Latest Conference Articles

The anti-PD-1 humanized antibody pembrolizumab (MK-3475) has robust antitumor activity as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced PD-L1-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Adding necitumumab to standard of care with gemcitabine-cisplatin improves survival compared with chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment in patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of squamous histology.

Combining the pan-deacetylase inhibitor panobinostat with bortezomib and dexamethasone delayed disease progression by 3.9 months over bortezomib and dexamethasone alone in patients with relapsed or relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma.

Gregory A. Daniels, MD, PhD, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology, University of California, San Diego, discusses the findings of the 2007-2012 PROCLAIM national registry

Thomas E. Hutson, DO, PharmD, medical oncologist, Texas Oncology–Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center, discusses a phase I study of BPX-201 vaccine plus AP1903 for chemotherapy-naïve mCRPC.

SAR650984 demonstrated encouraging efficacy as a monotherapy and in combination with dexamethasone and lenalidomide without reaching a maximum tolerated dose in patients with heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

The addition of the investigational hypoxia-targeted drug TH-302 to dexamethasone has demonstrated beneficial activity and a manageable adverse event profile in the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The novel agents idelalisib and ABT-199 in combination with rituximab have demonstrated impressive activity with manageable toxicity for patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

David Spigel, MD, director, Lung Cancer Research Program, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, provides an update on research into MPDL3280A for the treatment of patients with lung cancer.

Ezra Cohen, MD, professor of medicine, UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, discusses new data on immunotherapies for head and neck cancers.

James P. Allison, PhD, director, immunotherapy platform, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the potentiation of immune checkpoint blockade cancer immunotherapy with oncolytic virus.

Phase I results presented in 2013 from a study combining ipilimumab with the anti-PD-1 antibody, nivolumab,1 showed a 40% objective response rate in 53 patients with advanced melanoma and a preliminary overall survival (OS) of 80%.

The intratumoral injection talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) demonstrated promise in combinations and utility as a monotherapy in certain subsets of patients with unresectable melanoma.

Pembrolizumab continues to deliver impressive results in patients with advanced melanoma—producing long-lasting responses and improved overall survival, regardless of whether patients have been previously treated with ipilimumab.

The immunotherapy drug ipilimumab (Yervoy) reduced the relative risk of cancer recurrence in the adjuvant setting by 25% compared to placebo for patients with high-risk, lymph-node positive (stage III) melanoma.

Two patients with metastatic cervical cancer achieved durable complete responses that have so far lasted from 15 to 22 months through an adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) targeting the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Abemaciclib demonstrated unexpected single-agent activity in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive metastatic breast cancer and a clinical benefit rate exceeding 70% in combination with fulvestrant.

A joint analysis of two phase III trials involving a total of 4690 premenopausal women with HR+ breast cancer demonstrated that adjuvant use of exemestane reduced relative risk of developing subsequent invasive cancer by 28% compared with tamoxifen.

In what was described as “an almost unprecedented improvement in median survival,” the addition of the chemotherapy drug docetaxel to standard hormone therapy prolonged life for men with newly diagnosed metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer by nearly 14 months.

Julie R. Gralow, MD, discusses an analysis of the phase III SWOG S0307 trial comparing toxicities and patient-stated preference for oral versus intravenous delivery of bisphosphonates as adjuvant therapy in primary breast cancer.

Filip Janku, MD, PhD, discusses a trial presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting looking at the activity of the mTOR inhibitor sirolimus and HDAC inhibitor vorinostat in heavily pretreated patients with refractory Hodgkin lymphoma.

Frontline therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin) or cetuximab (Erbitux) combined with either FOLFOX or FOLFIRI yielded a comparable survival benefit of approximately 29 months in patients with <em>KRAS</em> wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

A dual HER2-blockade strategy that added lapatinib to trastuzumab for the adjuvant treatment of women with early breast cancer failed to demonstrate a significant improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) over the standard therapy with trastuzumab alone.

William D. Tap, MD, discusses a phase I study of the selective colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF1R) kinase inhibitor PLX3397 for the treatment of pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS).

MPDL3280A received the first Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the FDA for bladder cancer, according to information released May 31, 2014 at the 50th Annual Meeting of ASCO.

The third-generation EGFR inhibitor CO-1686 continues to demonstrate promising activity in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who developed resistance after prior treatment with an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI).

Paulo Marcelo Hoff, MD, PhD, FACP, discusses a trial that looked at the consistency of effect of ziv-aflibercept in the bevacizumab pre-treated subgroup of patients in the VELOUR trial stratified by first-line progression ≥ 9 months versus < 9 months.

Adding the VEGFR-2 inhibitor ramucirumab (Cyramza) to standard docectaxel improved overall survival (OS) by 1.4 months versus docetaxel alone in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Richard Goldberg, MD, discusses results from the phase III CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Treatment with single-agent ibrutinib (Imbruvica) dramatically increased progression-free survival (PFS) by nearly 80% and significantly extended overall survival (OS) by 57% compared with ofatumumab in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).