ASCO Annual Meeting

The PARP inhibitor niraparib (Zejula) provided significant benefits in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer who had a partial response, with similar treatment effects in patients with or without germline <em>BRCA</em> mutations, according to a post-hoc analysis of data from the ENGOT-OV16/NOVA trial presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Reducing oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy by half could benefit patients with low-risk advanced colon cancer receiving chemotherapy after surgery. The 50% decrease would not notably increase their recurrence risk and would decrease the chances of developing neuropathy,&nbsp;according to findings presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Comprehensive genomic testing is not yet widespread, but a French study presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting suggested that DNA profiling can be of important value in advancing personalized medicine. Patients who received molecularly targeted agents based on genomic profiles had longer 3-year and 5-year overall survival than those who did not.

A new, high-intensity genomic sequencing approach for circulating tumor DNA uncovered at least 1 genetic change in both the tumor DNA and the blood of 89% of patients, demonstrating a high rate of concordance between 2 approaches for detecting molecular aberrations, according to a study presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

The risk of disease progression or death was reduced by 45% with the addition of abemaciclib to fulvestrant compared with that of fulvestrant alone in patients with previously treated HR-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer, according to findings presented during the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Earlier intervention with abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) lowered the risk of death by nearly 40% for men with high-risk advanced or metastatic prostate cancer who were newly diagnosed or had not yet received hormone therapy in findings from 2 clinical trials presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

David Hyman, MD, Chief of Early Drug Development, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses efficacy results for larotrectinib (LOXO-101), a selective tropomyosin receptor kinase (TRK) inhibitor, in adult and pediatric TRK fusion cancers.

A single course of radiation treatment could relieve the symptoms of a spinal cord compression and maintain mobility as effectively as a multifractional course of radiotherapy (RT) in patients with advanced cancer, according to the results of a large phase III trial.

Updated results from the phase III MONALEESA-2 trial presented during the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting confirmed the benefit of frontline ribociclib (Kisqali) in combination with letrozole in patients with&nbsp;postmenopausal hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. The combination showed a progression-free survival (PFS) benefit of 9.3 months compared with letrozole plus placebo.

Chronic health issues, including&nbsp;high blood pressure, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, anxiety, or depression were noted in nearly 40% of testicular cancer survivors with low testosterone levels compared with survivors who had normal levels of testosterone,&nbsp;according to findings from a study that were released at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Lisa H. Butterfield, PhD, discusses efficacy and biomarker results of the phase II SARC028 study, which explored pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in advanced soft tissue and bone sarcomas, during the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Results from a recent study showed patients with stage III colorectal cancer experienced a 42% lower chance of death and a trend toward reduced cancer recurrence if they maintained a healthy body weight, engaged in regular physical activity, and adopted other healthy lifestyle behaviors.

Efficacy results for the&nbsp;human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine continue to be impressive, with newly reported findings showing it reduced&nbsp;the prevalence of high-risk oral HPV infections by 88% in young adults who had at least 1 dose of the vaccine.

More Stage I cancers were diagnosed after the passage of the Affordable Care Act within 5 screenable disease types (colorectal cancer, female breast cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer) than were diagnosed before ACA implementation.

Eating tree nuts, like almonds, walnuts, and pecans can improve overall survival and reduce the risk of recurrence in patients with colon cancer, findings of a new prospective study suggest.

Overall survival was improved by 15 months for patients with macroscopically resected biliary tract cancer who were treated with adjuvant capecitabine compared with observation alone.

Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the potential impact that regorafenib (Stivarga) could have on the treatment landscape of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

The advent of targeted inhibitors that work on the fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) pathway may alter the disease course and outcomes in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, suggests data from a four-center retrospective study. Lead investigator Apurva Jain, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center presented the findings at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.

The liquid biopsy testing method from a large genomic analysis of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in blood samples from more than 15,000 patients, was found to be closely correlated with mutations described in databases, and often from tumor biopsies as well, according to research presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Half of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer had objective responses when treated with a novel inhibitor of heparin-binding growth factors in addition to conventional chemotherapy, a small preliminary clinical trial showed.

Gregory E. Idos, MD, discusses a study examining the yield of multiplex panel testing compared with expert opinion and validated prediction models.

Updated results of the prevalence of germline cancer susceptibility gene mutations in a clinic-based series of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) were given in an oral presentation at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Interim analysis of a clinical trial of multiplex gene testing for inherited cancer risk suggests that fears of unnecessary surgery or adverse psychological effects associated with testing may be unwarranted.

An ongoing phase IIa basket study is evaluating treating patients who have molecular abnormalities with agents that target the HER2, BRAF, Hedgehog, or EGFR pathways, regardless of the patient's tumor type and the drug's original indication.

Patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who were treated with enzalutamide (Xtandi) were more likely to experience central nervous system (CNS) events or fatigue than patients treated with the combination of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and prednisone.

Men with nmCRPC demonstrated a median time to PSA progression of 28.7 months and a median time to radiographic progression of 41.4 months, according to updated safety and efficacy data involving abiraterone acetate and low-dose prednisone.

A preliminary safety and efficacy trial of a device using tumor treating fields (TTF) administered to unresectable pancreatic cancer patients found that the treatment was tolerable and safe when combined with gemcitabine.

Clinical trials studying a biomarker-based treatment showed substantially better results than non-personalized treatment methods in a meta-analysis that examined 13,203 patients from phase I trials.

The 1.8-mg/kg dose of polatuzumab vedotin is as effective as the 2.4-mg/kg dose on the endpoint of progression-free survival in patients with relapsed/refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma while improving tolerability, according to a pooled analysis of phase I and phase II clinical studies.

In the first phase III trial to show a benefit for adjuvant therapy in prostate cancer, treatment with an adjuvant combination of docetaxel, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), and radiation therapy (RT) improved 4-year overall survival (OS) rates in patients with high-risk localized prostate cancer, when compared with ADT plus RT alone.