Interviews

Daniel Catenacci, MD, discusses how he makes decisions with immunotherapeutic agents for the treatment of patients with gastroesophageal junction cancer. He says he bases his sequencing decisions on a number of factors.

Hope S. Rugo, MD, discusses the potential role of immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), based on data from the KEYNOTE-522 clinical trial. Immunotherapy has been very exciting in this setting.

Winston Tan, MD, discusses the current treatment landscape for patients with thyroid cancer. He highlighted the importance of first determining if a patient with thyroid cancer has benign or malignant thyroid nodules, which can be identified with the use of diagnostic biopsies. He also discussed the standard-of-care treatment options for these different subtypes of patients once they are identified.

Simon Rule, MD, PhD, shares his thoughts on the FDA’s decision to grant zanubrutinib, a BTK inhibitor, priority review for the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma. Should the drug be approved, it will be available for patients with MCL who have received at least 1 prior line of therapy.

Scott Kopetz, MD, PhD, explains how prognoses for patients with colorectal cancer differ based on whether their cancer is left-sided or right-sided and discusses how knowledge of these differences have led to the development of more agents to treat both groups of patients.

Lecia V. Sequist, MD, MPH, director, says that oncologists have developed a better understanding of what causes resistance to EGFR inhibitors in patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer through preclinical studies and biopsies. <em>MET</em> amplification was found to be one of the major causes of resistance to newer generation EGFR-targeted drugs.

John DiPersio, MD, PhD, discusses targeted therapies for myeloid malignancies using DARTs, Bites, and antibody&ndash;drug conjugates, a topic he presented during the 2019 Society for Hematologic Oncology Annual Meeting.

Pamela L. Kunz, MD, discusses the most recent FDA approval of Lutathera (lutetium [Lu 177] dotatate) for the treatment of patients with gastroenteropancreatic NETs (GEP-NETs), including foregut, midgut, and hindgut tumors.

Madappa Kundranda, MD, PhD, discusses the frontline therapeutic options for patients with newly diagnosed hepatocellular carcinoma who are not candidates for surgery or transplant.

Arash Rezazadeh Kalebasty, MD, a hematologist/oncologist and research program director, Urologic Oncology, Norton Cancer Institute, discusses the safety profile of cabazitaxel in the CARD trial, which randomized patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer to cabazitaxel or one of 2 antiandrogen receptor agents, abiraterone acetate or enzalutamide.

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, discusses the efficacy results from the CARD trial, which evaluated the radiographic progression-free survival of cabazitaxel combined with either abiraterone acetate or enzalutamide in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.<br /> &nbsp;

Daniel J. George, MD, says that clinicians who treat prostate cancer have devoted the past 70 years to hormone therapy and androgen deprivation therapy, particularly for patients with metastatic disease. However, the emergence of agents like docetaxel, abiraterone acetate, and androgen receptor antagonists, like apalutamide and enzalutamide, have changed the landscape.<br /> &nbsp;

Andrew Kuykendall, MD, discusses the background to the JAK2 inhibitor fedratinib (Inrebic), which was&nbsp;approved by the FDA in August 2019 for the treatment of patients with intermediate-2 or high-risk primary or secondary myelofibrosis, including post&ndash;polycythemia vera or post&ndash;essential thrombocythemia MF.

James Mohler, MD, discusses the rationale for the latest updates to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for genetic testing in prostate cancer.

William G. Wierda, MD, PhD, shares a message with community oncologists about the evolving treatment landscape for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Matthew P. Goetz, MD, discusses how genomic assays can help identify patients with ER&ndash;positive breast cancer who will benefit from the addition of chemotherapy to endocrine therapy.

Enrique Grande, MD, discusses the characteristics of metastatic urothelial cancer, which rationalizes the use of atezolizumab in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy in the IMvigor130 trial, in patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma.<br /> &nbsp;

Pieter Sonneveld, MD, PhD, discusses how the findings from the phase III CASSIOPEIA trial inform current thinking about treating patients with multiple myeloma.

Robert L. Coleman, MD, professor of medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains the rationale for the VELIA trial of veliparib with frontline chemotherapy and maintenance in patients with high-grade ovarian cancer.

Marcelo C. Pasquini, MD, discusses the rationale for analyzing real-world data for the use of tisagenlecleucel, a chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, as a treatment for patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. This CD19 CAR T cell was approved 2 years ago for use in both ALL and DLBCL.

Cynthia X. Ma, MD, PhD discusses the challenges with understanding treatment duration for adjuvant endocrine therapy in patients with breast cancer.

Ryan Sullivan, MD, discusses the 5-year data pooled from the phase III COMBI-d and COMBI-v trials, which each studied dabrafenib (Tafinlar) plus trametinib (Mekinist) in patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF V600</em>&ndash;mutant unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Winston Tan, MD, discusses the work of the Florida Society for Clinical Oncology, which helps improve the treatment of patients with all cancers.

Paul A. Bunn, Jr., MD, discusses subsets of patients with lung cancer that can benefit more from enrolling on clinical trials with immunotherapy compared with patients who do not benefit as much from immunotherapeutic approaches. Immunotherapy does not work in every patient, Bunn notes.

Michael Wang, MD, discusses the potential role for the next-generation Bruton&#39;s tyrosine kinase inhibitor zanubrutinib compared with first- and second-generation BTK inhibitors for the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma.

Christopher Sweeney, MBBS, professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, and physician, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the treatment-related adverse events associated with adding enzalutamide or non-steroidal anti-androgens to testosterone suppression treatment and docetaxel in patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, as seen in the ENZAMET trial.<br /> &nbsp;

Gulam A. Manji, MD, PhD, discusses the need to identify mutations that may be actionable in patients with colorectal cancer. The identification of such mutations can further impact patient survival and improve efficacy, says Manji, in both CRC and other gastrointestinal cancers.

David J. Pinato, MD, PhD, discusses the approach to selecting the appropriate frontline agent for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Sorafenib has been around for many years, but now that lenvatinib is FDA approved as well, physicians can now choose between the 2 agents.

Ruben Mesa, MD, discusses his experience with fedratinib since its FDA approval for the treatment of patients with myelofibrosis. The agent is compared across trials with ruxolitinib, which has been approved for several years in this space.

Amol K. Narang, MD, discusses the unanswered questions that still need to be addressed to further expand the role of stereotactic body radiation therapy in gastrointestinal cancers.