According to updated data from the phase I/II PIVOT-02 trial presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, the combination of NKTR-214 plus the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab demonstrated promising antitumor activity in patients with advanced solid tumors, particularly in PD-L1–negative patients.
Patients with relapsed, advanced, high-grade ovarian cancer achieved durable responses with the PARP inhibitor niraparib (Zejula) as fourth-line therapy and beyond, the phase II QUADRA trial showed.
According to phase III findings presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, a 4-drug chemotherapy combination, modified FOLFIRINOX, dramatically improved survival compared to standard gemcitabine in the postoperative setting for patients with resected pancreatic cancer. This major advance may set a new standard of care in a challenging disease.
According to updated findings from the phase III ASPECT trial presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, a combination of 2 over-the-counter drugs can reduce the risk for high-grade dysplasia or esophageal cancer in patients with Barrett’s esophagus if taken for at least 7 years. These results also demonstrated that high-dose esomeprazole in combination with a low-dose aspirin was associated with delaying all-cause mortality.
According to preliminary findings from the phase III PREOPANC-1 trial, preoperative treatment with chemotherapy and radiation improved overall survival for patients with resectable or borderline resectable pancreatic cancer compared to immediate surgery. These data, presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, demonstrated the potential role for neoadjuvant treatment in the pancreatic cancer treatment paradigm.
Ursula A. Matulonis, MD, director, Gynecologic Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses results from the phase II open-label, single-arm QUADRA study evaluating niraparib in patients with relapsed ovarian cancer who have received ≥3 prior chemotherapy regimens during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Durable complete remissions were seen in 46% of patients with high-risk diffuse large B-cell lymphoma treated with the CAR T-cell therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel at 6 months. These results come from the updated findings from the phase I, multicenter TRANSCEND trial that were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Keith T. Flaherty, MD, professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, director of Clinical Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses overall survival results from the phase III COLUMBUS trial investigating encorafenib plus binimetinib versus vemurafenib (Zelboraf) or encorafenib in BRAF-mutant melanoma during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
The multikinase inhibitor entrectinib demonstrated safety and activity in children and young adults with advanced, previously treated central nervous system tumors, according to a phase I study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.<br />
According to a phase II study, over 40% of patients with metastatic or unresectable urothelial carcinoma responded to treatment with the investigational fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor erdafitinib. Findings from this study were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Ribociclib in combination with fulvestrant showed an improvement in progression-free survival in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer; the benefit was seen both in treatment-naive patients, and in patients who had received 1 prior line of therapy, according to the results from the phase III MONALEESA-3 trial presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting.
Promising activity was seen in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck who were treated with lenvatinib in addition to pembrolizumab with an objective response rate of 40%. The results of this ongoing open-label phase Ib/II clinical trial were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Ipatasertib, an oral AKT inhibitors, demonstrated early survival results as a part of a frontline combination regimen with paclitaxel for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to interim results of the phase II LOTUS trial.
According to the phase III KEYNOTE-407 trial, when pembrolizumab was added to frontline carboplatin/paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel, the combination reduced the risk of death by 36% compared with chemotherapy alone for patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer. These results were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Adjuvant endocrine therapy alone is sufficient for patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, node-negative early-stage breast cancer who have an intermediate risk of distant recurrence compared with endocrine therapy in combination with chemotherapy. Results of the phase III TAILORx trial presented during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting showed that adjuvant endocrine therapy achieved noninferiority to chemoendocrine therapy.
Practice-changing improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival rates were seen for patients with pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma with the addition of a course of low-dose maintenance chemotherapy administered after standard-of-care intensive chemotherapy.
According to findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-042 trial, patients with non–small cell lung cancer demonstrated improved survival of 4 to 8 extra months with upfront pembrolizumab therapy compared with chemotherapy, the current standard of care. Patients treated with pembrolizumab also experienced fewer adverse events.
Shilpa Gupta, MD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation Division, University of Minnesota, discusses phase Ib and phase II studies of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with bevacizumab (Avastin) for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
According to findings of the IMPACT study discussed at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, overall survival was improved with personalized therapy based on tumor molecular profiling in patients with advanced, hard-to-treat cancers.
According to initial results reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas study, 3 cell-free DNA tests showed high degrees of specificity in identifying signs of early stage lung cancer.
Combination taselisib plus fulvestrant demonstrated a modest progression-free survival benefit of 2 months compared with fulvestrant alone for the treatment of patients with estrogen receptor–positive, <em>PIK3CA</em>-mutant locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.
According to the phase III IMpower131 trial findings presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, the risk of progression or death was reduced by 29% with the addition of atezolizumab to the first-line treatment regimen of carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel versus chemotherapy alone for patients with advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer.
Risk of disease progression or death decreased by 80% with the addition of ibrutinib to rituximab compared with rituximab alone for patients with Waldenström macroglobulinemia.
The highly-selective RET inhibitor LOXO-292 induced an objective response rate of 77% for patients with RET fusion-positive non–small cell lung cancer, according to findings from the phase I LIBRETTO-001 study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.
In updated findings from the multicenter phase I CRB-401 study that were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, the anti-BCMA CAR T-cell therapy bb2121 induced a median progression-free survival of 11.8 months and a median duration of response of 10.8 months for patients with relapsed/refractory heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.
Pomalidomide in combination with bortezomib and low-dose dexamethasone demonstrated an improved median progression-free survival compared with bortezomib and low-dose dexamethasone alone in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma who have previously received lenalidomide, according to results from the OPTIMISMM trial.
Duke researchers discussed findings from 2 studies at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, which revealed chemotherapy and hormone-targeting treatment may be more beneficial to black men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer compared with their white counterparts.
According to study results presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, women with head and neck cancer (HNC) are less likely to recieve intensive chemotherapy and radiation when compared with their male counterparts.
Scott Newman, PhD, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, discusses the St. Jude Cloud data-sharing resource for the research community.
To help reduce the chance of drug-induced toxicities and improve patient outcomes, NantOmics has developed a test that utilizes pharmacogenomic screening of patients to identify potential genomic variants that could impact treatment decisions. In results from the NantOmics pharmacogenomics test, more than 7% of patients were determined to have a variant that could potentially alter the course of their treatment.