June 2013

Ibrutinib was well tolerated and highly effective in eradicating tumor cells in both treatment-naïve and relapsed/refractory patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Using an intermittent dosing strategy with vemurafenib instead of continuous dosing has the potential to overcome the development of resistance in patients with melanoma treated with the drug.

A preliminary in vitro study has found markers that may predict response to drugs that target KRAS-mutated non-small cell lung cancer.

Two DNA demethylation biomarkers could potentially be used to more accurately determine response to epigenetic drugs for myelodysplastic syndromes.

Women with breast cancer who were carriers of the BRCA1 mutation had increased mortality compared with noncarriers in preliminary results from a retrospective study.

High levels of HER2 expression in metastatic breast cancer tumors correlated with increased benefit from treatment with adotrastuzumab.

The next-generation PI3 kinase (PI3K) inhibitor GDC-0032 has shown signs of efficacy in patients with advanced cancers that were mutated for the PI3K alpha gene.

Frontline cetuximab plus FOLFIRI improved overall survival by 3.7 months versus bevacizumab plus FOLFIRI in patients with KRAS wildtype metastatic colorectal cancer.

The anti-PD-1 therapy nivolumab demonstrated an overall objective response rate of 31%, with a median duration of 2 years in patients with advanced melanoma.

Combination therapy with ipilimumab and nivolumab led to durable tumor shrinkage in approximately half of patients with aggressive, advanced melanoma.

The second-generation TKI dacomitinib, designed to treat NSCLC, is being evaluated in a clinical trial that will measure the drug’s effectiveness as a first-line treatment.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas have different patterns of genetic alterations, some of which may be druggable, according to a study by The Cancer Genome Atlas.

The recent approval of the second-generation proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib by the FDA comes nine years after the initial approval of bortezomib, the first-in-class drug of its type.

Interim findings from a phase III study indicate that sorafenib nearly doubled PFS for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer resistant to standard radioactive iodine therapy.

Although the use of CTCs as a “liquid biopsy” to detect tumor growth has long been a goal, developing the technology for detecting and analyzing CTCs has been a challenge.

A phase I study found that idelalisib produced rapid and prolonged tumor shrinkage in half of patients with relapsed or refractory CLL who received the drug as monotherapy.

MPDL3280A, an antibody that targets the programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1), demonstrated a 21% response rate in a phase I study of patients with multiple solid tumors.

The progression of prostate cancer to castration-resistant prostate cancer is a crucial change in the behavior of this cancer. Bony metastasis is a common finding that may cause symptoms such as pain.