Latest Conference Articles

Joseph Alvarnas, MD, Director of Medical Quality, associate clinical professor, City of Hope, discusses the treatment of HIV-associated lymphoma.

Patients with relapsed and difficult-to-treat Hodgkin lymphoma who received brentuximab vedotin following treatment with high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplant had an unprecedented 50% higher likelihood of continuing to experience PFS at 2 years.

Anti-CD38 monoclonal antibodies continue to demonstrate promise and generate excitement that a new treatment paradigm could be on the horizon for patients with multiple myeloma.

The anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T-cell therapy CTL019 demonstrated a 92% complete response (CR) rate in pediatric patients with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Most patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL), having previously failed three or more therapies, responded to the immunotherapy nivolumab in a small phase I trial.

Treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) elicited responses in 66% of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL).

Philippe Armand, MD, PhD, senior physician, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the utility of PD-1 inhibitors for hematologic malignancies.

Shaji Kumar, MD, professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses the results of the phase III ASPIRE trial.

Marcel R.M. van den Brink, MD, PhD, Head, Division of Hematologic Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses two abstracts being presented at ASH looking at CAR T cell therapies for the treatment of ALL and NHL.

Nicholas Butowski, MD, discusses a phase I study of convection-enhanced delivery of nanoliposomal irinotecan (MM-398) for the treatment of recurrent glioblastoma or recurrent high-grade glioma.

Jeffrey J. Raizer, MD, provides an overview of a study that analyzed the overall survival and toxicity profile of proton therapy for large-volume re-irradiation for patients with recurrent glioma.

Roeland GW Verhaak, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Division of Quantitative Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses a study that examined the alteration of the p53 pathway and ancestral progenitors to determine if they were associated with tumor recurrence in glioblastoma.

A plenary session held November 15 at the Society of Neuro-Oncology’s (SNO) 2014 Annual Meeting in Miami Beach focused on immunotherapy’s promise as well as its challenges as a treatment for patients with brain cancer.

According to data from a phase I study, the oncolytic virus Delta-24-RGD can infect, replicate, and kill glioma cells in patients.

Steven A. Toms, MD, director, neurosurgery, Geisinger Health System, discusses the combination of the Novo Tumor Treating Fields (NovoTTF) system and temozolomide for patients with glioblastoma.

David Reardon, MD, clinical director, Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, president, Society for Neuro-Oncology, describes the mechanism of action of rindopepimut for recurrent glioblastoma.

Adjuvant temozolomide and the use of the Novo Tumor Treating Fields (NovoTTF) system led to longer progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with glioblastoma.

The vaccine rindopepimut appears to benefit patients with epidermal growth factor receptor variant III mutation (EGFRvIII) in glioblastoma with regard to progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).

Ceritinib (Zykadia) showed clinically significant antitumor activity in patients with ALK-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including those with brain metastases.

The vaccine rindopepimut (CDX110) in combination with bevacizumab induced tumor regression in a subset of patients with recurrent glioblastoma.

The addition of lomustine to bevacizumab showed superior efficacy compared with either agent alone in patients with recurrent glioblastom, according to the phase II BELOB study presented by Martin van den Bent, MD.

The combination of radiation therapy and procarbazine, CCNU, and vincristine (PCV) prolonged both overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) compared with radiation therapy (RT) alone in a phase III study of patients with grade 2 glioma.

Both HPV-positive and -negative head and neck cancers are “outstanding candidates for immunotherapeutic strategies,” said Andrew G. Sikora, MD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine, at the 2014 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium.

Translating current and emerging knowledge of the molecular drivers of ovarian cancer is yielding promising new insights into potential clinical targets, moving treatment away from historical paradigms in favor of more personalized therapeutic approaches.

PARP inhibitors represent an important class of emerging therapies for the treatment of patients with ovarian cancer and possibly other malignancies, but many scientific questions about the underlying molecular mechanisms that these agents target must be answered before they can be fully employed in clinical practice.

In May 2014, ASCO issued guidelines recommending the administration of adjuvant tamoxifen for 10 years in women with stage I-III hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer, based on data from the collection of 5 clinical trials.

When Gail J. Roboz, MD, took the stage Wednesday to give her talk on what’s ahead in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), she admitted feeling a little jealousy toward her colleagues in the lymphoid diseases.

The landscape in lymphoma management continues to evolve, with new therapies and approaches improving established treatment paradigms.

As the targeted therapy era in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) continues to unfold, two next-generation agents are generating responses with improved safety profiles as single agents and in combination regimens.

The combination of a FLT3L-primed in situ vaccine, low-dose radiotherapy, and a TLR 3 agonist has been shown to be feasible, safe, and immunologically and clinically effective in a phase I/II study for patients with low-grade lymphoma.