Interviews

Ajai Chari, MD, associate professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, advises on the best way to choose treatment regimens for patients with multiple myeloma. Since 9 different drugs have been approved after many phase III trials, a community physician may be overwhelmed by this surplus of options, Chari says.

Anas Younes, MD, chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses current research for staging patients with follicular lymphoma. In order to design new clinical trials, researchers must have reliable predictors of overall survival and progression-free survival in patients.

Shaji Kumar, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology at the Mayo Clinic, discusses the effects genetic abnormalities have on patients with high-risk multiple myeloma. Recent advancements have helped to identify these abnormalities in patients.

Joaquim Bellmunt, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at the Bladder Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the updated results of the phase III KEYNOTE-045 trial after 2 years of follow-up. These updated results confirmed the primary findings of the study, which compared pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with investigator's choice of chemotherapy in patients with recurrent, advanced urothelial carcinoma.

Marina C. Garassino, MD, medical consultant in the Medical Oncology Division, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy, discusses current advancements with immunotherapy as first- and second-line treatments for patients with lung cancer.

Joshua Bauml, MD, an assistant professor at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the possibilities with using liquid biopsies in patients with lung cancer.

Kathleen Moore, MD, associate director for clinical research at the Stephenson Oklahoma Cancer Center, discusses the development of combination therapy strategies for patients with ovarian cancer.

Robert Andtbacka, MD, associate professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine, discusses a study exploring the role of talimogene laherparapvec (T-VEC; Imlygic) in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma.

Constantine S. Tam, MD, associate professor, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discusses the phase III DUO trial, a randomized comparison of duvelisib versus ofatumumab (Arzerra) in patients with relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic leukemia.

Tian Zhang, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses the phase III KEYNOTE-564 trial of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as adjuvant treatment for renal cell carcinoma (RCC).&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;

Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, chief of the Division of Thoracic Medical Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses biomarkers that may help identify patients with lung cancer who can benefit from immunotherapy agents. Since the introduction of these agents, PD-L1 has been used as a potential biomarker for selecting patients that may benefit from treatment. As PD-L1 is not completely reliable, there is interest in developing additional biomarkers.

Sattva S. Neelapu, MD, associate professor, Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma, Division of Cancer Medicine, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses long-term findings of the ZUMA-1 trial investigating axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta) in patients with refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Omid A. Hamid, MD, chief of Translational Research and Immunotherapy, director,&nbsp;Melanoma Therapeutics, The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, discusses options for patients with melanoma who have exhausted standard therapies.

Thomas Karasic, MD, investigator at Penn Medicine, discusses a phase II trial of palbociclib (Ibrance) in patients with advanced&nbsp;<br /> esophageal or gastric cancer.<br /> &nbsp;

Lisa A. Carey, MD, professor, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the CALGB 40502/NCCTG N063H trial in patients with triple-negative breast cancer, a randomized phase III trial of paclitaxel compared with nab-paclitaxel or ixabepilone with bevacizumab as first-line chemotherapy for locally recurrent or metastatic breast cancer.<br /> &nbsp;

During the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Monika Joshi, MD, assistant professor, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, shared results of a phase Ib study of durvalumab (Imfinzi) and radiation therapy (DUART) followed by adjuvant durvalumab in patients with bladder cancer.

Matthew S. Davids, MD, Associate Director, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Center for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, discusses a multicenter study of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) plus FCR as a frontline therapy for younger patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;

Denise Yardley, MD, Senior Investigator, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, offers advice to community oncologists on managing patients.

Maria Svensson, MD, Lund University, discusses associations of PD-1 and PD-L1 expression with mismatch repair status and prognosis in chemoradiotherapy-na&iuml;ve esophageal and gastric adenocarcinoma.<br /> &nbsp;

Anna Sureda, MD, PhD,&nbsp;Head of the Clinical Hematology Service at the Institut Catal&agrave; d&#39;Oncologia &ndash; Hospitalet de Llobregat in Barcelona, discusses the phase III ECHELON-1 study exploring brentuximab vedotin plus doxorubicin, vinblastine, dacarbazine (A+AVD) versus ABVD in patients with previously untreated stage III or IV Hodgkin lymphoma.&nbsp;

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses a randomized phase II trial to evaluate dosing strategies for regorafenib (Stivarga) in patients with refractory metastatic colorectal cancer.

Rana R. McKay, MD, medical oncologist, assistant professor, Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, discusses advances in the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Cristiana Sessa, MD, head of Phase I-II Unit and Pharmacology, vice head of Medical Oncology and Head of Clinical Research, Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland, discusses targeted therapies for <em>BRCA</em>1/2-mutated tumors.&nbsp;

Michael Pishvaian, MD, PhD, director, Phase I Clinical Program, co-director of the Ruesch Center Pancreatic Cancer Program Medical Oncology, Otto J. Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancer, Georgetown University Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the results of a study investigating entrectinib in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who harbor <em>NTRK</em> and <em>ROS1</em> fusions.

Phyllis McKiernan, a nurse practitioner at John Theurer Cancer Center, Hackensack Medical Center, discusses a study of outcomes of autologous stem cell transplantation in very elderly patients with multiple myeloma.

Matthew Goetz, MD, professor of oncology and pharmacology, Mayo Clinic, discusses a secondary analysis of the MONARCH 1 and MONARCH 2 clinical trials in breast cancer.

Emanuela Palmerini, MD, Prometeo Laboratory: Clinical and Experimental Research Contract, Chemotherapy for Rare Musculoskeletal Tumors Department, Instituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, discusses optimal patient selection for denosumab (Xgeva) in patients with giant cell tumor of bone.

Helmut Schaider, MD, associate professor, Dermatology Research Centre, The University of Queensland, Australia, discusses drug resistance in melanoma.<br /> &nbsp;