April 1, 2021

The pandemic brought about by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has put some aspects of life on hold for over a year now. However, for people living with serious and potentially fatal illnesses, putting life on hold is not an option.

For patients non–small cell lung cancer who previously progressed on chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors, ceralasertib plus durvalumab proved effective compared with patients with the same profile who received durvalumab alone, according to findings from the ongoing HUDSON study.

In the past 3 years, the FDA has approved 7 novel drugs, either given alone or in combination, to help treat patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

As long-awaited results from pivotal trials are revealed during major medical conferences, community oncologists in the clinic look forward to the resulting approvals with much anticipation.

Ixazomib plus cyclophosphamide, and dexamethasone elicited higher rates of efficacy compared with ixazomib/dexamethasone, followed by single-agent ixazomib maintenance, in patients with transplant-ineligible newly diagnosed multiple myeloma/

Investigators reported an objective response rate of 73% for the anti–B-cell maturation antigen teclistamab in patients with relapsed/ refractory multiple myeloma, according to results from an ongoing study.

Infection mortality rate were lower in patients with multiple myeloma who were coronavirus disease 2019 positive and received maintenance lenalidomide than those who did not receive lenalidomide, according to study results presented during the 2nd European Myeloma Network Meeting.

Longer follow-up with parts A, B, and C of the phase 1 study CC-90010- ST-001 revealed continued safety and efficacy with the small molecule BET inhibitor CC-90010.

Schlafen-11 expression may serve as a predictive biomarker for response to select treatments in patients with small cell lung cancer.

Integrating afatinib into standard-of-care chemoradiation with or without surgery demonstrated encouraging efficacy, feasibility, and safety results in patients with stage III EGFR-mutation positive non–small cell lung cancer.

A PI3Kα inhibitor, CYH33, demonstrated positive clinical activity in an ongoing phase 1a trial at the European Society for Medical Oncology Targeted Anticancer Therapies Virtual Congress 2021.

Neratinib demonstrated single-agent efficacy with significant response and survival rates in tyrosine kinase inhibitor-refractory patients with non– small cell lung cancer whose tumors harbor EGFR exon 18 mutations.

Perliminary analyses of 2 cohorts from the phase 2 multicohort ZENITH20 trial evaluating poziotinib show clinical activity and tolerability for the tyrosine kinase inhibitor in patients with non–small cell lung cancer harboring EGFR and HER2 exon 20 insertions.

Research on combination therapies involving human papillomavirus-targeted vaccines and immunotherapies continues to expand in phase 2 and 3 trials in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Nearly 20% of the world’s cancer cases are caused by viruses, and 7 viruses have been documented to cause this aggregate number of cancer cases, with HPV being the most well recognized.