Audrey Sternberg

In a <em>Targeted Oncology</em>&trade; case-based peer perspective live discussion, Sandip P. Patel, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego Health, discussed EGFR inhibition options for patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, based on the case of a real patient.

Clinically meaningful outcomes in patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease were observed with administration of the selective ROCK2 inhibitor KD025, according to interim results of the phase II ROCKstar trial presented at the 2020 Transplant and Cellular Therapies Meetings in Orlando, Florida.

Evolving data about possible therapeutic targets for the treatment of transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy may introduce narsoplimab as a new therapy for management of patients with this challenging complication.

Evaluation of an expansion cohort of the pivotal phase I/II ZUMA-1 trial in patients with refractory large B-cell lymphoma revealed that early steroid intervention may have a positive impact on the toxicity profile of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy with axicabtagene&nbsp;ciloleucel, according to findings presented during a poster session at the 2020 Transplantation &amp; Cellular Therapy Meetings in Orlando, Florida.

Use of an off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor T-cell product may be feasible for use in patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell malignancies for whom no other available therapies exist, according to results of a phase I trial in adult and pediatric patients that were presented at the 2020 Transplant &amp; Cellular Therapies Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Preliminary results of the phase III SIERRA trial indicate that conditioning therapy with iodine apamistamab leads to high rates of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant in patients with active acute myeloid leukemia, according to Boglarka Gyurkocza, MD, who presented midpoint results of the trial at the 2020 Transplant &amp; Cellular Therapies Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Outpatient treatment with&nbsp;lisocabtagene maraleucel&nbsp;had consistent efficacy and safety with that of a previously reported clinical trial involving patients who were treated at university medical centers, according to results of 3 studies reported at the 2020 Transplantation &amp; Cellular Therapy Meetings in Orlando, Florida.

Treating chronic graft-versus-host disease with ruxolitinib in both adult and pediatric patients was found to be safe and effective based on data from 2 separate single-center retrospective analyses whose results were presented during a poster session at the 2020 Transplantation &amp; Cellular Therapy Meetings in Orlando, Florida.

Accelerated approval has been granted by the FDA to the methyltransferase inhibitor tazemetostat for the treatment of metastatic or locally advanced epithelioid sarcoma in adult and adolescent patients who are not eligible for complete resection.<br /> &nbsp;

Recent study results suggest that guideline recommendations for biomarker testing in metastatic colon cancer are not consistent with real-world care. A retrospective review of the COTA Real World Data database showed suboptimal adherence to testing guidelines for RAS, BRAF, and microsatellite instability (MSI)/mismatch repair deficiency in this patient population.

Results of the phase II DREAMM-2 trial recently published in The Lancet Oncology showed that the investigational agent belantamab mafodotin induced response rates above 30% and had a manageable safety profile in patients with heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

During a Targeted Oncology&trade; case-based peer perspectives live discussion, Ravi&nbsp;Vij,&nbsp;MD, MBA, professor, Department of Medicine, Oncology Division, Bone Marrow Tranplantation &amp; Leukemia, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis spoke with a group of oncologists about best practices for treating patients with multiple myeloma. The ideas he presented were based on a real case of a male patient with multiple myeloma.

The addition of pembrolizumab to standard-of-care chemotherapy for neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment of early triple-negative breast cancer lead to higher rates of pathologic complete responses in the KEYNOTE-522 trial, especially in those patients with stage III and/or node-positive disease.

&nbsp;In a&nbsp;<em>Targeted Oncology&nbsp;</em>case-based peer perspectives live discussion with a group of physicians, C. Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, reviewed several combination regimens used in the treatment of multiple myeloma. Landgren, chief of the Myeloma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, used the case of a 51-year-old man with standard-risk disease to highlight the benefits and drawbacks of each therapy strategy.

Patients with a difficult-to-treat form of multiple myeloma who were treated with a novel, bispecific anti-BCMA/anti-CD38 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy experienced promising responses and a manageable safety profile, according to results of a study that were presented at the 61st Annual American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.<br /> &nbsp;

The signal transduction inhibitor tipifarnib induced disease control in all patients with HRAS-mutant head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and a high variant allele frequency, according to preliminary results of a phase II trial presented at the 2019 American Association for Cancer Research&ndash;National Cancer Institute&ndash;European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.

