Oncology Times - OncTimes Talk

About a quarter of all patients with newly diagnosed triple-negative breast cancer will not benefit from neoadjuvant checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy with an agent such as pembrolizumab—even though it improves outcomes among the remaining majority.   At the 14th European Breast Cancer Conference, held in Milan, Italy, Laura van ’t Veer, PhD, Program Leader of the Breast Oncology...

An early study of patients (Phase I/II) with acute myeloid leukemia found that a new three-drug combination therapy greatly improved outcomes—both in patients with relapsed or refractory disease and as initial therapy.  The new research involved adding quizartinib that targets fms-related tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) oncogene. Mutations of FLT3 are present in nearly a third of all AML tumor...

How best to treat patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma has been made clearer by a report from the multinational Phase III Sympatico Study, presented at the 65th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition held in San Diego. Lead author Michael Wang, MD, Professor in the Department of Lymphoma & Myeloma at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told the conference...

2024 is the 20th year of clinical studies conducted as part of the STAMPEDE (Systemic Therapy in Advancing or Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Evaluation of Drug Efficacy) trial, a series of investigational approaches to initial therapy for patients with high-risk prostate cancer. Patient accrual has now ended, but practice-changing data continue to emerge from STAMPEDE. New agents, regimens, and optim...

The multicenter RAMOSE randomized clinical trial has found that doublet growth factor tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, when compared with standard osimertinib monotherapy, achieved a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival in patients whose advanced non-small cell lung cancers were driven by mutated epidermal growth factor receptor. First author Xiuning Le, MD, PhD, As...

A new targeted drug, revumenib, was found to increase response rates and survival in patients whose previously treated acute leukemias relapsed or were refractory to treatment. A Phase II clinical study found revumenib met its primary endpoint and was stopped early because of a high patient response rate and clinical efficacy. Revumenib acts on the hitherto untargeted histone-lysine N-methyltransf...

A marked improvement in the outlook for patients with locally advanced cervical cancer has been achieved thanks to a neoadjuvant regimen using standard anti-cancer drugs added to usual therapy.  At the ESMO Congress 2023 held in Madrid, Spain, Mary McCormack, PhD, MBBS, FRCR, Consultant Clinical Oncologist at University College London Hospitals, reported findings from the GCIG INTERLACE rando...

Patients whose advanced non-small cell lung cancers harbor the RET gene fusion should receive initial treatment with the RET-targeted agent selpercatinib rather than chemotherapy or chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy. This clear message comes from the randomized Phase III LIBRETTO-431 study reported at ESMO Congress 2023 by Herbert Ho Fung Loong, MBBS, FRCP, Associate Professor in the Depart...

The preferred first-line treatment for patients with uncommon sensitizing mutations in tumor epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) should now be the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) afatinib, rather than osimertinib, according to Japanese researchers reporting the ACHILLES trial results at the ESMO Congress 2023 held in Madrid. OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin talked with Satoru Miura, MD...

Patients with high-risk prostate cancer who have been treated with radical prostatectomy gain no additional advantage and face extra toxicity if they choose to have adjuvant radiotherapy. That’s according to the findings of the randomized RADICALS study, reported at the ESMO Congress 2023. These results support the use of early salvage radiotherapy for PSA failure after radical prostatectomy...

Although immunotherapies for patients with solid tumors such as melanoma can be dramatically successful, the majority of patients are resistant and require alternative treatments. While the cytokine interleukin-12 is well known for potentiating the effect of immunotherapies, such as checkpoint blockade, it couldn’t be used because of toxicity. At the 2023 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Confere...

The process of identifying which patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) can benefit from allogeneic stem cell transplantation in first complete remission (CR1) has taken a step forward thanks to analysis of the UK NCRI AML17 and AML19 studies, reported at the 65th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition. Patients who achieved molecular residual disease (MRD) negativity in their peripheral blood were...

With no standard-of-care treatment for patients with high-risk relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma, promising remissions have been observed in a Phase II study reported at the 65th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition. The antibody-drug conjugate loncastuximab tesirine in combination with rituximab brought a very high complete metabolic response rate among patients satisfying the criteria for hig...

Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) have poor outcomes after the failure of covalent Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor treatment, and new therapeutic options are needed. Pirtobrutinib, a highly selective, noncovalent (reversible) BTK inhibitor, was designed to re-establish BTK inhibition.

In a multinational, Phase III, head-to-head trial, ibrutinib, a Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor, was compared with zanubrutinib, a BTK inhibitor with greater specificity, as treatment for relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). In prespecified interim analyses, zanubrutinib was superior to ibrutinib with respect to overall response (t...

Randomized trials of venetoclax plus anti-CD20 antibodies as first-line treatment in fit patients (i.e., those with a low burden of coexisting conditions) with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) have been lacking.

Patients with non-small cell lung cancer who have failed initial immunotherapy therapy with anti-programmed cell death ligand-1 (PDL-1) checkpoint inhibitors, have responded to a new “bispecific” antibody that targets both the programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) antibody and also the T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 3 (TIM-3) molecule. Benjamin Besse, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Research at the...

Patients with high-risk prostate cancer who have been treated with radical prostatectomy gain no additional advantage and face extra toxicity if they choose to have adjuvant radiotherapy. That’s according to the findings of the randomized RADICALS study, reported at the 2023 annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) held in Madrid, Spain. These results support the u...

Research presented at the 2023 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics found that a combination of two drugs targeting the nRAS mutation had clinical activity in patients with checkpoint-inhibitor refractory melanoma and had potential for treating other solid tumors with mutated nRAS as their oncogenic driver. Rodabe N. Amaria, MD, from the MD Anderson...

Although immunotherapies for patients with solid tumors such as melanoma can be dramatically successful, the majority of patients are resistant and require alternative treatments. While the cytokine interleukin 12 is well known for potentiating the effect of immunotherapies, such as checkpoint blockade, it could not be used because of toxicity. At the 2023 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference o...

Among patients with non-small cell lung cancers driven by mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), those with MET-amplification can now be selected for therapy with two tyrosine kinase inhibitor drugs, not just standard osimertinib. That’s according to conclusions from the INSIGHT 2 study reported at the AACR-NCI-EORTC international conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer...

The Chloride Intracellular Channel 1 (CLIC1) protein appears to hold the key to understanding the anti-proliferative action of metformin, according to laboratory evidence discussed at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics held in October 2023, in Boston. At the conference, Michele M. Mazzanti, PhD, from the Department of Bioscience, at Milan Unive...

Dr. Takahashi talks with OncTimes Talk’s Peter Goodwin about the Phase 2 study he presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, October 11 - 15, 2023. Dr. Takahashi reported an improvement in median overall survival among patients with relapsed small cell lung cancer who had the ATR inhibitor berzosertib added to standard topotecan.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is notoriously difficult to treat. Only 28 percent of patients survive beyond 5 years after diagnosis. Mitophagy, a process in which damaged mitochondria are eliminated to prevent the transmission of death signals, has been identified as a key mechanism that allows leukemia cells to resist the effects of the widely prescribed drug venetoclax, according to a recent stud...

Some of the big randomized clinical trials could lead to unintentional bias because of an imbalance of assigned treatment discontinuations between experimental and control arms, according to ASCO poster author Faris Tamimi, MD, at the University Health Network Division of Medical Oncology and Hematology at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin talked with Tamimi...