December 2017

A new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) policy to redistribute savings under the 340B Drug Discount Program has been greeted by a mixture of praise and criticism from supporters and critics of the program.

With genetic screening for mutations and biomarkers gaining more prevalence in diagnosing and treating cancer, genetic testing and counseling for patients with prostate cancer is becoming a pressing concept that urologists need to better understand. At the 2017 LUGPA Annual Meeting, Leonard Gomella, MD, gave a presentation stressing the importance of integrating genetic testing into clinical practice.

Determining the sequence of therapies has yet to be wholly standardized for treating castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), particularly in the case of abiraterone (Zytiga) and enzalutamide (Xtandi).

Tipifarnib demonstrated encouraging antitumor activity among patients with <em>HRAS</em>-mutant head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), according to preliminary results of an ongoing phase II proof-of-concept trial (NCT02383927).

The overwhelming majority of patients with cancer who appear to progress after they begin immunotherapy will never respond. They will continue to progress, just as quickly as they would with no treatment and just as predicted by the Response Evaluation Criteria in Standard Tumors (RECIST) criteria that have long guided most trial evaluations and many treatment decisions.

Patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) are associated with a poor prognosis, though strides are being made in the treatment for younger populations of patients.

The novel oncolytic virus Toca 511 (vocimagene amiretrorepvec) and Toca FC (extended-release 5-fluorocytosine [5-FC]) induced durable responses in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and anaplastic astrocytoma (AA), for a median duration of response of 35.1+ months, according to findings from a phase I study presented during the 2017 AACRNCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics. In a pooled analysis of 3 phase I studies, the virus also proved to be well tolerated with fewer any-grade adverse events (AEs) than with standard chemotherapy.1

Confirmed responses were demonstrated in 3 patients with soft tissue sarcoma treated with entrectinib in the STARTRK-2 basket trial, according to the results of a case study presented at the 2017 Connective Tissue Oncology Society Annual Meeting that took place in Maui, Hawaii.