In patients whose solid<strong> </strong>tumors harbor a mutation in <em>KRAS </em>G12C, therapy with MRTX849 has produced promising responses and acceptable toxicity across 3 tumors types, according to data presented at the 2019 American Association for Cancer Research&ndash;National Cancer Institute&ndash;European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.

PARP inhibitors are increasingly relevant for frontline maintenance indications and potentially in combination with chemotherapy for treatment-na&iuml;ve ovarian cancer, including for those with <em>BRCA</em>-wildtype disease, Leslie M. Randall, MD, said to the audience at the <em>37th Annual</em> CFS.

Deciding between a watch-and-wait approach and systemic therapy in patients with newly diagnosed follicular lymphoma should be carefully assessed based on specific disease characteristics, with follow-up tailored toward patients&rsquo; risk of relapse, according to John P. Leonard, MD.

During a recent&nbsp;Targeted Oncology&nbsp;live case-based peer perspectives event, Olga Frankfurt, MD, discussed the complications that could development during the treatment of patients with graft-vs-host disease. Frankfurt explained these complications in the context of a patient who develops acute GVHD after undergoing hematopoietic cell transplant.&nbsp;

The advent of an era of targeted immunotherapy and CAR T-cell therapies for the treatment of adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia may reduce the need for hematopoietic stem cell transplant in certain cases.<br /> &nbsp;

The introduction of<strong> </strong>CDK4/6 inhibitors for the treatment of hormone receptor&ndash;positive, HER2-negative breast cancer has transformed therapy management and extended survival for this patient population. The next step in the process of tailoring therapy towards individual patients is the introduction of targeted therapies for patient subsets with driver aberrations.

During his presentation at the Cleveland Clinic Cholangiocarcinoma Symposium, Davendra P.S. Sohal, MD, MPH, reviewed promising novel therapies and those that recently gained indications for patients with cholangiocarcinoma.

&ldquo;New therapies have increased the median survival for advanced-stage melanoma from approximately 9 months before 2011 to at least 2 years, based on [data from] clinical trials,&rdquo; Elizabeth Ward, PhD, and colleagues wrote about their report on cancer burden in younger patients.

Certain patients with cancer who are treated using immune checkpoint inhibitors may develop a form of insulin-dependent diabetes that is associated with immune-related adverse events resulting from therapy, according to research published in <em>The Lancet Diabetes &amp; Endocrinology</em>.

&quot;Early-relapsing lymphoma is a problem, there is no debate about that. The hard part is in trying to manage these patients effectively,&rdquo; Jonathon B. Cohen, MD, MS, told an audience at the 2019 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology conference held in Sea Island, Georgia.<br /> &nbsp;

Based on findings from retrospective analyses and clinical trial data, patients with <em>ALK</em>-rearranged non&ndash;small cell lung cancer may be able to receive sequential ALK inhibitors following progression with similar second and third-generation agents.

The addition of carboplatin and pemetrexed to therapy with gefitinib in patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer and an <em>EGFR</em>-sensitizing mutation had a statistically significant effect on progression-free survival and overall survival and represents a new therapy option for these patients.

Both cell cycle-specific and nonspecific mechanisms that lead to acquired resistance to CDK4/6 inhibition in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer have resulted in multiple promising agents and combinations for the second-line management of metastatic disease.

The initial pilot study of CTL019 in heavily pretreated CD19-positive hematologic malignancies demonstrated the feasibility of CAR T-cell therapy in patients with CLL. A presentation at the 2019 American Society of Gene &amp; Cell Therapy Annual Meeting reported 2 cases of chemotherapy-resistant CLL, with ongoing follow- up at 8 years showing persistence of CAR-engineered T cells and sustained remission, as determined by flow cytometry and deep sequencing of immunoglobulin H rearrangements.&nbsp;