Interviews

Andrew Turk, MD, discusses the main factors that can be used to determine whether a patient presenting with thyroid cancer has an indolent form of the disease or a more aggressive thyroid cancer.

Gail Roboz, MD, discusses the use of FLT3 inhibitors as treatment of patients with acute myeloid leukemia, which can be a heterogenous and difficult-to-treat disease. There is a lot of optimism for new drugs and targets in AML, but the disease itself remains tough to treat, according to Roboz.

Timothy F. Burns, MD, PhD, discusses the necessary role of next-generation sequencing testing in patients with lung adenocarcinoma. In order to incorporate this into clinical practice, there is still a lot more work to be done, Burns says. Around 20% to 25% of patients with adenocarcinoma have targetable alterations.

Tanya Siddiqi, MD, discusses how she sees acalabrutinib fitting into the treatment landscape for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia following the results from the phase III ASCEND trial.

Kazuhiko Nakagawa, MD, PhD, discusses the role of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors for the frontline treatment of patients with&nbsp;<em>EGFR</em>-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

Sarah Ferguson, MD, FRCSC, discusses her experience being involved in a population-based study of women with cervical cancer treated with a radical hysterectomy.

Kim N. Chi, MD, discusses the safety findings for the next-generation androgen receptor inhibitor apalutamide in combination with androgen deprivation therapy in patients with metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer, according to findings from the phase III TITAN study. This combination was compared with placebo and ADT and presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Aditya Bardia, MBBS, MPH, discusses the value of liquid biopsies in the treatment landscape of breast cancer. The real value of liquid biopsy in this space lies in providing oncologists with insight on what&rsquo;s happening in tumor evolution.

Sagar Lonial, MD, discusses how phase III trials should be designed in the United States for patients with multiple myeloma in the early-relapse setting.

Jesus Anampa, MD, MS, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein School of Medicine, says in the past, most patients with breast cancer were treated with chemotherapy. In some cases, these patients were being over-treated. To limit the use of chemotherapy in patients who don&rsquo;t need it, a group of researchers conducted the TAILORx trial.

Keith T. Flaherty, MD, discusses the combination regimens and the potential role for a 3-drug regimen as treatment for patients with melanoma. He says investigators have been searching for new combination strategies beyond the combination of BRAF and MEK inhibitors.

Jorge E. Cortes, MD, discusses the frontline treatment options for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

Angela DeMichele, MD, MSCE, discusses predictors of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in various subgroups of patients with breast cancer. Selecting characteristics of patients who will most likely benefit from this therapy is not an exact science, she adds.

Sarah B. Goldberg, MD, MPH, discusses the role of clinical trials in patients with lung cancer who have molecularly altered tumors, such as&nbsp;<em>EGFR</em>,&nbsp;<em>ALK</em>,&nbsp;<em>BRAF</em>,<em>ROS1,&nbsp;</em>or other alterations. These patients typically consider either targeted therapy or immunotherapy treatment options.

Naveen Pemmaraju, MD, discusses the current understandings of how myelofibrosis presents in patients.

Andrew Turk, MD, discusses targeted agents that are making a splash in the treatment landscape of thyroid cancers, including the most aggressive form of the disease, anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. He says targeted agents have already become well established in the space of thyroid cancers, but these agents continue to evolve.

Lowell L. Hart, MD, FACP, scientific director of clinical research, Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, and associate professor of medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, discusses the effect of CDK4/6 inhibitor, trilaciclib on myelosuppression in patients with previously treated extensive-stage small cell lung cancer receiving topotecan. Hart presented the phase II results from the blinded, multicenter study during the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD, discusses the significance of the latest updates in the CheckMate 142 trial exploring an immunotherapy treatment combination in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer whose tumors are microsatellite instability&ndash;high or mismatch repair deficient.

Peter Martin, MD, discusses the differences between subgroups of mantle cell lymphoma. MCL is a heterogenous disease, and in the World Health Organization classification of lymphoid neoplasms, MCL has a leukemia non-nodal presentation, says Martin.

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, discusses the data from the phase II EV-201 trial investigating enfortumab vedotin as treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer previously treated with platinum-based chemotherapy or a PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor.

David Bond, MD, discusses 2 key findings from a recent study investigating the risk of developing a second cancer in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia treated with a BTK inhibitor.

Ryan Weight, DO discusses takeaways from the Immuno-Oncology Institute Working Group Summit. The summit was a part of the Association of Community Cancer Centers&rsquo; Immuno-Oncology Institute and brought together multidisciplinary working groups to strategize policy and delivery changes for the effective use of immunotherapy.

Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, discusses the potential role for darolutamide in combination with androgen deprivation therapy in patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Richard T. Penson, MD, discusses the toxicities that were demonstrated in the long-term follow-up of the phase III SOLO3 trial. This multicenter, open-label trial investigated single-agent olaparib in patients with platinum-sensitive, relapsed, BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer who have received at least 2 prior lines of chemotherapy.

Howard S. Hochster, MD, discusses the role of TAS-102 in patients with gastric/gastroesophageal junction or colorectal cancer in comparison to fluorouracil.

Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, shares a message with oncologists regarding molecular testing in patients with lung cancer. He says the most important message is that molecular characterization of the patient&rsquo;s tumor must be done in order to best treat the patient.

Peter Voorhees, MD, discusses the latest data for the use of pomalidomide-containing regimens for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. He highlights data from 2 randomized clinical trials that demonstrated an improvement in responses with pomalidomide-based triplets.

Heather A. Wakelee, MD, discusses recent research investigating antiangiogenic agents and checkpoint inhibitors in the frontline for patients with <em>EGFR</em>-positive non&mdash;small cell lung cancer. The most promising data were demonstrated in the phase III IMpower150 trial.

The research around best radiation-based treatment options for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma are over 15 years old, but the standard of care for long-term management of the disease is still conventional chemoembolization, according to Emil I. Cohen, MD, assistant professor, Georgetown University Hospital.

Patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia typically have low response rates to chemotherapy. However, some subsets of patients, particularly those with targetable mutations, may have long-term survival when given a novel FLT3 inhibitor like gilteritinib, as seen in the ADMIRAL trial, says Mark J. Levis, MD, PhD.