Latest Conference Articles

According to the phase III KEYNOTE-407 trial, when pembrolizumab was added to frontline carboplatin/paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel, the combination reduced the risk of death by 36% compared with chemotherapy alone for patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer. These results were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Adjuvant endocrine therapy alone is sufficient for patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, node-negative early-stage breast cancer who have an intermediate risk of distant recurrence compared with endocrine therapy in combination with chemotherapy. Results of the phase III TAILORx trial presented during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting showed that adjuvant endocrine therapy achieved noninferiority to chemoendocrine therapy.

Practice-changing improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival rates were seen for patients with pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma with the addition of a course of low-dose maintenance chemotherapy administered after standard-of-care intensive chemotherapy.

According to findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-042 trial, patients with non–small cell lung cancer demonstrated improved survival of 4 to 8 extra months with upfront pembrolizumab therapy compared with chemotherapy, the current standard of care. Patients treated with pembrolizumab also experienced fewer adverse events.

Shilpa Gupta, MD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation Division, University of Minnesota, discusses phase Ib and phase II studies of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with bevacizumab (Avastin) for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

According to findings of the IMPACT study discussed at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, overall survival was improved with personalized therapy based on tumor molecular profiling in patients with advanced, hard-to-treat cancers.

According to initial results reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas study, 3 cell-free DNA tests showed high degrees of specificity in identifying signs of early stage lung cancer.

Combination taselisib plus fulvestrant demonstrated a modest progression-free survival benefit of 2 months compared with fulvestrant alone for the treatment of patients with estrogen receptor&ndash;positive, <em>PIK3CA</em>-mutant locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

According to the phase III IMpower131 trial findings presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, the risk of progression or death was reduced by 29% with the addition of atezolizumab&nbsp; to the first-line treatment regimen of carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel versus chemotherapy alone for patients with advanced squamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

Risk of disease progression or death decreased by 80% with the addition of&nbsp;ibrutinib to rituximab compared with rituximab alone for patients with Waldenstr&ouml;m macroglobulinemia.

The&nbsp;highly-selective RET&nbsp;inhibitor LOXO-292&nbsp;induced an objective response rate of 77% for patients with&nbsp;RET&nbsp;fusion-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, according to&nbsp;findings from the phase I&nbsp;LIBRETTO-001 study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

In updated findings from the multicenter phase I CRB-401 study that were presented&nbsp;at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, the anti-BCMA CAR T-cell therapy bb2121 induced a median progression-free survival of 11.8 months and a median duration of response of 10.8 months for patients with relapsed/refractory heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

Pomalidomide in combination with bortezomib and low-dose dexamethasone demonstrated an improved median&nbsp;progression-free survival compared with&nbsp; bortezomib and low-dose dexamethasone alone in patients with&nbsp;relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma who have previously received lenalidomide, according to results from the OPTIMISMM trial.&nbsp;

Duke researchers discussed findings from 2 studies at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, which revealed chemotherapy and hormone-targeting treatment may be more beneficial to black men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer compared with their white counterparts.

According to study results presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, women with head and neck cancer (HNC) are less likely to recieve intensive chemotherapy and radiation when compared with their male counterparts.

Scott Newman, PhD, St. Jude Children&rsquo;s Research Hospital, discusses the St. Jude Cloud data-sharing resource for the research community.

To help reduce the chance of drug-induced toxicities and improve patient outcomes, NantOmics has developed a test that utilizes pharmacogenomic screening of patients to identify potential genomic variants that could impact treatment decisions. In results from the NantOmics pharmacogenomics test, more than 7% of patients were determined to have a variant that could potentially alter the course of their treatment.

Benjamin J. Drapkin, MD, PhD, clinical fellow in medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, resident, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the co-clinical trial of olaparib (Lynparza) and temozolomide (temodar) in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) patient-derived xenografts (PDX) models during the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting.

Patients with metastatic or recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck experienced a 32% reduction in the risk of death compared with investigator&#39;s choice of therapy, according to updated findings with a minimum of 2 years of follow-up from the phase III CheckMate-141 study.

In an updated analysis of CheckMate-586, investigators found that tumor mutational burden identified patients with&nbsp;non&ndash;small cell lung cancer who were more likely to respond to first-line combination immunotherapy with nivolumab and ipilimumab.

Kristopher Bosse, MD, attending physician, Division of Oncology, The Children&#39;s Hospital of Philadelphia, discusses findings with the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) D3-GPC2-PBD for neuroblastoma presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting.

In findings from the phase I/II ECHO-203 study presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting, there were no clinical responses demonstrated by adding the IDO1 inhibitor&nbsp;epacadostat to the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab in patients with pancreatic cancer.

According to phase Ib study findings presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting, combining the&nbsp;intratumoral toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) agonist&nbsp;CMP-001 and pembrolizumab showed clinical activity in reversing&nbsp;PD-1 checkpoint inhibition resistance in patients with metastatic melanoma.

The 1-year progression-free survival rate was more than tripled&nbsp;with the combination of&nbsp;nivolumab and ipilimumab versus chemotherapy in&nbsp;treatment-na&iuml;ve patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer with high tumor mutation burden,&nbsp;according to initial findings from the phase III CheckMate-227 trial.

Findings, presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting, demonstrated that an off-the-shelf, dual-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell approach found positive results in preclinical&nbsp;specificity, functionality, and efficacy studies.

Alexander M. M. Eggermont, MD, PhD, director general&nbsp;of Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus Grand Paris in Villejuif, France, discusses the phase III results from the EORTC 1325-MG/KEYNOTE-054 trial presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting.

According to results of a pilot study presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting and simultaneously published in the <em>New England Journal of Medicine,</em>&nbsp;neoadjuvant treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated a 45% major pathologic response rate in patients with resectable stage I to III non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) irrespective of PD-L1 expression.

Results from the phase III KEYNOTE-189 trial were presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting, indicating that the combination of pembrolizumab with standard chemotherapy in the frontline setting reduced the risk of death by more than 50% in patients with nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer without&nbsp;<em>EGFR&nbsp;</em>or&nbsp;<em>ALK</em>&nbsp;mutations.

In a precision medicine success story, crizotinib (Xalkori) demonstrated a 50% objective response rate and a 100% disease control rate in patients with&nbsp;<em>ALK</em>-positive advanced, inoperable inflammatory tumors, in findings from the CREATE study presented at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting.&nbsp;

Vivek Subbiah, MD, associate medical director, Clinical Center for Targeted Therapy, assistant professor, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses targeting <em>RET </em>alterations in solid tumors during the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting.