Latest Conference Articles

A technically negative trial in high-risk adult soft tissue sarcoma nonetheless produced a significant survival benefit for anthracycline-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to a study presented at the 2016 ESMO Congress.

Progression-free survival (PFS) was more than 3 times longer with ceritinib (Zykadia) than with chemotherapy, the current second-line standard, in patients with advanced <em>ALK</em>-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who progressed after first-line crizotinib.

Atezolizumab (Tecentriq) reduced the risk of death by 27% compared with docetaxel in patients with advanced non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following the failure of platinum-based chemotherapy.

Lidija Kandolf Sekulovic, MD, PhD, associate professor of Dermatology, Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, Serbia, discusses a recently published survey during an interview at the 2016 ESMO Congress. The survey found that several thousand patients with metastatic melanoma in Europe do not have access to new, life-saving agents in this field.

Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, director, Pediatric Medical Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the results of a study that evaluated dabrafenib as a treatment for pediatric patients with BRAF V600-mutant relapsed or refractory low-grade gliomas during an interview at the 2016 ESMO Congress.

Single-agent pembrolizumab (Keytruda) reduced the risk of death by 40% and improved progression-free survival (PFS) by 4.3 months compared with doublet chemotherapy for untreated patients with advanced non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with PD-L1 expression on &ge;50% of cells, according to findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-024 trial.

The oral multikinase inhibitor regorafenib (Stivarga) has the potential to become the standard of care as second-line treatment in patients with previously treated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who are unsuitable for loco-regional therapy and have progressed on sorafenib.

Gabriel Hortobagyi, MD, professor of Medicine, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the major findings of the MONALEESA-2 study in advanced breast cancer, during an interview at the 2016 ESMO Congress.

Maintenance therapy with the PARP1/2 inhibitor niraparib reduced the risk of progression or death by 73% compared with placebo for patients with germline <em>BRCA</em>-positive platinum-sensitive, recurrent ovarian cancer, according to findings from the phase III NOVA trial.

Updated findings from the phase III EORTC 18071 trial show treatment with ipilimumab (Yervoy) reduced the risk of death by 28% versus placebo in patients with high-risk stage III melanoma.&nbsp;

Over one-fourth of patients with metastatic melanoma in Europe do not have access to groundbreaking therapies that could extend their lives, according to a survey presented at the 2016 ESMO Congress.

Mikhail Fedyanin, MD, medical oncologist, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, discusses some of the factors associated with discordance in mutation status in metastatic colorectal cancer during the 2016 ESMO Congress.

Jim Zhong, MD, and colleagues describe a National Cancer Database (NCDB) outcomes analysis of patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer treated with either radical surgery or bladder preservation therapy.

The addition of external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) to interstitial brachytherapy failed to reduce prostate cancer progression compared to brachytherapy alone in men with intermediate-risk disease, interim data from a randomized trial showed.

According to findings from a multicenter randomized trial, chemoradiation for early-stage, low-grade follicular lymphoma led to significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) compared with involved-field radiotherapy alone (IFRT).

Hope Rugo, MD, clinical professor, department of medicine, and director of Breast Oncology Clinical Trials Program, at University of California, San Francisco, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the role of immunotherapy in breast cancer.

Patricia LoRusso, DO, PhD, professor of medicine and associate director of Innovative Medicine at Yale Cancer Center, discusses the key questions that still remain regarding combination and sequencing with PARP inhibitors.

PARP inhibitors&nbsp;are anything but dead as breast cancer treatment, argued Patricia LoRusso, DO.&nbsp;

Endocrine therapy has come a long way as a treatment for breast cancer since tamoxifen ruled the adjuvant therapy landscape in 1989, but much remains unknown about newer therapies and combating endocrine resistant mutations<br /> &nbsp;

Hope S. Rugo, MD, discusses&nbsp;immunotherapies, androgen receptor (AR)-targeted agents, and targeted therapies all on the horizon in TNBC.

Existing data for androgen receptor (AR) antagonists are encouraging and anticipated future results could soon show a benefit for these agents in large populations of patients with breast cancer.

Radiologists have been challenged by the ever-changing recommendations of when breast cancer screening should begin and the frequency of screening, says Sarah M. Friedewald, MD.&nbsp;The controversy surrounding screening recommendations can be a distraction to the implementation of new technologies, such as tomosynthesis.

Kimberly J. Van Zee, MS, MD, FACS, presented her findings on the benefits of nomogram during a panel on &ldquo;Breast Pathology for the Non-Pathologist&rdquo; at the 18^th annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago.<br /> &nbsp;

The selection process for determining which procedure to utilize for an image-directed core breast biopsy often remains a mystery to those outside of the pathology and radiology world.

William J. Gradishar, MD, discusses combining and sequencing novel targeted therapies.

In an era of simultaneous increased evaluative testing in the United States and a rise in early-stage breast cancer diagnosis, it&rsquo;s important that those facing treatment decisions for curable cancer understand the advances and advantages in precision medicine, explained Steven J. Katz, MD, MPH.

Steven Katz, MD, professor, internal medicine, at the University of Michigan Medical School, discusses the major advances in precision medicine in the field of breast cancer.

Marco Davila, MD, PhD, medical oncologist, Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses MDS as an immunoresponsive disease and applying immunotherapies to MDS.

With a number of effective targeted therapies now available for patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms and chronic myeloid leukemia, patient selection for transplantation should rely heavily on prognostic scoring.