ASCO Annual Meeting

For patients with PD-L1 positive non-small cell lung cancer, qdjuvant treatment with atezolizumab (Tecentriq) led to a significant improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) vs best supportive care.

For the past 17 years, HPV-related cervical cancer has been declining, however, other tumors related to the virus continue to remain steady.

PFS Doubles for Advanced Melanoma Patients Treated with Relatlimab Plus Nivolumab.

Improved outcomes for younger African American patients is associated with increased prostate-specific antigen screening.

Policies may be needed to expand Medicaid access to patients, after investigators found worse long-term survival outcomes for patients who lived in states with lower income eligibility rather than higher income eligibility.

Christina L. Roland, MD, PhD, discusses the preliminary results of neoadjuvant checkpoint blockade—nivolumab or nivolumab plus ipilimumab—in patients with surgically resectable undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma and dedifferentiated liposarcoma.

Jennifer Marie Suga, MD, discusses implementing a genomic oncology program at Kaiser Permanente Northern California through large-scale genomic next generation sequencing testing of patients with advanced cancers in the community setting.

"The ARROW trial results presented today during the ASCO virtual meeting showed that patients with RET fusion–positive lung cancer treated with the selective RET inhibitor pralsetinib had durable responses. In addition to supporting the development of pralsetinib across a broad population, these data highlight the urgency to test [patients with] lung cancer with next-generation sequencing so that eligible patients may be identified for treatment."

Patients with ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer showed clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival when receiving alectinib, a highly selective second-generation TKI, versus those treated with crizotinib, according to updated data from the pivotal phase 3 ALEX trial presented at the 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program.

Durable clinical activity was demonstrated with tepotinib, an oral, highly selective MET inhibitor, in patients with locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer and a MET exon 14 skipping mutation identified through liquid or tissue biopsy. This data was from the phase 2 VISION trial presented during the at the 2020 Virtual Scientific Meeting and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to findings from the phase 1b COSMIC-021 trial presented at the 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program, cabozantinib and atezolizumab demonstrated clinically meaningful activity in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, including those with high-risk clinical features.

Stratified multivariate analysis as well as efficacy from multiple treatment time points confirmed the benefit of cabazitaxel over abiraterone acetate or enzalutamide as a standard treatment in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who were previously treated with docetaxel and either of those 2 androgen receptor-targeted agents, according to results presented during the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology Virtual Scientific Program.

Patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer receiving darolutamide plus androgen deprivation therapy had a 31% reduction for the risk of death compared with placebo and ADT, according to the results of the phase 3 ARAMIS trial’s preplanned final overall survival analysis presented during the 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program.

"Irrespective of the PD-L1 status, there were no trends in favor of atezolizumab in both arms."

Mansoor Raza Mirza, MD, discusses the final survival data from the randomized phase 2 NSGO-AVANOVA2/ENGOT-OV24 study, which evaluated the combination or niraparib plus bevacizumab versus niraparib alone in recurrent platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer.

"Liquid biopsies continue to gain attention in the field of oncology. The ability to have a rapid, noninvasive test, and one that allows for serial treatment monitoring is imperative for more precise patient care."

“The data demonstrated deepening clinical responses with cemiplimab over time. Furthermore, duration of response and overall survival [OS] are considerably longer with cemiplimab than what has previously been recorded with other agents.”

Phase 3 BGB-A317-307 trial results showed statistically significant improvements in progression-free survival with tislelizumab plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone in Chinese patients with untreated advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer.

Patients with urothelial carcinoma who progress after platinum-containing chemotherapy may receive benefit with the combination regimen of cabozantinib and atezolizumab, according to new data from the COSMIC-021 study.

“Importantly, the separation among the curves seems to be observed over time and, indeed, survival at 2 years improves from 14% [of participants] in the control arm to 22% on the experimental arm. The magnitude of the benefit is very similar and very consistent across all the prespecified subgroups of patients analyzed, including those treated with cisplatin or those patients with liver or brain metastases.”

Interim analysis of the ZUMA-5 study indicates that patients with relapsed or refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma who were treated with the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy of axicabtagene ciloleucel had high rates of response and demonstrated the agent's manageable safety profile.

An analysis of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma revealed that systemic therapy with cabozantinib induced reliable responses for patients regardless of whether or not they had received prior immunotherapy, according to data that were presented as part of the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology Virtual Scientific Program.

Data from 2 phase 2 trials involving fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki revealed the agent’s ability to induce responses in patients with HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer and advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.

Another treatment option would be a welcome change for these patients, who tend to have poor prognoses once they run out of treatment options, according to Saad Z. Usmani, MD. After becoming refractory to available therapies, median overall survival is 6-11 months.

Apalutimide in combination with androgen deprivation therapy led to a significant improvement in overall survival in patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the phase 3 SPARTAN clinical trial.

Encorafenib plus binimetinib show sustained overall survival and progression-free survival benefit in patients with BRAF V600–mutant melanoma, according to updated findings from the COLUMBUS study.

Encorafenib plus cetuximab with or without binimetinib continued to show an overall survival benefit compared with cetuximab plus irinotecan-based regimens as treatment of patients with BRAF-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer in the updated findings from the phase 3 BEACON CRC clinical trial.

The long-term benefit of adjuvant dabrafenib plus trametinib as treatment of patients with resected, stage III BRAF V600E/K-mutant melanoma were validated by 5-year data from the phase 3 COMBI-AD study.

Favorable activity and safety findings were demonstrated with the combination of CC-92480 plus dexamethasone as treatment of patients with heavily pretreated relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma in an ongoing study, according to a presentation from the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology Virtual Scientific Program.

Overall, these data support the use of pembrolizumab and pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy as first-line treatment of patients with relapsed and/or metastatic HNSCC.