Anita T. Shaffer

Though a new generation of drugs has proved highly effective against the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a leading risk factor for liver cancer in the United States, there is conflicting evidence about whether the therapies promote cancer recurrence in infected patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who already have responded to curative treatment.

The optimal use of emerging assays that characterize molecular abnormalities from plasma in late-stage non-small cell lung cancer will be to augment tissue biopsies at initial diagnosis and to evaluate patients for second- and third-line therapies.

Precision oncology should play a vital role in the shift toward value-based medicine by helping to deliver more effective therapies with more manageable pricing profiles, according to John L. Marshall, MD.

A phase II study is exploring the oncolytic virus talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC; Imlygic) in the neoadjuvant setting for patients with resectable melanoma.

Findings for the new immunotherapy agent targeting claudin18.2 (CLDN18.2) presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting raised the possibility of a new therapeutic agent in a tumor type with relatively few current options. When added to standard chemotherapy, the treatment reduced the risk of death or disease progression by approximately 50% for patients with CLDN18.2-positive advanced gastric cancers.

The liquid biopsy testing method from a large genomic analysis of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in blood samples from more than 15,000 patients, was found to be closely correlated with mutations described in databases, and often from tumor biopsies as well, according to research presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Herceptin, a biosimilar version of trastuzumab, produced comparable efficacy rates and safety profile as trastuzumab in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, according to research presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Three years after the pembrolizumab (Keytruda) clinical trial for advanced melanoma that led to the drug's FDA approval, 40% of the patients are still alive.

Precision oncology should play a vital role in the shift toward value-based medicine by helping to deliver more effective therapies with more manageable pricing profiles.

Adding the monoclonal antibody daratumumab to standard multiple myeloma regimens showcased responses in 81% of patients with relapsed or refractory myeloma that were

The PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab in combination with an established multiple myeloma regimen showed responses in 76% of a cohort of 17 patients with relapsed/refractory disease in data one of several clinical trials presented at the 2015 ASH Annual Meeting.

Novel BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax showed a near 80% overall response rate (ORR) in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia harboring a chromosome 17p deletion.

An international team of experts is planning an innovative clinical trial to speed up development of new treatments for glioblastoma multiforme.

When cetuximab (Erbitux) was added to chemotherapy, the risk of death was reduced by 44% for patients with advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors test positive for EGFR gene amplification.

Compared with best available therapy, the novel JAK2 inhibitor pacritinib demonstrated significantly better outcomes in spleen volume reduction and symptom control when administered to patients with myelofibrosis.

The oral combination of olaparib, a PARP inhibitor, and BKM120, a PI3K inhibitor, demonstrated to be safe and clinical beneficial in women with high-grade serous ovarian cancer, as well as patients with triple-negative breast cancer.

The treatment options for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma are expanding rapidly, notably through clinical trial evidence supporting a number of three-drug combination regimens.

Intensifying the chemotherapy component of a standard first-line bevacizumab-containing regimen reduced the risk of death by about 20% and doubled the 5-year overall survival (OS) rate among patients with mCRC.

Researchers will dissect topline results from the MARIANNE trial in an effort to understand why T-DM1 failed to triumph as a first-line treatment in the metastatic setting for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer despite the promise of earlier findings.

Two HER2-targeting regimens anchored by T-DM1 failed to outperform the standard strategy in women with previously untreated advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, dealing a blow to efforts to move the drug into frontline settings.

Nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) was more effective than conventional paclitaxel as part of a neoadjuvant regimen for patients with high-risk early breast cancer in a large German study. These results were presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

PARP inhibitors represent an important class of emerging therapies for the treatment of patients with ovarian cancer and possibly other malignancies, but many scientific questions about the underlying molecular mechanisms that these agents target must be answered before they can be fully employed in clinical practice.

As the targeted therapy era in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) continues to unfold, two next-generation agents are generating responses with improved safety profiles as single agents and in combination regimens.

Five novel agents for the treatment of patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the lung will be evaluated in the recently launched Lung-MAP trial.

Two patients with metastatic cervical cancer achieved durable complete responses that have so far lasted from 15 to 22 months through an adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) targeting the human papillomavirus (HPV).

A dual HER2-blockade strategy that added lapatinib to trastuzumab for the adjuvant treatment of women with early breast cancer failed to demonstrate a significant improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) over the standard therapy with trastuzumab alone.

Combining the oral targeted agents olaparib and cediranib resulted in a near-doubling of median progression-free survival (PFS) among women with recurrent ovarian cancer.

In an interview with Targeted Therapies, Wierda discussed new treatments for CLL, including issues in translating these regimens into clinical practice.

Amid advances in targeted therapies for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), researchers also have been making strides in the realm of chemoimmunotherapy regimens for the disease.