Interviews

Anthony Mato, MD, MSCE, director of the CLL Program, University of Pennsylvania, discusses the difference between intolerance and resistance when giving patients with chronic lymphotic leukemia ibrutinib.

​John McCarty, MD, medical director, Bone Marrow Transplant Program, Virginia Commonwealth University Health, discusses advice physicians can give to patients with lymphoma seeking stem cell mobilization.

Aaron Logan, MD, PhD, discusses the evolving definition of immunotherapy and its importance within the realm of oncology. Logan says immunotherapies were initially meant try to vaccinate patients against their own tumors, though the methodologies involved did not prove successful.

​Michael A. Davies, MD, PhD, discusses the importance of identifying which patients diagnosed with melanoma are at the highest risk for developing brain metastases.

Ashani T. Weeraratna, PhD, discusses the similarities in treatment between younger and older patients with melanoma. She says this lack of differentiation between treatment regimens could pose a problem in the future. One such issue is that older patients tend to react less well to treatments like vemurafenib.

Sheri Holmen, PhD, discusses treating metastases in melanoma. Holmen says the treatment of metastases in melanoma is currently the cancer's biggest unmet clinical need, specifically brain metastases.

Beer says that while BRCA is normally associated with breast cancer, the gene is found in up to 20% of advanced prostate cancers. He says of this 20% patient population, roughly half inherit the BRCA gene and the other half acquire it.

Srinivasan says enrolling patients in clinical trials that best represents their type of kidney cancer is an appropriate course of action for treatment.

Kutikov points out that not every mass needs to be resected and that patients need to understand the risks associated with each decision they make in the treatment process.

Choueiri says that while both drugs have a chance to become first-line therapies, nivolumab does more so than cabozantinib. He says there is a phase III study that has recently finish accrual that looks at combining nivolumab and ipilimumab, in comparison to sunitinib, as a treatment for RCC.

Plimack says the efficacy of PD-L1 inhibitors have been proven in the treatment of bladder cancer and are currently employed in the armamentarium of medical professionals. She adds as other cancer types further test both ipilimumab and PD-L1 inhibitors, oncologists will gain a better understanding of how both will continue to play a role in bladder cancer.

Kibel cited both the STAMPEDE and CHAARTED trials, which showed the efficacy of docetaxel plus androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in metastatic prostate cancer.

Hoffman-Censits says outside of the first-line therapy of cisplatin-based chemotherapy in locally advanced unresectable bladder cancer tumors, there are currently no solutions for disease progression.

​Darren Feldman, MD, discusses dose intensification in patients with advanced germ cell tumors who are not responding to BEP chemotherapy.

Freeman says when a patient is given chemotherapy, oncologists can anticipate certain toxicities and treat accordingly. With immunotherapies, Freeman says the toxicities are associated with immune attacks where there shouldn't be any. These attacks can result in side effects such as skin rashes, colitis, and neumonitis.

Hamstra says that shorter regimens of radiotherapy for men whose prostates remained in tact post-surgery proved to be noninferior when compared to longer regimens. He adds that these shorter regimens are more convenient for patients, as well as more cost effective.

Padmanee Sharma discusses the constantly shifting landscape of immune response and how it differs from patient to patient. Sharma says in order to best treat a patient with bladder cancer, oncologists have to consider that immune response in patients will never be the same day to day.

Saeed Rafii, MD, PhD, MRCP, discusses the phase Ib JAVELIN solid tumor trial. The trial looks at the anti-PD-L1 antibody avelumab in patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

Patrick Johnston, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses a phase I study that incorporated belinostat with standard CHOP chemotherapy for patients with newly diagnosed peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Johnston says the goal of the trial was to discover the maximum tolerable dose. He said there were no additional significant toxicities in patients and the combination was well-tolerated.

Branagan said in his study, which gave patients with myeloma a high-dose flu vaccine followed by a booster dose 30 days later, 66% of patients saw total serum protection from the ailment. he said previous efforts to vaccinate patients with myeloma has resulted in a 20% total serum protection.

Kathryn Kolibaba, MD, discusses results from the phase II trial dubbed Pyramid Trial. The open-label trial examined a combination of R-CHOP and bortezomib in patients with untreated non-germinal center B-cell-like subtype diffuse large cell lymphoma.

​Benjamin Smith, MD, discusses a recent study looking at local treatments in breast cancer and the complication burdens associated with them. Smith says that any complications arising in patients with breast cancer within 2 years are strongly associated with their treatments.

Shak says the study examined the prospective outcomes of 1626 women and showed that at 5 years, less than 1% of women had a distant recurrence.

Twelves said historically, chemotherapy combinations have been created utilizing empirical evidence, which he says is not a sound rationale for the combinations. He adds that due to certain biological properties of eribulin mesylate, the treatment warrants further investigation as a combination therapy.

APOBEC3B was investigated in a retrospective study of a cohort available for analysis from a Dutch study. Results shows patients with high levels of APOBEC3B had much worse outcomes compared to those with low levels.

Debu Tripathy, MD, discusses the further investigation into immunotherapy's role in treating breast cancer.

Rex Chin-Wei Yung, MD, FCCP, discusses the value of teamwork in oncology, specifically lung cancer, and the importance of pulmonologists.

Betty Hamilton, MD, discusses TET2 mutations in molecular mutations in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) on allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant outcomes.

​Gordon B. Mills, MD, PhD, says individualized treatment, as opposed to treating patients solely based on their malignancy type, must happen in order to improve patient outcome.

Denise Yardley, MD, says one of the biggest challenges the malignancy poses is triple negative breast cancer's heterogeneity, resulting in medical professionals having to rely on clinical path features that do not provide enough preciseness in treatment.