March 1 2020

The upcoming 4th Annual Medical Crossfire Hematologic Malignancies, hosted by Physicians’ Education Resource, LLC, promises a lively exchange between experts in multiple myeloma, leukemia, and lymphoma and physician attendees who are on the front lines of patient care. This educational format moves away from didactic lectures and instead focuses on discussions on scientific advances and their impact on real-world patient cases.

Use of the liquid biopsy assay MSK-ACCESS has led to detection of actionable genetic variants in 40% of tumor samples, offering an attrac­tive alternative to invasive tumor biopsies in patients with no available tissue for testing. 

Liquid biopsy results that identify DNA damage repair genes in prostate cancer may be a useful tool in clinical-deci­sion making, espe­cially because these genes can elucidate therapeutic vulnera­bilities that could be exploited by current treatments.

Efficacy analyses by cell of origin and by MYC and BCL2 double expression status showed a trend toward improved outcomes of patients treated on the polatuzumab vedotin-containing arm regardless of cell of origin or MYC and BCL2 doubkle expression status.

When checkpoint inhibitors<strong>&nbsp;</strong>were introduced, it had been more than 30 years since any new drugs had been approved for the treatment of urothelial cancer. Recently, 2 new non&ndash;checkpoint inhibitors, erdafitinib and enfortumab vedotin-ejfv, reached the market, and more may be available soon.

In response to&nbsp;frequent and substantial changes in the treatment of non&ndash;small cell lung cancer in the frontline set&shy;ting, the American Society of Clinical Oncology has partially updated its 2017 guide&shy;line for the treatment of patients with stage IV disease without driver mutations.

Elderly patients with advanced prostate cancer should be evaluated for preexisting cardiovascular diseases before taking oral androgen signaling inhibitors by a multidisciplinary team, includ&shy;ing a cardiologist, according to a recent retro&shy;spective study. Investigators at Thomas Jeffer&shy;son University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, demonstrated that after receiving abiraterone acetate&nbsp; or enzalutamide, these patients had higher rates of short-term mortality than similar patients without CVDs.

Patients harboring IDH1/2 muta&shy;tions may receive benefit by the use of PARP inhibitors, with investigators initi&shy;ating clinical trials in patients across multiple different tumor types to determine the efficacy of this strategy.