Oncology Times - OncTimes Talk

Although T-DXd had already been licensed for use in all categories of HER2 positivity, including patients with so-called HER2-low tumors (defined as having immunohistochemical score of 1+ or 2+ with non-amplified in-situ hybridization), doubts have remained about the effectiveness of this antibody drug conjugate in the subset of such patients who also have low expression of the estrogen receptor,...

A mathematical study of real-world data from 27,855 women whose breast cancer was diagnosed between 2008 and 2020 has shown that a machine-learning artificial intelligence algorithm was able to predict mortality and could become a key weapon in the clinician’s armory when selecting therapies on the basis of predicted survival. Initial findings and conclusions from the study were reported at the Eu...

Caution was expressed at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting about potential adverse effects from one form of breast cancer treatment de-escalation. A poster warns about risks from omitting axillary sentinel node surgery in older women.   In this edition of OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin hears about axillary dissection in older women with clinically...

A real-world study reported at the ESMO Breast Cancer 2023 Annual Congress identified a risk for inappropriate therapeutic decision-making resulting from an alarmingly high rate of false-negative tests coming from biopsy specimens looking for biological parameters such as PR and HER2.  Study researchers at the University of Catania suggested tumor heterogeneity was a big reason why markers li...

Patients with breast cancer who complied fully with their adjuvant endocrine medication lived 15 percent longer than those who skipped doses, according to a huge real-world study coordinated from Tübingen University, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, reported at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting. OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin discusses the findings with senior author of the study, Dominik Danne...

Being overweight or obese can reduce the benefit of extending adjuvant breast cancer hormone therapy in women younger than 60 years, according to research from the DATA trial discussed at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Breast Cancer 2023 Congress. Senna W.M. Lammers, MD, from Maastricht University Medical Centre in The Netherlands, reported her findings from the DATA trial lookin...

Non-small cell lung cancer was one of the big topics at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting where Heather Wakelee, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Oncology at Stanford University in California, was overheard reminding a junior cancer doctor that the only adjuvant therapy for lung cancer had been chemotherapy just a couple of decades previously.  Now, a plethora of targe...

End-of-life care for patients with cancer could be significantly improved while simultaneously reducing cost according to the findings of a study from the University of Pennsylvania. Ravi Parikh, MD, MPH, talks with OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin about his findings on the value of harnessing AI to help doctors have serious illness conversations with patients during end-of-life care.

Roy Herbst, MD PhD, Deputy Director of the Yale Cancer Center at Yale School of Medicine, talks with OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin about his group’s findings from the international Phase III ADAURA clinical trial looking at adjuvant therapy with the anti EGFR-mutant drug osimertinib in patients with completely resected stage one B to three A non-small cell lung cancer. In a late-breakin...

Roy Herbst, MD PhD, Deputy Director of the Yale Cancer Center at Yale School of Medicine, talks with OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin about his group’s findings from the international Phase III ADAURA clinical trial looking at adjuvant therapy with the anti EGFR-mutant drug osimertinib in patients with completely resected stage one B to three A non-small cell lung cancer. In a late-b...

Progress in esophageal cancer is forging ahead at Columbia University in New York. Brian Henick, MD, is a medical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with malignancies of the aerodigestive tract. As Associate Director of Experimental Therapeutics and Director of Translational Research in Aerodigestive Cancers in Medical Oncology, Henick is involved in a wide range of studies at Columbi...

Today we are introducing the new Oncology Times Editorial Board Chair: Stephanie L. Graff, MD, FACP. In her new role, Graff will help Oncology Times continue to provide essential clinical news and analysis for the cancer care community. Graff is Director of Breast Oncology at Lifespan Cancer Institute and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brown University. Oncology Times contributor Catlin Nalley...

When cancer advances to an incurable stage, some patients may prioritize treatment that will extend their life as long as possible, and others may prefer a care plan that’s designed to minimize pain. Talking to patients about their prognosis and values can help clinicians develop care plans that are better aligned to each patient’s goals. However, it’s essential that the discussions happen before...

Despite increased screening and HPV vaccines, cervical cancer remains the fourth-leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. Screening guidelines are constantly scrutinized and reassessed. The most current U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) guidelines recommend screening for cervical cancer every 3 years with cervical cytology alone in women aged 21 to 29 years. For women aged...

This episode is Research Review, a quarterly review of the research you may have missed. Today, we are covering the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting highlights. First Up, results from the ECOG-ACRIN E1910 Randomized Phase III clinical trial showed that blinatumomab improved overall survival in newly diagnosed adult patients with b-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia. First author of...

Sarcoma represents an incredibly rare group of cancers comprised of 50 histologic subtypes, with approximately 13,000 new diagnoses per year. Each histologic type exhibits a unique biologic behavior, and, as such, prognosis and optimal treatment strategies vary. Sarcoma can appear anywhere in the body, and local invasion of nearby organs may make surgical resection difficult or impossible. This ma...

A study using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells has proven to be safe for treating patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The agent known as PRGN-3006 also brought remissions among patients who had chemotherapy for lymphodepletion prior to their CAR-T cell procedure (Abstract 4633). After the lead author of the new study, David Sallman, MD, from the Moffitt Cancer...

Colorectal cancer is the third most diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. The current gold standard for screening, the colonoscopy, reduces cancer deaths by 67 percent, according to a 2018 study from Kaiser Permanente. So, we know screening is effective. However, obstacles remain. Colonoscopies are invasive and costs can be prohibitive. An alarming trend has als...

BARCELONA, Spain—Patients with solid tumors expressing mutated AKT oncogenes responded to therapy with a pan-AKT inhibitor—the investigational drug ipatasertib—in a Phase I study reported at the 2022 EORTC—NCI—AACR symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics. Nearly a quarter of the patients treated with the AKT blocker had their tumors shrink. These included patients with breast, endom...

BARCELONA, Spain—Liquid biopsies are increasingly used to identify cancer progression and could also provide molecular evidence of higher risk for hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, according to findings from a study of circulating tumor DNA reported at the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer—National Cancer Institute—American Association for Cancer Research (EORTC-N...

In oncology today, there is an urgent need to better understand the implications of racial bias and disparities on the health outcomes of patients. Although breast cancer mortality rates decreased by 43 percent from 1989 to 2020, Black women remain more likely to die from breast cancer compared with White women, according to the 2022 American Cancer Society’s update on breast cancer statistics in...

We talk to Naveen Pemmaraju, MD, about the results of the largest prospective BPDCN trial evaluating the CD123-targeted therapy tagraxofusp in adults with treatment-naive and relapsed/refractory blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN). BPDCN is a rare and aggressive myeloid malignancy of the dendritic cell lineage which can affect other organs such as the lymph nodes, spleen, central...

Today on OncTimes Talk, we are getting to know a clinical researcher in 5 questions. We sat down with Sandeep Mittan, PhD, FAHA, who is a Clinical Scientist in the Division of Women’s Health and Medical Oncology at the Montefiore Medical Center and The University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His work investigates mechanisms responsible for aging and cardiovascular...

PARIS, France—One of the most prominent late-breaking abstracts reported at ESMO 2022 in Paris was about a rare cancer, desmoid tumor, for which no standard therapy had yet been recommended and for which there had been a clear unmet need. A team from Germany presented new findings from a randomized study using nirogacestat, a “NOTCH inhibitor”—gamma secretase inhibitor—that the investigators sugge...

The availability of a blood test for circulating DNA that can be used widely in healthy individuals to check for molecular signs of multiple cancers led Deb Schrag, MD, MPH, formerly of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston and currently Chair of the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, to research it's use as a means of spotting a wide range of cancers ear...