News

Telesta Therapeutics has been granted an FDA advisory hearing to discuss the biologics license application of its MCNA immunotherapy as treatment for high-risk nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer following first-line bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG).

The immunotherapy, pembrolizumab (Keytruda), has been FDA approved for treatment in patients with pretreated advanced non-small cell lung cancer across all histologies with tumors expressing PD-L1.

Frontline combination treatment with erlotinib and bevacizumab demonstrated high efficacy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who harbored an EGFR T790M mutation.

Tasquinimod demonstrated promise in phase II trials but failed to improve overall survival in a phase III trial in treatment-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer; some experts believe this failure highlights the need for more intelligent clinical trial designs in prostate cancer.

Data from the pivotal KEYNOTE-001 trial showing pembrolizumab's efficacy in pretreated non-small cell lung cancer were presented just days before the FDA is scheduled to make its approval decision on the PD-1 inhibitor in this setting (October 2, 2015).

Eribulin mesylate (Halaven) has been granted an FDA priority review designation as a treatment for patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma following chemotherapy.

The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab has received accelerated FDA approval as a treatment for patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Tom Herzog, MD, clinical director, University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute, explains the impact ADXS11-001 may have on patients with recurrent metastatic cervical cancer who currently have limited effective treatment options.

Significantly improved emesis control was seen when fosaprepitant was added to an antiemetic regimen compared with standard care, in women receiving radiotherapy and cisplatin for cervical cancer.

Rociletinib has been granted priority review designation as a treatment for patients with EGFR T790M-mutant metastatic non-small cell lung cancer following prior administration of an EGFR TKI.

Treatment with nivolumab demonstrated clinical efficacy and safety in patients with platinum-resistant, recurrent, or advanced ovarian cancer.

Accelerated hypofractionated radiotherapy using a schedule of 60 Gy in 20 fractions of 3 Gy delivered in 4 weeks was found to be comparable to the conventional schedule of 74 Gy/37 of 2 GY delivered in 7.2 weeks in patients with localized prostate cancer taking androgen deprivation therapy.

Talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC), an attenuated oncolytic virus, combined with pembrolizumab, an immune checkpoint inhibitor, passed an early safety evaluation for unresectable melanoma.

Inhibition of PD-L1 with atezolizumab (MPDL3280A) showed crucial clinical efficacy as monotherapy for the treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Two strategies of successive immunotherapy for the treatment of advanced melanoma recently showed similar safety and tolerability, yet substantially different efficacy.

Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc recently announced it has completed development of its protocol for phase Ib/II testing in patients with stage IV melanoma.

Patients with advanced lung and gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors had a 52% reduction in risk of progression or death with everolimus compared with placebo.

Over a fifth of patients with previously treated advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma showed a measureable response, when treated with pembrolizumab, an immune checkpoint inhibitor.

A preclinical study using mouse and human melanoma cell lines published in a September, 2015, issue of Cell, outlines mechanisms by which melanoma can evade the immune system.

The risk of death for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was reduced by 27% with nivolumab (Opdivo) versus everolimus (Afinitor), and overall survival (OS) was improved by 5.4 months.

Malignant melanoma is one of the most common primary tumors to spread to the brain.

Dabrafenib (Tafinlar), in combination with trametinib (Mekinist), improved overall survival (OS) by 7.6 months, compared to the single-agent vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in patients who have unresectable or metastatic BRAFV600E/K-mutant melanoma.

Compared with everolimus, second-line treatment with cabozantinib (Cometriq) reduced the risk of progression or death by 42% in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC)

Failure-free survival (FFS) for patients with follicular lymphoma has had a lack of improvement, fueling interest in new treatment strategies that may offer promise for better outcomes.

Single-agent ibrutinib (Imbruvica) data showed durable responses in patients with untreated or relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

New combination strategies are required for heterogeneity of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), in order to improve outcomes.

Clinical evaluation suggests a role for immune checkpoint inhibition in the treatment of patients with lymphomas, but early success has also raised many questions.

A sarcoma study arm of the phase II portion of the multiarm PembroPlus clinical trial that combines immunotherapy with chemotherapy has commenced at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), Western Regional Medical Center, Goodyear, Arizona

The Inaugural International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference commenced September 16, 2015, in New York City, and one presentation detailed Biothera's new biomarker strategy in patient selection for the company's investigational cancer immunotherapy, Imprime PGG.

Frequency of the cell death-regulating protein Bim (BCL-2-interacting mediator of cell death) may predict patient response to PD-1 inhibitor immunotherapy.