Virginia Powers, PhD

Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor acalabrutinib demonstrated a high rate of response, prolonged survival, and high tolerability in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who demonstrated intolerance to ibrutinib. Findings were presented at the 15th International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma.

Rate of response and progression-free survival were superior with venetoclax versus chlorambucil in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who also received obinutuzumab, and this trend was observed across all genetic subgroups.<br /> &nbsp;

Lenalidomide plus standard R-CHOP immunochemotherapy may help select patients with activated B-cell-type diffuse large B-cell lymphoma who have a poor prognosis, based on data from the phase III ROBUST trial presented at the 2019 International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma.<br /> &nbsp;

Significant activity was observed when ibrutinib was administered concurrently with CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy compared with separately in patients with&nbsp;high-risk relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia who had progressed on or were intolerant of ibrutinib.&nbsp;Data presented at the 15th International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma show a high response rate with this concurrent treatment.&nbsp;

A combination of nivolumab plus brentuximab vedotin was highly active in 73% of patients with relapsed/refractory primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma, based on results from the phase I/II CheckMate 436 trial, recently announced during the 15th International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma.<br /> &nbsp;

The combination of venetoclax and bortezomib lead to an increased number of deaths by infection in patients with multiple myeloma in the phase III BELLINI trial, according to data presented at the 2019 EHA Congress. Deaths increased in spite of promising responses data and a high progression-free survival rate.

Patients with early-stage, asymptomatic, newly diagnosed chronic lymphocytic leukemia showed improved survival outcomes with ibrutinib monotherapy compared with placebo, according to results from phase III CLL12 study presented at the 2019 European Hematology Association Congress.<br /> &nbsp;

New data from the phase II/III IMerge trial show that imetelstat may allow for transfusion independence for patients with debilitating anemia caused by myelodysplastic syndrome,&nbsp;according to results presented at the&nbsp;2019 EHA Congress.<br /> &nbsp;

According to findings from an exploratory analysis from the phase III IMpower150 trial presented at the 2019 European Lung Cancer Congress, atezolizumab plus bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel has emerged as a potential new standard of care for patients with <em>EGFR</em>-positive metastatic nonsquamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer who have failed on TKI treatment.

Daratumumab salvage therapy demonstrated a 1-year overall survival rate of&nbsp;90.9% in patients with multiple myeloma who&nbsp;relapsed following allogeneic stem cell transplantation and also failed several posttransplant therapies,&nbsp;according to findings presented at the 2019 European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation Annual Meeting.

Final data from 2 phase I expansion studies confirmed the efficacy of frontline&nbsp;osimertinib (Tagrisso) in&nbsp;patients with <em>EGFR</em>-positive non&shy;&ndash;small cell lung cancer, investigators reported during the&nbsp;2019 European Lung Cancer Congress.

Patients with advanced alveolar soft part sarcoma demonstrated durable responses that occurred early following the initiation of atezolizumab, according to phase II trial findings presented at the 2018 CTOS Annual Meeting. Atezolizumab was also well tolerated and demonstrated a favorable safety profile.

Results from a phase II trial of abemaciclib presented at the 2018 CTOS Annual Meeting showed that the majority of patients with dedifferentiated liposarcoma remained progression free at 12 weeks following abemaciclib treatment.

The addition of olaratumab to doxorubicin-based chemotherapy resulted in similar response and stable disease rates between patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma and a good performance status, but provided an improved safety profile that favored the olaratumab cohort, according to results reported at the 2018 CTOS Annual Meeting.

Cabozantinib demonstrated the strongest response observed to date among all the multikinase inhibitors that have shown activity in bone sarcoma, according to results from the CABONE trial that were reported at the 2018 CTOS Annual Meeting.

Avapritinib showed substantial clinical activity in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors with <em>KIT</em> and <em>PDGFRA</em> mutations, according to findings from the phase I NAVIGATOR trial presented at the 2018 CTOS Annual Meeting. To date, patients with GIST who harbor these mutations have typically been resistant to all available therapies.

Half of the patients with inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMFT) demonstrated a response to crizotinib (Xalkori), according to results from the EORTC phase II &quot;CREATE&quot; study 90101 reported at the 2018 CTOS Annual Meeting.

Elotuzumab&nbsp;(Empliciti) added to&nbsp;pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and&nbsp;dexamethasone reduced the risk of disease progression by 46% in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma compared with&nbsp;pomalidomide and dexamethasone alone,&nbsp;according to findings from the phase II ELOQUENT-3 trial presented at the 2018 EHA Congress.

According to long-term follow-up data from the phase III CLL11 study, treatment with obinutuzumab combined with chlorambucil&nbsp;reduced the risk of death by 24% versus rituximab plus chlorambucil in treatment-na&iuml;ve patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia with comorbidities. These findings were presented&nbsp;at the 2018 European Hematology Association Congress.

Similar improvements in quality of life were found with frontline treatment of osimertinib for patients with&nbsp;advanced&nbsp;EGFR-mutant non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, as well as&nbsp;a clinically meaningful improvement in cough, compared with the standard-of-care EGFR TKIs, according to the phase III FLAURA trial. The results were presented at the 2018 European Lung Cancer Congress&nbsp;in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to research recently reported at the&nbsp;European Society of Gynaecological Oncology 2017 Congress, deleterious mutations in the PALB2 gene may account for development of breast cancer in women with an elevated risk due to a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, but who test negative for the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

According to results of a survey reported at the European Society of&nbsp;Gynaecological Oncology 2017 Congress, patients with ovarian cancer are more likely to opt to receive maintenance therapy if it could offer delay of disease progression and allow them to maintain or improve their quality of life.

According to results reported&nbsp;at the 2017 international meeting of the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO 20), maintenance therapy with olaparib monotherapy was safe and provided clinically significant, long-term treatment benefits in patients with platinum-sensitive relapsed serous ovarian cancer.

Although the addition of pazopanib (Votrient) to gemcitabine in the second-line treatment of&nbsp;patients with metastatic or relapsed uterine or soft tissue leiomyosarcomas demonstrated disease control in the majority of patients,&nbsp;statistical endpoints were not met in the&nbsp;phase II UNICANCER SARCOMA 11 study, according to results reported at the 2017 ESMO Congress.

According to an update from the phase II KEYNOTE-052 trial presented at the 2017 Global Congress on Bladder Cancer, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was safe and provided tumor reduction as well as durable responses as a first-line treatment for patients with&nbsp;cisplatin-ineligible advanced urothelial cancer.

The therapeutic landscape for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma is being rapidly altered by clinical trials of immunotherapy, but overall survival could be dramatically improved simply by changing the way quality of life is monitored,&nbsp;according to findings presented at the 2017 Global Congress on Bladder Cancer.

Patients with a history of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer may not have to undergo multiple cytoscopies during routine follow-up, according to data on a new procedure for monitoring RNA indicators of disease recurrence in urine samples.&nbsp;

A multicenter retrospective analysis presented at the 2017 ESMO Congress found that a newly defined subset of patients treated with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy&nbsp;experienced accelerated tumor growth indicative of hyperprogressive disease (HPD).

Vx-001, a cancer vaccine that employs a new strategy targeting a universal tumor antigen, significantly improved overall survival in patients with advanced or metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer who developed an immune response to the vaccine, according to findings presented at the 2017 ESMO Annual Congress in Madrid, Spain.

There was no overall survival improvement seen by expanding surveillance from chest x-ray to follow-up with PET-CT scan after surgery for patients with&nbsp;early-stage non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, according to data reported during the 2017 ESMO Congress.