Latest Conference Articles

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).

Combining the oral targeted agents olaparib and cediranib resulted in a near-doubling of median progression-free survival (PFS) among women with recurrent ovarian cancer.

Lenvatinib, a novel multityrosine kinase inhibitor, is highly effective against differentiated thyroid cancer that has become resistant to standard radioiodine (RAI) therapy.

Adding goserelin to chemotherapy for women with early-stage hormone receptor (HR)-negative breast cancer helps both to preserve their fertility and to prolong their survival.

Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, a professor of medical oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discusses data presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting examining EGFR inhibitors for lung cancer.

Patients starting palliative care for advanced cancer are often already on repeat prescriptions of statins to lower cholesterol and reduce risk of a heart attack or stroke, and many of these patients continue on statin therapy until death.

The dosing frequency of zoledronic acid (Zometa) can be reduced by 67% without compromising efficacy and safety in women with breast cancer and bone metastases.

Obesity significantly increases the risk of dying of breast cancer in premenopausal women with ER-positive early disease, according to findings from a large, retrospective study involving 80,000 patients.

In December 2013, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended that asymptomatic, high-risk individuals receive annual screening for lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT).

The new targeted drug, PLX3397, has demonstrated responses in patients with pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS), a rare joint disorder.

A rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) after surgery or radiation therapy for prostate cancer is not enough reason, on its own, to initiate androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT), a large observational study has found.

The highly selective EGFR inhibitor AZD9291 demonstrated an ORR of 64% without inducing dose-limiting toxicities in patients with metastatic NSCLC who harbor an acquired EGFR T790M resistance mutation.

Over the past few decades, the optimal margin width for minimizing recurrence after breast-conserving surgery (BCS; lumpectomy) has been a topic of much debate.