Latest Conference Articles

In findings from the phase III GeparSepto trial presented during the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, long-term disease-free survival rates were improved with neoadjuvant nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) compared with standard paclitaxel in patients with high-risk early breast cancer.

The addition of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) to doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (A+AVD) reduced the risk of progression and death by 23% in patients with advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) compared with standard ABVD (doxorubicin [Adriamycin], bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine) chemotherapy, according to results of the phase III ECHELON-1 clinical trial. 

Treatment with the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy axi-cel (axicabtagene ciloleucel; Yescarta) demonstrated improvement in long-term survival rates in patients with refractor, aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to updated findings from the pivotal ZUMA-1 trial.

Mogamulizumab improved progression-free survival in previously treated patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma by 4.6 months compared with vorinostat (Zolinza), according to findings from the phase III MAVORIC study.

Incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) recurrence was reduced in patients with cancer with oral rivaroxaban (Xarelto) therapy compared with dalteparin (Fragmin), the current standard of care, according to results from the Select-D pilot trial presented during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Phase Ib results presented at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting demonstrated that zanubrutinib (BGB-3111), an investigational BTK inhibitor, had encouraging rates of clinical activity in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including an overall response rate of 78% among patients with marginal zone lymphoma.

Kerry Rogers, MD, Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses a phase II trial of early intervention with ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in patients with asymptomatic, high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

Matthew S. Davids, MD, Associate Director, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Center for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, discusses a study that explored optimizing checkpoint blockade as a treatment for relapsed hematologic malignancies after allogenic hematopoietic cell transplantation during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.<br /> <br /> &nbsp;

For patients with mantle cell lymphoma, initial and maintenance treatment with the combination of lenalidomide (Revlimid) and rituximab (Rituxan) were found to be feasible, safe, and elicit clinical activity.

Survival rates improved with nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) therapy compared with paclitaxel in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) more than in other patient subsets, according to findings from a post-hoc analysis from the CALGB 40502/NCCTG N063H clinical trial.&nbsp;

Updated results of the&nbsp;phase Ib/II ENHANCE1/KEYNOTE-150 study presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium found that the combination of&nbsp;pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and eribulin (Halaven) was associated with a 26.4% objective response rate for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Results of a&nbsp;prospective clinical trial demonstrated that the detection of positive circulating tumor cells in the blood 5 years after hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer diagnosis was&nbsp;associated with an increased risk for late recurrence.

Tari King, MD, chief of Breast Surgery, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women&#39;s Cancer Center, discusses a &quot;less is more&quot; approach when it comes to lymph node surgery in patients with breast cancer.

Treatment with a&nbsp;gonadotropin-releasing hormone analog could potentially preserve fertility and protect ovarian function in premenopausal woman being treated with chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer, according to the results of a meta-analysis presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Results of the phase III SOLD trial maintained the benefit of 12 months of adjuvant treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin) for patients with early stage HER2-positive breast cancer, as the trial failed to demonstrate noninferiority for 9 weeks of trastuzumab versus the standard 1-year period, when added to chemotherapy.&nbsp;

Disease-free survival&nbsp; is maintained in women with postmenopausal hormone receptor-positive breast cancer treated with aromatase inhibitors, even when the treatment is only given for 2 years in comparison with the standard 5 years of additional aromatase inhibitor therapy, according to findings from the phase III ABCSG-16 trial presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.&nbsp;

Denise Yardley, MD, senior investigator, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses the results from a recent phase II trial evaluating exemestane with or without enzalutamide in patients with hormone receptor&ndash;positive breast cancer.

Julie Nangia, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, discusses getting genetic testing for patients. While the NCCN has guidelines of who should be tested, it may also be possible for physicians to write a letter of medical necessity for other people, such as Ashkenazi Jewish women, who have higher rates of BRCA mutations.

Early-stage breast cancer recurrence and mortality was reduced by shortening the intervals between chemotherapy cycles or administering&nbsp;the drugs sequentially&nbsp;compared with&nbsp;standard dosing techniques, according to meta-analysis results presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Mothaffar F. Rimawi, MD, associate professor and director of clinical research at the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine, discusses the&nbsp;NSABP B-47 study, which explored&nbsp;the value of trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus standard adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients with low levels of HER2 protein.

An overall disease control rate of 45% was achieved with sacituzumab govitecan (IMMU-132) therapy in patients with heavily pretreated metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC), according to updated findings of a study presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).&nbsp;

In results from the phase Ib/II PANACEA trial presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), the combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and trastuzumab (Herceptin) achieved an objective response rate (ORR) of 15.2% in patients with trastuzumab-resistant, PD-L1&ndash;positive, HER2-positive breast cancer.

Sir Richard Peto, FRS, a recognized pioneer in epidemiology and health statisticians, will be honored with the William L. McGuire Memorial Lecture Award at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), to be held December 5 to 9 in San Antonio, Texas. The topic of his award lecture will be announced at a later date, according to a press release from SABCS.

Nilofer Azad, MD, associate professor, Johns Hopkins University, discusses preliminary results from the NCI-Match trial for nivolumab (Opdivo) in patients with mismatch repair-deficient cancers The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 32^nd Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

Jennifer Wu, PhD, professor, Northwestern University, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses how soluble MIC can impact response to anti-CTLA-4 therapy during The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 32^nd Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

Dendritic cells are an essential target for generating immunity against cancer due to their ability to manipulate the immune system and there are a number of potential methods by which DCs can be utilized for cancer immunotherapy, according to Karolina Palucka, MD, PhD.

Metastatic urothelial cancer is a relatively chemotherapy-sensitive malignancy. With contemporary cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy regimens, objective responses are achieved in approximately 50-60% of patients and complete radiographic responses are achieved in approximately 10-20% of patients.

H. Jack West, MD, a thoracic oncologist of Swedish Cancer Institute at Swedish Medical Center, discusses appropriate treatment for patients with stage IV adenocarcinoma who do not harbor oncogenic drivers.

For decades and even to this day, the foundation of metastatic bladder cancer therapy has been cytotoxic chemotherapy. In fact, until recently, the most significant breakthrough in treatment was in the 1980s, when cisplatin-based therapies, specifically MVAC, became the new standard of care.