December 2018

In 2017 there was a continued increase in opioid-related deaths in the United States, with more than 60,000 lives lost. Most opioid abusers report that their opioids are acquired with their own prescription or a prescription for someone else obtained illegally. Two recent retrospective studies found that in patients undergoing surgery for early non–small cell lung cancer, perioperative opioid use was associated with decreased OS and increased risk of recurrence.

Clinicians need to consider the inherent heterogeneity of each case of triple-negative breast cancer during diagnosis and treatment planning, said Stuart J. Schnitt, MD, because not all cases present the same way. During the 2018 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium, Schnitt reviewed the conventional views of TNBC and emphasized that they may not fit all cases of TNBC.

Primary and acquired resistance to immunotherapy necessitates novel strategies that can overcome cellular processes and genetic mutations of resistance to advance into the next age of cancer therapy. 

Failed clinical trials in glioblastoma are hampering the path toward novel treatment regimens in this difficult-to-treat malignancy and old approaches to clinical trial design are reducing the appetite for involvement, according to Erik P. Sulman, MD, PhD.

Acquired resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting <em>EGFR</em> mutations in patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer are leading to next-generation therapies equipped to circumvent the mutations that arise from initial treatment.&nbsp;A review of these mechanisms, and the latest agents being developed to address them, shows that the pipeline holds promise for the future.

The FDA recently&nbsp;released a draft guidance to assist with the use of minimal residual disease as a biomarker of tumor burden quantification as well as&nbsp;to clarify issues pertaining to this use of MRD in regulatory submissions, including in clinical trials, or to support marketing approval of drugs and biologics for treatment of specific hematologic malignancies. In this discussion, experts say this&nbsp;represents a timely and significant move toward advancing the role of MRD as a regulatory endpoint.

Recent FDA drug approvals in hematologic malignancies have changed the treatment paradigm of many diseases and resulted in necessary updates to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology.