GENITOURINARY CANCERS

The FDA has accepted and granted a priority review to a supplemental Biologics License Application for pembrolizumab for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors with tissue tumor mutational burden-high who have progressed following prior treatment and who have no satisfactory alternative treatment options.

External Beam Radiation therapy with or without androgen deprivation therapy or surgery are the standards of care for men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer, but the adverse events associated with the treatments, delayed testosterone recovery and prolonged erectile dysfunction, are challenges.

An association was found between a lower risk of grade 3 or higher chemotherapy toxicity with higher body mass indexes and normal albumin, a protein made in the liver, levels in older adult patients with solid tumors, according to an analysis of a prospective, multicenter study.

A sudden surge in the cases of COVID-19 due to pandemic, along with efforts to contain it, has led to multiple challenges that no country has experienced in the last several decades. The global pandemic from COVID-19 poses a unique set of challenges not only for patients with cancer who need their treatment, but also for caregivers, oncologists, and the overall care team.

At the Annual Education Summit of the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California, Tanya Dorff, MD, discussed evolving practices in prostate and urothelial cancers as well as highlighted controversies in the treatment landscape such as the role of combination therapy in prostate cancer.

Liquid biopsy results that identify DNA damage repair genes in prostate cancer may be a useful tool in clinical-deci­sion making, espe­cially because these genes can elucidate therapeutic vulnera­bilities that could be exploited by current treatments.

Eugene B. Cone, MD, discusses the strategies for treating patients with prostate cancer who develop adverse events, such as cardiac events and immune-related events.

A 75-Year-Old Man With Metastatic Castrate-Resistant Prostate Cancer

A significant percentage of younger men with high-risk prostate cancer who display minimal comorbidities continue to receive&nbsp;nondefinitive therapy (NDT), despite research that has demonstrated local therapy is more beneficial in this patient population, according to findings from a study published in&nbsp;<em>JAMA Oncology</em>&nbsp;show. A number of reasons for this have been identified, including&nbsp;&nbsp;insurance status and race/ethnicity.

In an interview with&nbsp;Targeted Oncology, Kashyap Patel, MD, discussed the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of new precautions in his practice as the number of COVID-19 infected persons rises in the state.<br /> &nbsp;

The addition of 6 months of oral daily enzalutamide to standard salvage radiation and hormone therapy is safe and may improve prostate cancer remission rates at 2 and 3 years postoperatively among patients with high-risk disease, according to a recent paper in European Urology Oncology.

Elderly patients with advanced prostate cancer should be evaluated for preexisting cardiovascular diseases before taking oral androgen signaling inhibitors by a multidisciplinary team, includ&shy;ing a cardiologist, according to a recent retro&shy;spective study. Investigators at Thomas Jeffer&shy;son University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, demonstrated that after receiving abiraterone acetate&nbsp; or enzalutamide, these patients had higher rates of short-term mortality than similar patients without CVDs.

Patients harboring IDH1/2 muta&shy;tions may receive benefit by the use of PARP inhibitors, with investigators initi&shy;ating clinical trials in patients across multiple different tumor types to determine the efficacy of this strategy.

Treatment with pembrolizumab demonstrated antitumor activity along with tolerable toxicity in patients with 4 different rare and hard-to-treat malignancies, according to results from a phase II study led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers and published in the&nbsp;Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer.

Neeraj Agarwal, MD, discusses the efficacy of cabozantinib and atezolizumab in the COSMIC-021 study.

To help assess the advances the United States has made in decreasing cancer-related deaths, a collective of public health bodies found that monitoring trends in cancer risk, screening test use, and mortality is informative. A report published in&nbsp;<em>Cancer</em>&nbsp;shows that progress has been made in recent years, but there is more work to be&nbsp;<a>done.</a>

African American males with prostate cancer may fare better in terms of overall survival than Caucasian males, according to the results of a pooled analysis of phase III data. The data were obtained through the PROCEED registry, which includes over 1900 patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer treated with sipuleucel-T, created at the recommendation of the FDA.

Patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer with a luminal B tumor are associated with better outcomes with the addition of docetaxel chemotherapy to androgen deprivation therapy compared with androgen deprivation therapy alone. In a correlative study presented at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Sumposium, investigators also determined that the basal tumor subtype did not experience as much of a survival benefit with the addition of docetaxel to androgen deprivation therapy.

The FDA has accepted a Biologics License Application for MYL-1402O, a proposed biosimilar to bevacizumab, according to a press release from co-developers Biocon and Mylan. The BLA is seeking approval for the biosimilar as a treatment for multiple types of cancer and the FDA has set an action date goal of December 27, 2020, for a decision on the BLA.

As the new coronavirus disease 2019 creates problems internationally, health-wise and economically, it is also becoming a cause for concern throughout the oncology community.

The addition of apalutamide to androgen deprivation treatment improved time to pain progression and other quality-of-life out&shy;come measures in patients with metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer in the phase III TITAN trial.