminal type A breast cancer, sparing them radiation therapy, including its side effects, financial burden, and inconvenience, according to findings from the single-arm LUMINA clinical trial reported at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

In the phase 3 DETERMINATION trial—in which patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma were randomly assigned to a standard triplet regimen with and without autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT), with all receiving lenalidomide (Revlimid) maintenance therapy until disease progression—patients with ASCT had significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS) versus those who did not, but no difference in overall survival (OS) was observed between the 2 treatment arms.

Treatment with acalabrutinib (Calquence) elicited a complete or partial response in ≥50% of patients with relapsed or refractory marginal zone lymphoma (MZL), according to interim results of a study presented by L. Elizabeth Budde, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope, Duarte, CA, at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

Digital health technologies have the potential to help transform patient care, but there are barriers that need to be overcome, said Deb Schrag, MD, MPH, George J. Bosl Chair, Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and Professor, Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York City, during a keynote lecture at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2022.

The number of cancer survivors continues to increase in the United States, which can be attributed to a growing and aging population, as well as recent advances in diagnosis and treatment.

First-line treatment with dostarlimab-gxly (Jemperli), a PD-1 inhibitor, achieved complete responses (CRs) in 100% of a subset of patients with locally advanced mismatch repair-deficient (dMMR) rectal cancer, sparing them surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, as of the latest follow-up.

Combining the PARP inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) with abir­aterone acetate (Zytiga) led to a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in radiographic progression-free survival (PFS) versus abiraterone alone in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), regardless of homologous recombination repair (HRR) status, according to results of the phase 3 PROpel trial, presented at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Adjuvant pembrolizumab (Key­truda) continued to provide a disease-free survival (DFS) benefit in patients with renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) at intermediate-high or high risk of recurrence after nephrectomy, according to 30-month follow-up data from the KEYNOTE-564 trial presented at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

The phase 3 CheckMate-816 trial establishes a new standard of care for resectable non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC): neoadjuvant nivolu­mab (Opdivo) plus chemotherapy.

According to data from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Survey on COVID-19 in Oncology Registry, black or African-American patients with cancer and COVID-19 were more likely than non-Hispanic white patients to experience delays or disruptions in cancer treatment during the pandemic.

Patients with cancer and immunoglobulin deficiency have compromised immune systems–based response to COVID-19 vaccines. A team of researchers in Germany has developed a multipeptide COVID-19 vaccine that boosts immunity in immunocompromised patients, according to results of a phase 1/2 trial reported at the 2022 American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.

The use of a polygenic score (PGS) based on noncancer genetic variations in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) values helped to refine PSA screening in a large group of men without prostate cancer at baseline.

The addition of sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy), an antibody–drug conjugate, to the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) showed encouraging antitumor activity in checkpoint inhibitor–naïve patients with metastatic urothelial cancer, according to an analysis of the results of cohort 3 from the phase 2 TROPHY-U-01 clinical trial, which were presented at the 2022 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium by Petros Grivas, MD, PhD, Clinical Director, Genitourinary Cancers Program, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and Associate Professor, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle.

Sotorasib (Lumakras) continues to demonstrate durable efficacy in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with KRAS p.G12C mutation at 2-year follow-up of the phase 2 CodeBreaK 100 clinical trial.

The investigational oral selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) elacestrant (RAD1901) significantly reduced the risk for death or disease progression and improved progression-free survival (PFS) compared with standard-of-care (SOC) endocrine therapy in patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer who had progressed on prior endocrine and targeted therapies, according to results of the phase 3 EMERALD clinical trial.

The antibody–drug conjugate polatuzumab vedotin-piiq (Polivy) added to R-CHP (rituximab [Rituxan], cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and prednisone) achieved a 27% reduction in the risk for progression or death compared with the standard regimen of R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) as first-line therapy for patients with intermediate- and high-risk diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

According to results presented at the 2021 ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition, new sequencing technologies may overcome previous limitations of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) profiling in patients with central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma.

Dual EGFR targeting with amivantamab-vmjw (Rybrevant) plus lazertinib (Leclaza) led to durable responses in more than one-third of chemotherapy-naïve patients with EGFR-positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease had progressed on osimertinib (Tagrisso) therapy, according to a cohort analysis of the CHRYSALIS trial, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2021 virtual annual meeting.

Treatment with the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) following surgery significantly extended disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with high-risk, clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) compared with placebo, according to the results of the KEYNOTE-564 clinical trial. These findings were reported during a plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 virtual annual meeting.

The addition of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor tucatinib (Tukysa) to trastuzumab (Herceptin) and capecitabine continued to improve overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, according to updated results from the pivotal HER2CLIMB trial.

