Latest Conference Articles

Flares of bone pain decreased significantly when the oral corticosteroid dexamethasone was added to radiation therapy in patients with metastatic cancer, according to a randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

Coordinating radiation therapy teams and palliative care teams based on patient reported outcomes from University of Virginia Health System improved outpatient symptom management and decreased end-of-life hospitalizations, as well as costs of care for patients with late-stage cancer.

Martyn E. Caplin, professor, lead clinician, Neuroendocrine Unit at the Royal Free Hospital, London, discusses the efficacy of lanreotide for the treatment of patients with neuroendocrine tumors, as shown in clinical trials such as the CLARINET study.

Combining the chemotherapy streptozotocin with various mTOR inhibitors was found to effectively target tumors in preclinical studies for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs).

Treatment with capecitabine and temozolomide is an effective therapy for patients with metastatic pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Jennifer Eads, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, senior clinical instructor of Medicine, Case Western University, reflects on the phase III RADIANT-4 study, which examined everolimus in advanced nonfunctional neuroendocrine tumors of lung or gastrointestinal origin.

The 2015 NANETS Annual Symposium begins October 15 and the theme focuses on a team perspective. Kari Brendtro, founder of NANETS, recently spoke with Targeted Oncology about some of this year's upcoming presentations.

When cetuximab (Erbitux) was added to chemotherapy, the risk of death was reduced by 44% for patients with advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors test positive for EGFR gene amplification.

Osimertinib (AZD9291), the third-generation TKI, demonstrated a 71% objective response rate (ORR) in those with EGFR T790M-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), following resistance to frontline anti-EGFR therapy.

When bevacizumab (Avastin) was added to adjuvant chemotherapy, overall survival (OS) did not improve in patients with surgically resected early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

Continued treatment with gefitinib (Iressa) beyond progression showed a trend toward better outcomes for those with T790M-negative non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

For patients who have metastatic squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors were positive for EGFR copy number, as determined by the FISH analysis, survival tended to be better with the addition of necitumumab to their conventional chemotherapy.

Coexisting driver mutations within EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could possibly contribute to primary resistance to EGFR-targeted therapy.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy), a chemotherapy-free regimen, showed activity as a first-line therapy for patients who have advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Daniel S. Oh, MD, assistant professor of surgery, University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, discusses myPlan genetic testing in patients with lung cancer.

By adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to a standard chemotherapy doublet, the risk of death is reduced by 24%, with the risk of disease reducing by 39%, in patients who have malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM).

The majority of patients under the age of 40 who have lung cancer had tumors with mutations that can be targeted with existing therapies.

Marc Ernstoff, MD, director of melanoma, Cleveland Clinic, discusses progression-free survival (PFS) and safety in patients with advanced melanoma (MEL) receiving nivolumab (NIVO) combined with ipilimumab (IPI).

Keith T. Flaherty, MD, Harvard Medical School and Center for Targeted Therapies at Massachusetts General Hospital, spoke to Targeted Oncology about the importance of combination BRAF/MEK inhibitors in the treatment of melanoma.

Janice M. Mehnert, MD, of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, gave a presentation at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting entitled, “Should Comorbidities Be an Automatic Exclusion for Clinical Trials?”

At the ASCO 2015 Annual Meeting, F. Stephen Hodi, MD presented an analysis of the phase II CheckMate 069 trial covering objective response rate, progression-free survival, and safety in predefined subgroups, including those with poor prognostic factors.

Results presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting by Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, examined the feasibility of combining these immunotherapy and targeted therapies in a phase I study.

Stefani Spranger, PhD, post-doctoral fellow, Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the significance of melanoma intrinsic β-catenin signaling on immune exclusion and resistance to immunotherapies.

At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, Adil I. Daud, MD, UCSF Hellen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, presented a pooled analysis of 655 patients with advanced melanoma enrolled in the KEYNOTE-001 trial.

Dr. Larkin presented updated results from coBRIM, including progression-free survival, response rate, and treatment outcomes of patients who harbored additional oncogenic mutations in their pretreatment tumor samples at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Current trends and recent advances have reinforced the superiority of combined inhibition of BRAF/MEK in melanoma treatment, according to Michael A. Davies, MD, during a summary of studies in melanoma.

David Reardon, MD, clinical director, Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and president, Society for Neuro-Oncology, discusses rindopepimut (CDX-110), a synthetic peptide vaccine, and its potential in brain cancer based on the results of the ReACT Trial.

The efficacy of radium-223 was not impacted by prior treatment with an androgen receptor inhibitor for men with bone metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Christopher Filson, MD, urology, UCLA Medical Center, discusses a study that used a MR-US fusion biopsy in 1000 men as a method to diagnose high-grade prostate cancer.