THYROID CANCERS

Now in it 24th year, the annual International Congress on Hematologic Malignancies: Focus on Leukemias, Lymphomas, and Myeloma, hosted by Physicians’ Education Resource, LLC, continues to bring significant advances in hematology to the forefront.

Andrew Turk, MD, discusses the main factors that can be used to determine whether a patient presenting with thyroid cancer has an indolent form of the disease or a more aggressive thyroid cancer.

In an interview with&nbsp;<em>Targeted Oncology</em>, Raymond L. Chai, MD, discussed the latest treatment advancements for thyroid cancer that he has seen over the past few years and how he sees quality of life improving for patients with advanced subtypes of thyroid cancer. He also shared a personal message for oncologists in honor of Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month.

To improve the efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies, Nirali N. Shah, MD, MHSc, suggested including new constructs that target more than 1 antigen in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, during a presentation at the 2019 SOHO Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

Treatment with selpercatinib induced responses in 68% of patients with&nbsp;<em>RET&nbsp;</em>fusion&ndash;positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, according to findings from the phase I/II LIBRETTO-001 trial.

A small retrospective study has found that patients who had differentiated thyroid cancer with bone metastasis and received radioiodine&nbsp;treatment in combination with one or more non-¹³¹I direct and systemic treatments experienced increased overall survival compared with patients who received only&nbsp;¹³¹I treatment.

In an interview with&nbsp;Targeted Oncology, Evert F.S. van Velsen, MD, MSc, discussed the evaluation of the 2015 ATA Risk Stratification in patients with DTC, including patients with PTC and FTC. He also highlighted challenges in treating patients that have been defined as high-risk for recurrence.

In an interview with&nbsp;Targeted Oncology, Sattva S. Neelapu, MD, discussed the evolving role for CAR T-cell therapy in patients with B-cell lymphomas. He also highlighted the toxicities commonly associated with these therapies and how physicians can treat these AEs as they arise.

Andrew Turk, MD, discusses targeted agents that are making a splash in the treatment landscape of thyroid cancers, including the most aggressive form of the disease, anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. He says targeted agents have already become well established in the space of thyroid cancers, but these agents continue to evolve.

PD-L1 positivity in patients with medullary thyroid cancer is associated with more aggressive clinicopathological features and predictive of structural and biochemical recurrences, according to the results of a retrospective Chinese study.

A recent study of patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) who were surveyed about their perceived choice in receiving radioactive iodine (RAI) treatment suggests the need for increased shared decision making between physicians and their patients regarding treatment choices.

A neoadjuvant regimen of dabrafenib plus trametinib in patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF&nbsp;</em>V600E&ndash;mutated anaplastic thyroid carcinoma offered a feasible way to prepare patients for life-extending and quality-of-life-enhancing surgical resection, according to the results of a case series report of patients with locoregionally advanced ATC at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

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;

In an interview with <em>Targeted Oncology</em>, Chong, a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed the 4-year follow-up data for CAR T cells in patients with DLBCL and FL. She also addressed the challenges that need to be overcome in order to give more patients access to this type of therapy.

In the phase I/II TRANSCEND CLL 004 study, chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel led to undetectable minimal residual disease in patients with relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Kieron Dunleavy, MD, discussed current approaches to treating patients with MCL, highlighting peer discussions on the subject and information about the ZUMA-2 trial, in an interview with&nbsp;<em>Targeted Oncology</em>.

Shlomo Koyfman, MD, discusses factors that are associated with the risk of recurrence and death in patients with papillary thyroid cancer with hobnail morphology, an aggressive variant that has been associated with poorer outcomes.

Vivek Subbiah, MD,&nbsp;discussed the activity and tolerability of BLU-667 in patients with advanced&nbsp;<em>RET</em>-altered MTC and PTC. He also discussed the next steps planned for this ongoing trial and how this agent can impact the treatment landscape of patients with&nbsp;<em>RET</em>-altered thyroid cancers.

A theranostic approach to radioactive iodine therapy in thyroid cancer has become the standard of care and represents a more precise means of managing patients based on disease-specific features, according to a presentation on differentiated thyroid cancer management at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2019 Annual Meeting, held June 22-25, 2019, in Anaheim, California.

The FDA has granted an orphan drug designation to MB-102, a CD123-directed CAR T-cell therapy, for the treatment of patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

A combined regimen of pazopanib and trametinib was tolerable at full single-agent doses in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer according to the results of a multicenter phase I trial expansion cohort. The expansion cohort showed that the combination has clinical activity in DTC but did not achieve the pre-specified response rate, according to a new report in&nbsp;<em>Clinical Cancer Research</em>.