Wayne Kuznar

Combining cabozantinib and atezolizumab induced durable responses in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who had soft tissue progression after prior hormonal therapy.<br /> &nbsp;

Maintenance of quality of life on patient-reported assessments was prolonged with encorafenib plus cetuximab with or without binimetinib, out-performing the standard of care in patients with <em>BRAF</em>&nbsp;V600E-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer.

The combination of regorafenib plus an oral fluoropyrimidine, TAS-102, as third-line treatment in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, achieved a clinically meaningful disease control rate in the phase I dose-escalation trial REMETY, according to data presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Better rates of overall survival were observed in patients with intermediate-stage hepatocellular carcinoma who had an elevated baseline alpha-fetoprotein level when ramucirumab was used as second-line therapy after sorafenib compared with second-line placebo. These improvements occurred irrespective of patients&#39; Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stage and were based on results of a pooled analysis of the phase III REACH and REACH-2 trials

Cetuximab plus mFOLFOX6 with the addition of avelumab resulted in an overall response rate of 81% in patients with RAS/BRAF-wildtype metastatic colorectal cancer, according to results of the phase II AVETUX study that were presented during the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. But despite promising tumor responses, the trial missed its primary progression-free survival end point.

Frontline lenvatinib followed by an anticancer procedure resulted in prolonged overall survival in patients with&nbsp;unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma when compared against&nbsp;sorafenib, according to results of a post hoc analysis of the REFLECT trial reported at the 2020 GI Cancers Symposium.

Antitumor activity in patients with germline <em>BRCA/PALB2</em>-mutant pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma was reported with the chemotherapy doublet of gemcitabine plus cisplatin with or without the addition of veliparib,&nbsp;according to data presented at&nbsp;the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.&nbsp;

Promising antitumor activity with durable responses were demonstrated with the combination of nivolumab and ramucirumab plus paclitaxel&nbsp;in a phase II study of patients with advanced gastric cancer, which wsa presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.&nbsp;Among patients treated with the combination, the objective response rate was 37.2%, and all responders had a partial response.

The addition of ipilimumab with the combination&nbsp;cabozantinib and nivolumab&nbsp;led to higher response rates, as well as progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma compared with the doublet combination alone, according to a presentation at the&nbsp;2020 GI Cancers Symposium, held January 23-25, in San Francisco, California.

Overall survival was meaningfully improved with treatment of pembrolizumab in first and later lines for patients with&nbsp;advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction cancer with a high number of PD-L1&ndash;expressing cells in the tumor, lymphocytes, and macrophages compared with chemotherapy.

A subset of patients with GI cancers harboring&nbsp;<em>NTRK</em>&nbsp;gene fusions had positive responses to selective TRK inhibition with larotrectinib, confirming efficacy of the agent in this group. The results of the confirmatory trial were recently reported the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Interim phase II trial data showed that the combination of enasidenib, an oral small molecule inhibitor of mutant&nbsp;IDH2&nbsp;proteins, and azacitidine, significantly improves complete remission and overall responses in patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia with&nbsp;IDH2&nbsp;mutations compared with azacitidine alone, according to results presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

Treatment with REGN1979, a human anti-CD20 &times; anti-CD3 bispecific IgG4 antibody, showed high clinical activity and tolerability in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.<br /> &nbsp;

CPI-0610, a selective and potent oral bromodomain and extra-terminal domain inhibitor, induced spleen and symptom responses as early as 12 weeks in combination with the JAK inhibitor ruxolitinib in patients with JAK inhibitor-na&iuml;ve myelofibrosis, according to the preliminary findings from the phase II MANIFEST trial presented at the 2019 ASH Annual Meeting.

Heavily pretreated patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma demonstrated antitumor activity when treated with varying dose levels of the human IgG4-based anti-CD20 &times; anti-CD3 bispecific&nbsp;monoclonalantibody, REGN1979.&nbsp;

Stable disease status was achieved in patients with b-cell malignancies through treatment with &nbsp;vecabrutinib, a reversible, noncovalent Bruton&rsquo;s tyrosine kinase inhibitor, without producing any grade &ge;3 treatment-related adverse events, according to data presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Patients with high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma who previously progressed on ibrutinib, responded well to treatment the CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel and had manageable toxicity, according to updated findings from the phase I/II TRANSCEND CLL 004 study presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.

A high rate of rapid and durable complete responses were observed in patients with aggressive relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma treated with lisocabtagene maraleucel.

An&nbsp;open-label, single-arm, phase II study in patients with&nbsp;chronic lymphocytic leukemia demonstrated the frontline AVO triplet, comprised of&nbsp;acalabrutinib, venetoclax, and obinutuzumab, achieved&nbsp;undetectable minimal residual disease in the bone marrow in 48% of patients after only 8 monthly cycles of therapy,&nbsp;according to lead author Benjamin L. Lampson, MD, PhD, who presented the findings at the 2019 ASH Annual Meeting.

Updated follow-up analysis of&nbsp;the phase III E1912 study showed that ibrutinib/rituximab induced higher rates of&nbsp;progression-free survival (PFS) when compared against fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab in&nbsp;patients &le;70 years with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to&nbsp;Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, who presented the findings at the 2019 ASH Annual Meeting.

Given the frequency of <em>FGFR2</em>&nbsp;alterations in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, investigators have identified it as a potential prognostic indicator of survival and a rational target of systemic cancer therapies.

In a presentation at the 2019 ESMO Congress on a case series of 7 pretreated patients with <em>NRG1</em>-positive tumors, Stephen Liu, MD, and colleagues discussed the efficacy of afatinib and explained that afatinib may be a potential treatment option for <em>NRG1</em>-positive tumors across multiple cancer types.

The case for the combination of olaparib and durvalumab in patients with metastatic breast cancer and relapsed ovarian cancer with germline&nbsp;BRCA&nbsp;mutations was strengthened based on the updated results from the phase I/II MEDIOLA, which was covered in 2 separate presentations at the 2019 ESMO Congress.

Multiple presentations at the 2019 ESMO Congress add to the evidence that blood-based biomarkers have predictive utility in advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Blood-based next-generation sequencing has also shown clinical utility in aiding treatment decisions for physicians treating this disease.

In the phase III CASPIAN study, durvalumab added to etoposide and platinum-based chemotherapy delayed the development of new lesions and improved patient-reported outcomes compared to etoposide and platinum-based therapy alone in untreated patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer.

Using a measure known as the growth modulation index, patients with TRK fusion&ndash;positive cancers who were treated with larotrectinib had a clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival compared with the time to progression on their prior treatment, an analysis of patients enrolled in 1 of 3 clinical trials has found.

In the CheckMate-358 study, the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab showed durable clinical activity in patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, regardless of tumor PD-L1 expression.

In the phase III ATTRACTION-3 study, nivolumab prolonged overall survival compared with chemotherapy in patients with previously treated advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, according to findings presented at the 2019 ESMO Congress.

A subgroup of patients with triple-negative breast cancer who had immune cell PD-L1 expression, by the SP142 immunohistochemistry assay had responses to atezolizumab and nab-paclitaxel, regardless of whether they had primary or metastatic disease, according to an exploratory biomarker substudy of IMpassion130.

Frontline atezolizumab plus&nbsp;carboplatin plus etoposide has shown an improvement in overall survival over&nbsp;placebo plus CP/ET in&nbsp;the treatment of patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, according to updated results from the phase III IMpower133 trial.