Audrey Sternberg

A first-in-human study of the bispecific antibody RO7122290 alone or in combination with atezolizumab showed preliminary antitumor activity and a good safety profile for patients with advanced solid tumors, according to findings of the trial presented at the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020.

In patients with non–small cell lung cancer who were eligible for surgical resection, treatment with one dose of neoadjuvant atezolizumab was considered safe and induced major pathological responses in some patients.

An analysis of patient samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas indicated a possible connection between tumor responses to immunotherapy and patient baseline characteristics after investigators discovered evidence of stronger immune selection by female and younger patients in early tumorigenesis.

Patients considered to have early myelofibrosis are a heterogeneous group for whom disease risk, best treatment strategies, and the probability of mortality are best determined individually by looking at patient’s clinical characteristics and molecular markers together.

Men who are carriers of a BRCA2 pathogenic variant were more likely to develop breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers than patients harboring BRCA1, according to an analysis of male and female carriers of BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants.

According to the CDC, patients at any age who have cancer are at an increased risk of severe illness due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and this may be aggravated by aspects such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors.

Like never before, presentations related to systemic therapies for biliary tract cancers are taking center stage at medical and oncology conferences, generating hope that treating physicians will have multiple options in the near future.

Breakthrough data for systemic therapies in the treatment of various hematologic malignancies impressed attendees at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Virtual Scientific Program.

Broad adoption of testing methods that allow for assessing all possible actionable targets and diagnostic markers in advanced cancer is becoming more complex with greater availability of lifesaving targeted therapies.

In patients with advanced melanoma whose disease progressed on immunotherapy, the use of fecal microbiota transplant achieved objective responses, in a phase I study.

Management of treatment-associated dermatologic adverse events that commonly occur as a result of cytotoxic or targeted therapy is critical to prevent dose modifications or interruptions that could negatively affect clinical outcomes.

An analysis of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma revealed that systemic therapy with cabozantinib induced reliable responses for patients regardless of whether or not they had received prior immunotherapy, according to data that were presented as part of the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology Virtual Scientific Program.

Statistically significant improvements in time to second progression or death, or PFS2, was demonstrated in the bevacizumab/niraparib combination, as well as other positive clinical outcomes.

Frontline treatment with the TIGIT inhibitor tiragolumab plus atezolizumab demonstrated greater efficacy versus single-agent checkpoint inhibitor therapy in locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer, according to results of the phase 2 CITYSCAPE trial reported at the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology Virtual Scientific Program.

"Our efforts in the cancer clinic have been driven by patient safety and also maintaining patient access to care. In the age of COVID-19, those 2 things are sometimes at odds with each other."

"Liquid biopsy is useful at any time when a physician needs genomic information about their patient’s cancer in order to make a treatment decision."

"Intravesical nadofaragene firadenovec [recombinant adenovirus interferon alpha achieved a 53.4% CR rate in patients with BCG-unresponsive carcinoma in situ of the bladder."

Interim findings of the ongoing phase II ZENITH20 trial demonstrated that poziotinib induced a 68.7% disease control rate when used as treatment of patients with pretreated non–small cell lung cancer harboring an EGFR exon 20 insertion.

Expanded indications in the treatment of cancers with novel therapy biomarkers were a notable result of drug approvals in the past year. In order to facilitate the identification of these molecular markers, more targeted agents are being approved with associated companion diagnostics, made evident by 3 such tests approved in 2019.

From reprioritizing office visits to rescheduling surgical procedures and even delaying clinical trials, coronavirus disease 2019 has affected every facet of life on a global scale. Oncologists who are already challenged to keep their patients healthy from more run-off-the-mill infections must now contend with a new pathogen.

Combination therapy strategies involving immune checkpoint inhibitors and a secondary agent have shown promise across sarcoma subtypes, according to analysis of clinical trial data that were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Sarcoma & GIST Symposium 2020, held in Milan, Italy.

Pembrolizumab plus enzalutamide in castration- resistant prostate cancer that exhibited enzalutamide resistance led to positive antitumor signals and a favorable safety profile, according to results of the phase II KEYNOTE-199  trial presented  at the 2020  Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Use of the liquid biopsy assay MSK-ACCESS has led to detection of actionable genetic variants in 40% of tumor samples, offering an attrac­tive alternative to invasive tumor biopsies in patients with no available tissue for testing. 

The use of genetic testing by way of tumor tissue analysis combined with liquid biopsy monitoring at different time points throughout the disease progression of colorectal cancer may help optimize treatment selection.

In response to frequent and substantial changes in the treatment of non–small cell lung cancer in the frontline set­ting, the American Society of Clinical Oncology has partially updated its 2017 guide­line for the treatment of patients with stage IV disease without driver mutations.

As business slows down in most sectors worldwide due to the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the biopharmaceutical industry is doubling its efforts in order to develop life-saving vaccines and diagnostic tools for use by clinicians across medical specialties. Swift actions by the FDA and other public health organizations are being taken to ensure the health care industry has the tools it needs to care for patients who may be affected by the virus.

Microsatellite instability has been an FDA-indicated biomarker for immunotherapy since 2017, when the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab was approved for patients with solid tumors found to be mismatch repair deficient or MSI high. Other approvals since then, such as for the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab in patients with MSI-H/dMMR metastatic colorectal can­cer, have established the relevance of cancer thera­pies for tumors with this biomarker specifically rather than tumor histology alone.

At the 24th Annual International Congress on Hematologic Malignancies, host by Physicians’ Education Resourceâ, LLC, Ruben Mesa, MD, who is director of the UT San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center, presented available and emerging therapy options for patients who require additional MF therapy following ruxolitinib.

Updated results from the phase II arm of the DeCidE1 trial of DPX-Survivac demonstrated promising activity and tolerability in patients with heavily pretreated, advanced recurrent ovarian cancer, according to the developer of the agent IMV Inc.

A fixed-dose subcutaneous formulation of pertuzumab and trastuzumab in combination with intravenous chemotherapy has been accepted by the FDA for the treatment of eligible patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, which is supported by results of the phase III FeDeriCa study.