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Silas Inman

Articles by Silas Inman

For patients with <em>BRAF</em>-mutant advanced melanoma, the&nbsp;BRAF inhibitor encorafenib combined with the MEK inhibitor binimetinib demonstrated significant improvements in progression-free survival (PFS) compared with single-agent vemurafenib or encorafenib, according to updated findings from the phase III COLUMBUS trial presented at the 2017 ESMO Congress.

Treatment with the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi) improved median PFS by 11.2 months compared with placebo for patients with locally advanced, unresectable stage III non&ndash;small cell lung cancer who had not progressed following chemoradiotherapy, according to phase III results from the PACIFIC trial presented at the 2017 ESMO Congress.

The FDA has granted its approval to olaparib tablets (Lynparza) as a maintenance therapy for patients with recurrent epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer, who are in a complete or partial response to platinum-based chemotherapy, regardless of <em>BRCA</em> status.

CPX-351 (Vyxeos), a fixed-combination of daunorubicin and cytarabine, has been approved by the FDA for adult patients with newly diagnosed therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (t-AML) or AML with myelodysplasia-related changes (AML-MRC), based on an improvement in overall survival (OS) in a phase III study.

Enasidenib (Idhifa) has been approved by the FDA as a treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory <em>IDH2</em>-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML), based on findings from a phase I/II study. A companion diagnostic, the RealTime IDH2 Assay, was also approved for the detection of the <em>IDH2</em> mutation.

Ublituximab (TG-1101) in combination with ibrutinib (Imbruvica) met its primary endpoint of showing an improvement in objective response rate (ORR) compared with ibruitinib monotherapy in patients with previously treated high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In a presentation of findings from the phase III GENUINE trial during the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, data were reviewed demonstrating that the combination had an ORR of 78% in this patient population.&nbsp;

Lenalidomide consolidation therapy following induction with fludarabine and rituximab (Rituxan) was found to increase long-term survival over survival rates&nbsp;seen with FR or FR plus cyclophosphamide in an overall survival plateau that intrigued researchers when examined in&nbsp;patients with symptomatic, treatment-naive chronic lymphocytic leukemia without an 11q deletion.

Updated results from the phase III MONALEESA-2 trial presented during the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting confirmed the benefit of frontline ribociclib (Kisqali) in combination with letrozole in patients with&nbsp;postmenopausal hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. The combination showed a progression-free survival (PFS) benefit of 9.3 months compared with letrozole plus placebo.

The irreversible pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor neratinib showed single-agent activity across cohorts of patients with <em>HER2</em>-mutant advanced cancers, according to findings from the phase II SUMMIT study presented at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

A biologics license application has been submitted for axicabtagene ciloleucel (KTE-C19) as a potential treatment for transplant ineligible patients with relapsed or refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.