ASCO Annual Meeting

Adding palbociclib to standard fulvestrant more than doubled progression-free survival in pretreated patients who have HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.

MPDL3280A reduced the risk of death by 53% compared with docetaxel in previously treated patients with PD-L1-positive squamous and non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.

Immune checkpoint inhibition will continue to attract interest at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, with a number of abstracts focused on this emerging class of agents

Taking the vitamin B3 pill nicotinamide could reduce the risk of recurrence for those with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer.

Adding docetaxel to standard androgen deprivation therapy significantly improved overall survival in men with newly diagnosed, hormone-naïve advanced prostate cancer.

Treatment with elotuzumab in combination lenalidomide and dexamethasone prolonged remission by 4.5 months in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma when compared with lenalidomide and dexamethasone alone.

An updated analysis of a phase III trial hints at a possible survival advantage for patients with radioactive iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer treated with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor sorafenib.

Adding necitumumab to standard of care with gemcitabine-cisplatin improves survival compared with chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment in patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of squamous histology.

Combining the pan-deacetylase inhibitor panobinostat with bortezomib and dexamethasone delayed disease progression by 3.9 months over bortezomib and dexamethasone alone in patients with relapsed or relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma.

SAR650984 demonstrated encouraging efficacy as a monotherapy and in combination with dexamethasone and lenalidomide without reaching a maximum tolerated dose in patients with heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

The addition of the investigational hypoxia-targeted drug TH-302 to dexamethasone has demonstrated beneficial activity and a manageable adverse event profile in the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The novel agents idelalisib and ABT-199 in combination with rituximab have demonstrated impressive activity with manageable toxicity for patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Abemaciclib demonstrated unexpected single-agent activity in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive metastatic breast cancer and a clinical benefit rate exceeding 70% in combination with fulvestrant.

A joint analysis of two phase III trials involving a total of 4690 premenopausal women with HR+ breast cancer demonstrated that adjuvant use of exemestane reduced relative risk of developing subsequent invasive cancer by 28% compared with tamoxifen.

In what was described as “an almost unprecedented improvement in median survival,” the addition of the chemotherapy drug docetaxel to standard hormone therapy prolonged life for men with newly diagnosed metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer by nearly 14 months.

Julie R. Gralow, MD, discusses an analysis of the phase III SWOG S0307 trial comparing toxicities and patient-stated preference for oral versus intravenous delivery of bisphosphonates as adjuvant therapy in primary breast cancer.

Filip Janku, MD, PhD, discusses a trial presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting looking at the activity of the mTOR inhibitor sirolimus and HDAC inhibitor vorinostat in heavily pretreated patients with refractory Hodgkin lymphoma.

Frontline therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin) or cetuximab (Erbitux) combined with either FOLFOX or FOLFIRI yielded a comparable survival benefit of approximately 29 months in patients with <em>KRAS</em> wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

A dual HER2-blockade strategy that added lapatinib to trastuzumab for the adjuvant treatment of women with early breast cancer failed to demonstrate a significant improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) over the standard therapy with trastuzumab alone.

William D. Tap, MD, discusses a phase I study of the selective colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF1R) kinase inhibitor PLX3397 for the treatment of pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS).

The third-generation EGFR inhibitor CO-1686 continues to demonstrate promising activity in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who developed resistance after prior treatment with an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI).

Paulo Marcelo Hoff, MD, PhD, FACP, discusses a trial that looked at the consistency of effect of ziv-aflibercept in the bevacizumab pre-treated subgroup of patients in the VELOUR trial stratified by first-line progression ≥ 9 months versus < 9 months.

Adding the VEGFR-2 inhibitor ramucirumab (Cyramza) to standard docectaxel improved overall survival (OS) by 1.4 months versus docetaxel alone in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Richard Goldberg, MD, discusses results from the phase III CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Treatment with single-agent ibrutinib (Imbruvica) dramatically increased progression-free survival (PFS) by nearly 80% and significantly extended overall survival (OS) by 57% compared with ofatumumab in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Combining the oral targeted agents olaparib and cediranib resulted in a near-doubling of median progression-free survival (PFS) among women with recurrent ovarian cancer.

Lenvatinib, a novel multityrosine kinase inhibitor, is highly effective against differentiated thyroid cancer that has become resistant to standard radioiodine (RAI) therapy.

Adding goserelin to chemotherapy for women with early-stage hormone receptor (HR)-negative breast cancer helps both to preserve their fertility and to prolong their survival.

Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, a professor of medical oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discusses data presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting examining EGFR inhibitors for lung cancer.

Patients starting palliative care for advanced cancer are often already on repeat prescriptions of statins to lower cholesterol and reduce risk of a heart attack or stroke, and many of these patients continue on statin therapy until death.