Interviews

Linda Vahdat, MD, discusses the antibody drug conjugate glembatumumab vedotin being used in the treatment of women with triple negative breast cancer who have a high expression of gpNMB.

Katherine Van Loon, MD, discusses identifying recurrences in gastrointestinal cancers at a point where patients can receive further therapy.

Maurie Markman, MD, discusses characterizing tumor types in ovarian cancer and treating the malignancy with checkpoint inhibitors.

Michael Birrer, MD, PhD, discusses several international phase III trials showing bevacizumab significantly prolonging progression free survival in patients with ovarian cancer.

Yael Cohen, MD, discusses VB111, a highly targeted anti-angiogenic agent. The treatment is currently going through a phase III trial for treating glioblastoma, phase I trial for thyroid cancer and phase II trial for ovarian cancer.

Joanne Blum, MD, PhD, discusses the function of the oral PARP inhibitor talazoparib (BMN 673) in BRCA mutation subjects with locally advanced and/or metastatic breast cancer.

Sabine Siesling discusses breast conserving surgery versus mastectomy. Siesling says her and her team found that internationally, the survival rate of breast cancer patients is lower when a mastectomy is performed, as compared to breast conserving surgery.

​Andrew D. Seidman, MD, attending physician, Breast Cancer Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the shift paradigm of breast cancer treatment and the development of targeted agents that disrupt certain pathways.

Eric P. Winer, MD, discusses the survival rates of women with early stage breast cancer who received bevacizumab and/or carboplatin.

Peter Beitsch, MD, breast surgeon, Medical City Dallas Hospital, discusses a triplet of chemotherapy, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab in the adjuvant and neoadjuvant settings.

​Amanda L. Kong, MD, MS, FACS, discusses breast cancer care at high volume hospitals versus low volume hospitals. Kong says the study is the first one that looks at processes as a bundle and takes into account socioeconomic statuses of patients.

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, talks about taking the clinical trials examining MPDL3280A a step further for bladder cancer patients.

Figlin says drugs like lenvatinib, everolimus, and cabozantinib have emerged in recent years as possible first-line therapies for RCC.

Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Vice President for Government Relations and Chief Advocacy Officer, Chief, Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses carboplatin in triple-negative breast cancer and in-breast response rates.

Farhad Ravandi, MD, Professor in the Department of Leukemia, MD Anderson Cancer Center‎, discusses minimal residual disease. Ravandi says historically, MRD has shown a resistance to cytotoxic chemotherapy.

Claire Harrison, MD, discusses ruxolitinib continuing to show a benefit for patients with advanced myelofibrosis over the course of a 5 year study.

Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, on the progression treatments from combinations toward three-drug treatments and the use of monoclonal antibodies. Landgen adds that while he does have faith that monoclonal antibodies will change the treatment landscape in oncology, he says they could very well be combined with old and new drugs.

William G. Wierda, MD, PhD, discusses ibrutinib and idelalisib as treatments for non-small cell lung cancer. Wierda says that as it currenlty stands, ibrutinib is approved only for patients with NSCLC with a 17p deletion untreated and idelalisib is only approved for patients with untreated NSCLC.

Burtness says on average, medical professionals should take about 4 minutes or longer to properly explain the clinical trial to their patients, as well as leave ample time for questions at the end of the conversation.

Srdan Verstovsek, MD, PhD, discusses the JAK2 inhibitor, as well as upcoming treatments like momelotinib and pacritinib, for the treatment of patients with myelofibrosis.

George Demetri, MD, professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, director of the Sarcoma Center, Dana Farber Brigham Women's Cancer Center, on the mutagenic properties of dacarbazine.

Robin Jones, BSc, MB, MRCP, MD, oncologist, Royal Marsden Hospital, London, discusses the effectiveness of monoclonal antibody olaratumab in combination with doxorubicin in metastatic soft tissue sarcoma.

Michael Mauro, MD, discusses the side effects of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

Garon says the likely place to start when looking into combination therapies are cytotoxic chemotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors, given these treatments are currently approved in lung cancer.

Jimmie Holland, MD, Wayne E. Chapman Chair in Psychiatric Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, on the development of genomic medicine in oncology.

Colin Weekes, MD, PhD, associate professor, Department of Medicine and Medical Oncology, University of Colorado, on molecular phenotyping in pancreatic cancer patients.

Ilaria Muller, PhD student, Cardiff University, on a possible common antigen between thyroid cancer and breast cancer.

Emmanuel S. Antonarakis, MBBCh, assistant professor, Johns Hopkins Medicine, on the coming importance of being tested for the ARV7 marker and future treatments for patients with the marker.

Abraham Chachoua, MD, associate professor of Oncology, NYU Langone Medical Center, talks about the present use of anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 becoming the standard second-line treatment in lung cancer.

Erika P. Hamilton, MD, on ONT-380 for HER2-positive breast cancer and the treatment's ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.