News

Jhanelle E. Gray, MD, recently shared the treatment considerations and decisions she makes when treating patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, with a special focus on immunotherapy.&nbsp;Gray, associate member, Director of Thoracic Clinical Research, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, explained her treatment decisions based on 2 case scenarios during a&nbsp;<em>Targeted Oncology</em>&nbsp;live case-based peer perspectives dinner.

Progression-free survival was improved by nearly 15% with CHOP-RIT compared with R-CHOP alone in previously untreated patients with follicular lymphoma,&nbsp;according to findings from the phase III SWOG-S0016 trial published in the <em>Journal of Clinical Oncology</em>.

Treatment with cabozantinib induced similar quality of life results as treatment with everolimus in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma, according to results of the&nbsp;randomized, open-label, international phase III METEOR trial.

Arjun Balar, MD, recently shared the treatment considerations and decisions he makes when treating patients with advanced bladder cancer.

Rapid growth continues for research surrounding combination therapies of immunotherapy with chemotherapy for patients with NSCLC.

Four US studies of&nbsp;BPX-501 have been halted by the FDA after&nbsp;3 patients developed encephalopathy possibly related to treatment with the&nbsp;novel cellular immunotherapy for cancers and orphan inherited blood disorders.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD,&nbsp;discusses the current and future state of immunotherapy in the treatment of melanoma.

Treatment with lomustine plus bevacizumab provided a slightly improved progression-free survival, but did not demonstrate an overall survival advantage over treatment with lomustine alone in patients with progressive glioblastoma, according to results of a randomized phase III trial published in the<em> New England Journal of Medicine</em>.

Circulating tumor cell conversion and CTC value &ge; 1 at baseline were superior predictors of overall survival than PSA in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, according to an analysis of results from 5 clinical trials.<br /> &nbsp;

During their 155th annual meeting, to be help April 29, the National Academy of Science (NAS) will award 19 individuals for their extraordinary scientific achievements in a wide range of fields including the physical, biological, and medical sciences.

Charles J. Ryan, MD, will soon be joining the University of Minnesota Medical School as director of the Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation Division in the Department of Medicine, effective April 2018.

A phase III clinical trial of VAL-083, a first-in-class small molecule chemotherapy agent, has opened for patients with glioblastoma multiforme whose disease has progressed during or after standard treatment with chemoradiation, according to a news release from Atlantic Health System. &nbsp;

David F. McDermott, MD,&nbsp;shares some of the successes with immunotherapy in RCC and gave his insight on the future treatment of these patients.

Based on results of the phase III NETTER-1 trial, Lutathera has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of patients with somatostatin receptor-positive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Rana R. McKay, MD,&nbsp;discusses the evolving management of patients with advanced RCC, specifically the future of combinations with immunotherapy regimens.

According to results of a subgroup analysis of the phase III METEOR trial, cabozantinib (Cabometyx) demonstrated a 4.7 month improvement in progression-free survival compared with everolimus&nbsp;(Afinitor)&nbsp;in pretreated patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma with bone metastases at baseline.

In phase II data reported at the&nbsp;2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) elicited promising progression-free survival and overall survival results&nbsp;in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma who received previous treatment with sorafenib.

Pfizer has announced that PF-05280586, a biosimilar for rituximab, has delivered positive top-line results, meeting its primary endpoint for overall response rate in the&nbsp;in the phase III REFLECTIONS B3281006 trial for patients with follicular lymphoma.

According to results reported at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, early&nbsp;signs of efficacy were seen with the&nbsp;investigational oral cancer stem cell pathway inhibitor napabucasin (BBI608) combined with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in the first 8 patients enrolled in a multicenter phase I/II trial of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

According to 2 analyses presented at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, data from the CheckMate-142 study support the use of nivolumab (Opdivo) alone or in combination with ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the treatment of&nbsp;patients with previously treated DNA mismatch repair-deficient/microsatellite instability-high metastatic colorectal cancer.

Hackensack Meridian Health has announced that Verda J. Hicks, MD, FACS, FACOG, will serve as its chief of Gynecologic Oncology at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. She will be joined by associates James R. Bosscher, MD, and Karim ElSahwi, MD, to facilitate promising experience and care to the Monmouth, Ocean, and Middlesex counties.

Kathy S. Albain, MD, has been named the inaugural Huizenga Family Endowed Chair in Oncology Research at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Funded by Heidi Huizenga, one of Albain&rsquo;s beholden patients, her husband, and her family, the endowed chair recognizes Albain&rsquo;s notable contributions as a physician, research, teacher and mentor.

According to findings reported during the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, a weekly dose-escalation&nbsp;strategy of regorafenib (Stivarga) beginning at 80 mg and ending at 160 mg was found to be superior than the previously standard starting dose of 160 mg in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Progression-free survival and overall survival were improved for patients with glioblastoma by adding tumor-treating fields to&nbsp;temozolomide (Temodar),&nbsp;according to a final analysis of results from the EF-14 trial.

Susan Domchek, MD, discusses the&nbsp;evolving treatment landscape for patients with <em>BRCA&shy;</em>-related,<em> </em>metastatic breast cancer.

In patients with newly diagnosed locally advanced pancreatic cancer, induction treatment with nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) plus gemcitabine induced an overall disease control rate of 77.6%, according to&nbsp;updated findings from the phase II LAPACT trial presented at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Based on findings from the&nbsp;ALCYONE study,&nbsp;which were published in the <em>New England Journal of Medicine</em> and presented at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting,^&nbsp;the FDA has granted a priority review designation to&nbsp;daratumumab (Darzalex) in combination with bortezomib (Velcade), melphalan, and prednisone for the treatment of patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who are ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant.

Peter Martin, MD, discusses a phase I, open-label, multicenter trial of oral azacitidine (Vidaza) plus R-CHOP in people with high-risk, previously untreated DLBCL, grade 3B follicular lymphoma, or transformed lymphoma.

Adjuvant pembrolizumab (Keytruda) reduced the risk of recurrence by 43% in patients with stage III resected high-risk melanoma,&nbsp;according to findings from the phase III EORTC1325/KEYNOTE-054 trial

According to results from the phase I JAVELIN Solid Tumor study recently published in the Lancet Oncology, the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab (Bavencio) induced an overall response rate of 17% in patients with platinum-refractory metastatic urothelial carcinoma.