BRAIN CANCER

Prostate Cancer

Lung Cancer

David M. Ashley, MBBS, FRACP, PhD, has been named director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University. His position began March 1, 2018, and he succeeded Darell Bigner, MD, PhD.

Lung Cancer

In results of a phase II study, cabozantinib (Cabometyx) showed signs of activity in patients with progressive glioblastoma who were naïve to antiangiogenic therapy, despite the predefined statistical target for success not being met.

Kenneth Aldape, MD, has joined the National Cancer Institute&rsquo;s Center for Cancer Research as chief of the Laboratory of Pathology, an integral component of the research and clinical community at the National Institutes of Health.<br /> &nbsp;

According to results of a phase I study recently published in&nbsp;<em>Journal of Clinical Oncology</em>, treatment with the investigational agent&nbsp;DNX-2401 resulted in 20% of patients with&nbsp;recurrent malignant glioma surviving more than 3 years from the time of treatment.

Treatment with lomustine plus bevacizumab provided a slightly improved progression-free survival, but did not demonstrate an overall survival advantage over treatment with lomustine alone in patients with progressive glioblastoma, according to results of a randomized phase III trial published in the<em> New England Journal of Medicine</em>.

A phase III clinical trial of VAL-083, a first-in-class small molecule chemotherapy agent, has opened for patients with glioblastoma multiforme whose disease has progressed during or after standard treatment with chemoradiation, according to a news release from Atlantic Health System. &nbsp;

Progression-free survival and overall survival were improved for patients with glioblastoma by adding tumor-treating fields to&nbsp;temozolomide (Temodar),&nbsp;according to a final analysis of results from the EF-14 trial.

Roger Stupp, MD, discusses final results of a randomized, multi-center, phase III trial investigating tumor treating fields added to standard chemotherapy in newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

The FDA closed out the year by approving several new agents last month, including bevacizumab for glioblastoma, cabozantinib for renal cell carcinoma, nivolumab for melanoma, bosutinib for chronic myeloid leukemia, and pertuzumab for HER2+ breast cancer. In addition, several agents were granted a priority review designation. Here is a look back at all the FDA activity that took place in December.

Hideho Okada, MD, PhD, director, Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Center, professor of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, discusses a study exploring vaccination in patients with glioblastoma.

Several agents are being investigated for the treatment of patients with glioblastoma in an ongoing phase II clinical trial. Known as the INdividualized Screening Trial of Innovative Glioblastoma Therapy, the study will randomize patients to 1 of 4 arms&mdash;either the control arm of standard-of-care agent temozolomide, or 1 of 3 experimental arms.

The novel oncolytic virus Toca 511 (vocimagene amiretrorepvec) and Toca FC (extended-release 5-fluorocytosine [5-FC]) induced durable responses in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and anaplastic astrocytoma (AA), for a median duration of response of 35.1+ months, according to findings from a phase I study presented during the 2017 AACRNCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics. In a pooled analysis of 3 phase I studies, the virus also proved to be well tolerated with fewer any-grade adverse events (AEs) than with standard chemotherapy.1