March 2021

Oncologists deciding what to do about coronavirus disease 2019 vaccines are not alone.

A key advance in treating patients with gastrointestinal cancer is molecular profiling of the tumor that results in specific targets being identified. The standard of care for GI cancer has consisted of surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, but these standards have had limited efficacy and considerable toxicity that impact patients’ quality of life.

The use of a fitness tracking device as a prognostic tool was feasible and acceptable in a study evaluating 80 patients with colorectal cancer.

Data presented during the 2021 Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Meetings showed that treatment with Orca-T achieved a significant reduction in cases of graft-versus-host disease, an impressive GVHD relapse-free survival rate, and a lack of treatment-related mortalities while demonstrating scalability potential.

Half of all patients with hepatocellular carcinoma treated with the combination of regorafenib and nivolumab following progression on 2 lines of chemotherapy achieved disease control, according to initial results from a phase 2 proof-of-concept trial.

The biggest unanswered question in biomarker development for cancer is how to determine which patients will respond to targeted therapy or immunotherapy. Investigators around the world are trying to answer this through clinical trials and data mining, in addition to finding new tools to add to the mix.

In a single-arm study, 100% of patients treated with sintilimab plus stereotactic body radiotherapy who had oligometastases of hepatocellular carcinoma achieved disease control and were alive and progression free at 6 months.

As the understanding of genetic risk factors in breast cancer continues to grow, professional organizations have sought to provide specific recommendations for genetic testing that would prevent overtesting yet still diagnose as many mutations as possible in patients.

Immune checkpoint blockade has revolutionized cancer therapy and led to improved outcomes and possibly even cures in the metastatic setting once thought to be unattainable.

Coronavirus disease 2019 has disrupted oncologic care across the spectrum of cancer screening, diagnosis, and management.

Most of the time, evidence of a cancer therapy’s success in clinical trials is reassuring. This time, it was not.

Although chemotheray remains a standard in the first- and second-line setting of biliary tract cancer in the locally advanced and metastatic setting, further treatments are emerging rapidly.

Sotorasib demonstrated significant benefit in patients with KRAS G12C–mutated advanced non–small cell lung cancer who progressed after standard treatment, according to results from the phase 2 portion of the CodeBreaK 100 trial .