The addition of ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617, a radionuclide therapy that targets prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), to standard-of-care treatment resulted in a 38% reduction in the risk for death versus standard of care alone in men with progressive PSMA-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), according to findings from the phase 3 VISION clinical trial, which were presented during a plenary session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 virtual annual meeting.

Approximately 13% of patients with lung adenocarcinoma harbor the KRAS p.G12C mutation, which is associated with poor clinical outcomes.

The addition of the PI3K inhibitor copanlisib (Aliopa) to rituximab (Rituxan) reduced the risk for disease progression or death by 48% compared with rituximab alone in patients with relapsed indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in the phase 3 CHRONOS-3 clinical trial.

Selpercatinib (Retevmo) demonstrated antitumor activity in RET fusion–positive tumors other than lung cancer and thyroid cancer, according to interim results from the phase 1/2 LIBRETTO-001 clinical trial.

Researchers have identified 2 inherited pathogenic genetic variants in patients with pediatric neuroblastoma, according to results from a study presented at the 2021 virtual American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.

According to results from a large meta-analysis, breast cancer survivors of child-bearing age are less likely than the general population to get pregnant and face greater risk for certain complications, including preterm labor and cesarean section.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions to virtually all aspects of oncology care. There has been a steep drop in cancer diagnoses and screenings—a result of shelter-in-place policies instituted early on, as well as ongoing patient fears about returning to healthcare facilities for new appointments or follow-up care.

In patients with metastatic urothelial cancer who received previous therapy, as well as in cisplatin-ineligible patients with this cancer, enfortumab vedotin-ejfv (Padcev) improved overall survival (OS), according to new data presented at the 2021 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Cabazitaxel (Jevtana) is approved as third-line therapy for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) after treatment with docetaxel and an androgen receptor inhibitor.

Results of the SWOG S1007 RxPONDER clinical trial suggest that many postmenopausal women with early-stage hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth receptor 2 (HER2)-negative breast cancer, and 1 to 3 positive axillary lymph nodes may be able to avoid adjuvant chemotherapy.

In a phase 3 clinical trial, ruxolitinib (Jakafi) led to superior overall response rates and durable responses compared with best available therapy (ie, control group) in patients with steroid-dependent or steroid-refractory chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), with acceptable safety, according to results presented at ASH 2020.

The randomized phase 2 CAPTIVATE clinical trial showed that first-line therapy with ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and venetoclax (Venclexta) for a fixed duration (ie, 12 cycles) led to a 30-month progression-free survival (PFS) in more than 95% of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and undetectable minimal residual disease (MRD).

At the National Comprehensive Cancer Network 2020 Virtual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies, multiple myeloma expert Shaji Kumar, MD, discussed the “bonanza of treatment regimens for multiple myeloma.” Although several new treatments and combination regimens have extended survival in patients with multiple myeloma, this cancer remains an incurable chronic disease, he said.

“COVID-19 is more than just the common cold. It represents a perpetual challenge for which we have to be perpetually prepared,” stated Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD), in his keynote lecture at the July 2020 AACR virtual meeting on COVID-19 and cancer.

During the July 2020 AACR virtual meeting on COVID-19 and cancer, Solange Peters, MD, PhD, European Society for Medical Oncology President, and Head, Medical Oncology Department, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland, delivered the keynote address, providing an update on the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium cohort study.

During the July 2020 AACR virtual meeting on COVID-19 and cancer, Solange Peters, MD, PhD, European Society for Medical Oncology President, and Head, Medical Oncology Department, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland, delivered the keynote address, providing an update on the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium cohort study.

Early results from the phase 2 TheraP clinical trial show that the targeted radiation therapy ¹⁷⁷Lutetium PSMA-617 (Lu-PSMA) significantly improved prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response compared with standard cabazitaxel in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) that progressed after docetaxel therapy.

Oral relugolix given daily is superior to standard an­drogen-­deprivation therapy (ADT) with leuprolide (Lupron) in men with advanced prostate cancer, according to the results of the phase 3 HERO study, which were reported at the ASCO 2020 virtual annual meeting and published online before the meeting (Shore ND, et al. N Engl J Med. 2020;382:2187-2196).

Updated results of the phase 3 CASPIAN clinical trial continue to show that durvalumab (Imfinzi) added to standard chemotherapy improves overall survival (OS) for patients with treatment-naïve extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC), according to a presentation at the ASCO 2020 virtual annual meeting.

Interim analysis of the phase 3 JAVELIN Bladder 100 clinical trial showed that maintenance therapy with the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab (Bavencio) plus best supportive care significantly prolonged overall survival (OS) versus best supportive care alone in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma whose disease did not progress with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.