Interviews

Adam Fisch, MD, PhD, a clinical fellow in molecular genetic pathology at the Brigham’s Women’s Hospital, discusses the key points from a patient case he presented at the 2019 Association for Molecular Pathology Annual Meeting and Expo, in which the patient with acute myeloid leukemia harboring a FLT3-TKD mutation lost the mutation following relapse on gilteritinib.

Georgina V. Long, BSc, PhD, MBBS, FRACP, discusses the current treatment options that are approved around the world for patients with advanced melanoma. These treatments include both immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, and targeted therapies.

Aiwu Ruth He, MD, discusses the current role of immune checkpoint inhibitors in upper gastrointestinal and gastric cancers and which patients are most likely to benefit from the anti–PD-1 agents.

Neeraj Agarwal, MD, discusses the results from the randomized phase III TITAN trial, which enrolled over 1,000 patients with newly diagnosed metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer and randomized them to either androgen deprivation therapy plus the novel androgen receptor inhibitor apalutamide or ADT alone.

Lori Leslie, MD, discusses toxicities and outcomes observed in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia treated with acalabrutinib in real-word clinics.

Justin F. Gainor, MD, discusses the latest advancements with immune checkpoint inhibitors for the treatment of patients with non—small cell lung cancer.

David Rimm, MD, PhD, discusses the key takeaways from the results of a phase I/II trial presented in a poster at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which evaluated neoadjuvant checkpoint inhibition in a small subset of patients with triple-negative breast cancer.<br /> &nbsp;

Margaret von Mehren, MD, discusses the rationale for evaluating ripretinib in patients with heavily pretreated advanced GIST in&nbsp;the phase III INVICTUS trial, which was presented at the ESMO Congress 2019.

Shlomo Koyfman, MD, discusses registry data on thyroid cancer and how data from the registry can improve practice for oncologists.

Heather H. Cheng, MD, PhD, discusses the role of genetic testing in prostate cancer as it continues to evolve in this space. This year, the&nbsp;2019 NCCN guidelines&nbsp;focused more on genetic testing in select patients with prostate cancer.

Bianca D. Santomasso, MD, PhD, discusses the challenges that exist for the treatment of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with CAR T-cell therapy.

Naval Daver, MD, explains the rationale for the phase II QUAZAR trial, which assessed the efficacy and safety of azacitidine in patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Jeff P.&nbsp;<a>Sharman</a>, MD, discusses the safety profile of acalabrutinib that was demonstrated in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.targetedonc.com/conference/ash-2019/patients-with-cll-treated-on-the-elevatetn-trial-experience-improved-pfs-with-acalabrutinib"><strong>the phase III ELEVATE-TN trial</strong></a>. The trial&nbsp;&nbsp;evaluated acalabrutinib&nbsp;&nbsp;as a single agent or in combination with obinutuzumab versus obinutuzumab&nbsp;&nbsp;plus chlorambucil in patients with treatment-na&iuml;ve chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Andre Goy, MD, discusses the results from a small clinical trial, which was presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting that he found particularly significant for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

Laura Michaelis, MD, discusses the next steps for research in the treatment of myelofibrosis following the addition of fedratinib to the armamentarium of JAK inhibitors.

Benjamin Weinberg, MD, assistant professor of medicine, and attending physician, Georgetown University Hospital, Medstar Health, discusses the overall prognosis of patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Brennan J. Decker, MD, PhD, discusses the role of identifying&nbsp;<em>EGFR</em>&nbsp;mutations in patients with lung cancers. In lung adenocarcinoma, there are many different activating mutations that can lead to the development of cancer, Decker explains.

James L. Mohler, MD, discusses the evolving role of genetic testing in patients with prostate cancer following the updates to the National Cancer Care Network Guidelines, which now include guidance for better practice in terms of conducting genetic testing in this patient population.

Benjamin Weinberg, MD, discusses&nbsp;his treatment decisions for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and the role of cetuximab in this patient population.

Justin Taylor, MD, discusses the rationale for an ongoing phase II trial that is exploring the combination of vemurafenib, a BRAF inhibitor, plus the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody obinutuzumab in previously untreated patients with classical hairy cell leukemia.

Mar&iacute;a Varela, MD, PhD, discusses the findings from a real-life analysis to confirm the benefit of regorafenib as treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who have progressed on prior sorafenib. Regorafenib was approved by the FDA for second-line treatment in this patient population based on data from the phase III RESORCE trial.

Brain C. Baumann, MD, assistant professor of radiation oncology, Department of Radiation Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, explains the rationale for the study of adjuvant chemotherapy plus radiation versus radiation alone in patients with locally advanced bladder cancer.

Timil Patel, MD, discusses how to sequence therapies in a patient with rectal cancer with a single lung nodule.

Emese Zsiros, MD, PhD, FACOG, assistant professor of oncology, Department of Gynecologic Oncology, Center for Immunotherapy, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center explains the rationale for the a phase II study, which combined pembrolizumab with bevacizumab in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer. Zsiros presented data on the study in early 2019 at the SGO Annual Meeting.

Marc J. Braunstein, MD, PhD, discusses the greatest challenge that still exists in the treatment paradigm of multiple myeloma.

Andreas Rimner, MD, gives an overview of his presentation titled, &ldquo;Crossing the PACIFIC,&rdquo; which he presented at the 2019 New York Lung Cancers Symposium. He evaluates some potential next steps for durvalumab (Imfinzi) following the practice-changing results from the PACIFIC trial.

Andrew M. Evens, DO, MSc, discusses the significance of the results from the phase III ECHELON-1 trial in which patients with stage III/IV classical Hodgkin lymphoma were treated with the combination of brentuximab vedotin plus doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine.

Adil Daud, MD, compares the roles of immunotherapy versus dabrafenib plus trametinib targeted therapy combinations in patients with advanced melanoma. The latter combination is appropriate and even preventative in select patients, but the decision between checkpoint immune therapy and immunotherapy comes down to what is best for each patient.

George W. Sledge, Jr., MD, professor of medicine, Stanford University Medical Center, discusses the next steps for the phase III MONARH-2 trail following the positive interim analysis results presented during the 2019 European Society of Medical Oncology Congress.

Sarah Murawski, MPAS, discusses how telemedicine can impact the use of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy in patients with cancer at the Association of Community Cancer Centers National Oncology Conference.