Latest Conference Articles

Lenvatinib in combination with nivolumab demonstrated promising antitumor activity in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma with no new safety signals reported.

Frontline lenvatinib followed by an anticancer procedure resulted in prolonged overall survival in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma when compared against sorafenib, according to results of a post hoc analysis of the REFLECT trial reported at the 2020 GI Cancers Symposium.

Antitumor activity in patients with germline <em>BRCA/PALB2</em>-mutant pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma was reported with the chemotherapy doublet of gemcitabine plus cisplatin with or without the addition of veliparib,&nbsp;according to data presented at&nbsp;the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.&nbsp;

In an interview with&nbsp;Targeted Oncology, Vincent Chung, MD, discussed the findings from the pilot trial evaluating the addition of dietary supplements to combination chemotherapy in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer. He also highlighted the importance of these findings and the next steps necessary to evaluate the role of supplements in pancreatic cancer further.

Promising antitumor activity with durable responses were demonstrated with the combination of nivolumab and ramucirumab plus paclitaxel&nbsp;in a phase II study of patients with advanced gastric cancer, which wsa presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.&nbsp;Among patients treated with the combination, the objective response rate was 37.2%, and all responders had a partial response.

The addition of ipilimumab with the combination&nbsp;cabozantinib and nivolumab&nbsp;led to higher response rates, as well as progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma compared with the doublet combination alone, according to a presentation at the&nbsp;2020 GI Cancers Symposium, held January 23-25, in San Francisco, California.

Overall survival was meaningfully improved with treatment of pembrolizumab in first and later lines for patients with&nbsp;advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction cancer with a high number of PD-L1&ndash;expressing cells in the tumor, lymphocytes, and macrophages compared with chemotherapy.

A subset of patients with GI cancers harboring&nbsp;<em>NTRK</em>&nbsp;gene fusions had positive responses to selective TRK inhibition with larotrectinib, confirming efficacy of the agent in this group. The results of the confirmatory trial were recently reported the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

In an interview with&nbsp;Targeted Oncology,&nbsp;Kaoru Tsuchiya, MD, discussed the results of the real-world study of lenvatinib in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma that are being presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Hirva Mamdani, MD, explains the rationale for conducting a safety and efficacy study of durvalumab in patients following multimodality therapy for locally advanced esophageal and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.

Adam M. Brufsky, MD, PhD, FACP, discusses the TBCRC049 trial, which looks at the safety and efficacy of the tucatinib/trastuzumab/capecitabine combination to treat leptomeningeal metastases in HER2-positive breast cancer.

In a 500-patient randomized trial, the pharmacokinetics, clinical activity, and safety of pertuzumab and trastuzumab administered as a subcutaneous fixed-dose combination were found to be noninferior to the intravenous versions of the drugs.

A pathologic complete response rate of 44% was observed with a neoadjuvant durvalumab (Imfinzi)-based regimen administered to patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to results of a phase I/II study presented in a poster at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, discusses the results of the monarcHER trial, which examined adding the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib and endocrine therapy to trastuzumab versus trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in advanced hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer.

Nearly 12 years after discontinuing treatment,&nbsp;anastrozole, an aromatase inhibitor, maintained a preventive effect for postmenopausal women at high risk for breast cancer. Women assigned to anastrozole were 49% less likely to have developed breast cancer compared with women assigned to placebom according to data&nbsp;presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Preliminary results from the phase III NeoTRIPaPDL1 Michelangelo study showed that the addition of atezolizumab to combination&nbsp;carboplatin plus nab-paclitaxel did not result in a statistically significant increase in the pathologic complete response rate compared with the combination alone in patients with&nbsp;early high-risk and locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer.

According to a pooled analysis of neoadjuvant trials presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, a&nbsp;pathologic complete response to HER2-directed neoadjuvant therapy reduced the risk of recurrence in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer but did not eliminate it, supporting the common practice of continued anti-HER2 therapy.

In patients with triple-negative breast cancer or those with PD-L1&ndash;positive breast cancer across several subtypes, durvalumab as maintenance therapy, may improve outcomes compared with chemotherapy, according to an exploratory analyses from the phase II randomized SAFIR02-IMMUNO trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The addition of pembrolizumab to standard-of-care chemotherapy for neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment of early triple-negative breast cancer lead to higher rates of pathologic complete responses in the KEYNOTE-522 trial, especially in those patients with stage III and/or node-positive disease.

Frontline treatment with palbociclib demonstrated positive progression-free survival n real-world patients with HR-positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer and may lead to an overall survival benefit , according to data from the pivotal PALOMA-2 trial.

High rates of disease control were reported in the first set of results from a randomized trial in which adjuvant T-DM1 was compared to &nbsp;trastuzumab and paclitaxel for the treatment of patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer.

Rita Nanda, MD, discusses the IMpower130 trial in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who express PD-L1.

Patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who had received prior anti-HER2 therapies continued to experience a progression-free survival benefit with margetuximab and a trend toward overall survival compared with trastuzumab when either agent was combined with chemotherapy, according to updated findings from the phase III SOPHIA trial.&nbsp;

In the phase III APHINITY trial, pertuzumab with trastuzumab plus chemotherapy demonstrated a 0.9% improvement in overall survival and continued to reduce the risk of disease recurrence in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer in the adjuvant setting, according to a 6-year analysis of the phase III APHINITY trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

In the phase II HER2CLIMB trial, a 34% reduction in the risk of death was observed with the addition of tucatinib to the combination of trastuzumab and capecitabine in patients with heavily pretreated unresectable locally advanced or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer compared to the combination alone, according to results from the phase II HER2CLIMB trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Japanese patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer had a significant improvement in invasive disease-free survival with the addition of the novel oral fluoropyrimidine derivative S-1, according to findings from the phase III POTENT trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

In heavily pretreated patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, trastuzumab deruxtecan induced a confirmed objective response rate of almost 61% and a durable benefit, according to results from the phase II DESTINY-Breast01 trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A significant proportion of patients with transplant-ineligible newly diagnosed multiple myeloma alive and progression free after &gt;3 years following treatment with daratumumab in addition to standard first-line therapy, according to updated safety and efficacy findings from the randomized ALCYONE study.

In the phase I CRB-402 study, patients with heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma and minimal residual disease negativity had very good partial responses to the anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy bb21217, according to updated results presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

In the phase III BELIEVE trial, clinically meaningful and durable transfusion burden reduction were observed with luspatercept in the majority of adult patients with &beta;-thalassemia who require regular red blood cell. Additionally, dose levels were not associated with by incidence of adverse events, and these AEs decreases overtime without affecting treatment modification or continuation.