News

The chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel has shown promising results in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, primary mediastinal lymphoma, and transformed follicular lymphoma, according to findings presented at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

John L. Marshall, MD, discusses efforts to determine the underlying molecular basis for the sidedness issue in colorectal cancer.

Heather Dalton, MD, discusses first-line treatment options currently available for patients, pivotal data that have solidified standard approaches, and why chemotherapy will likely always remain critical in the ovarian cancer sphere.

According to results from a randomized, double-blind, phase III study, patients with stage III or IV melanoma assigned to 10 mg/kg ipilimumab lived longer than patients assigned to a lower dose of the anti-CTLA-4 anticlonal antibody, but at the cost of greater toxicity.

Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, discusses recent trials of immunotherapy and chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer, as well as the future role of immunotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer.

Fresh concern has been ignited in the oncology community due to a set of draft recommendations for controlling price escalation in the Medicare Part B program, which covers injectable and infusion drugs. 

Andrew Wei, MBBS, PhD, discusses a study which explored the safety and efficacy of the novel BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax in combination with low-dose cytarabine chemotherapy for treatment-naïve patients over the age of 65 with AML.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) may move away from its long-standing opposition to routine PSA screening for prostate cancer in some men.

The PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab showed single-agent activity in previously treated patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal, resulting in an overall response rate of 24.3%.

Manish Shah, MD, discusses ongoing efforts to understand the distinction between early-onset CRC and traditional CRC.

Celestia Higano, MD, discusses the early use of chemotherapy, the potential for PARP inhibitors, and the evolving role of radium-223 in prostate cancer. 

According to findings from the phase III ALEX trial, alectinib reduced the risk of disease progression or death compared with crizotinib as a frontline treatment for patients with <em>ALK</em>-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.&nbsp;

A majority of patients with relapsed or refractory indolent lymphoma responded to treatment with the PI3K dual-isoform inhibitor copanlisib, according to results from the phase II CHRONOS-1 trial.<br /> &nbsp;

A retrospective analysis presented at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting found the flexibility of CAR T cells to perform multiple functions was associated with the level of clinical activity elicited for patients with advanced non-Hodgkin&rsquo;s lymphoma.

Combining the IDO inhibitor indoximod with pembrolizumab led to an overall response rate of 52% in patients with advanced melanoma.

The IDO1 inhibitor BMS-986205 had &quot;best-in-class&quot; activity as demonstrated by kynurenine reductions and IDO1 inhibition for patients with advanced tumors in a phase I/IIa study.

Adding a formulation of the Coxsackievirus A21 to ipilimumab yielded an overall response rate of 50% and was well-tolerated in immunotherapy-na&iuml;ve and pretreated patients with advanced melanoma.

Mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 and 2 (<em>IDH1/2</em>) are not the mutations commonly found in cancer cells, according to a presentation from the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

BGB-283, a novel agent that targets <em>RAS/RAF</em>-mutated tumors, demonstrated activity across a variety of tumor types, according to the results of a preliminary clinical evaluation presented at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

More than 80% of patients with refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) achieved objective responses to treatment with the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel (KTE-C19), according to the results of a pivotal phase II trial.

According to 5-year follow-up data&nbsp;from the CA209-003 study, long-term survival in patients with metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) has proven to be much higher than expected, with 16% of patients surviving after 5 years.

The PD-1 and CTLA-4 inhibitor combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) induced a 12% reduction in the risk of death versus nivolumab monotherapy in patients with treatment-na&iuml;ve advanced melanoma.

FDA approval is being sought for the use of denosumab for the prevention of skeletal-related events in patients with multiple myeloma, according to Amgen, the developer of the RANK ligand inhibitor.

Steven H. Lin, MD, PhD, discusses&nbsp;the benefits of advanced radiation technologies, including IMRT and proton therapy.

According to results of the phase II JAVELIN Merkel 200 study, the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab (Bavencio) induced an objective response rate (ORR) of 33% in patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma, including 2 additional complete responses (CR) since the primary analysis.

&nbsp;According to the results of a phase I study of single agent anti-PD-L1 atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC), ten percent of patients showed impressive long-term survival, although researchers said that aside from some biomarker evidence, it&rsquo;s yet unclear why the drug was more effective in this subset of patients.

A landmark analysis of findings from the EF-14 trial testing the efficacy and safety of tumor treating fields for the treatment of patients with glioblastoma multiforme has found that the risk of death was reduced by 37% and overall survival was extended by a median of 5 months with the use of the device.

The combination of trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb) resulted in a 30% objective response rate (ORR) in heavily pretreated patients with HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), suggesting a new targeted therapy strategy for later lines of treatment that supports testing for the aberration.

The irreversible pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor neratinib showed single-agent activity across cohorts of patients with <em>HER2</em>-mutant advanced cancers, according to findings from the phase II SUMMIT study presented at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

A biologics license application has been submitted for axicabtagene ciloleucel (KTE-C19) as a potential treatment for transplant ineligible patients with relapsed or refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.