March 2022

In surveys conducted between 2020 and 2021, Cardinal Health sought to determine oncologists’ perceptions about their use of biosimilars in their treatment regimens.

Research results suggest that CAR T-cell therapy can overcome T cell defects caused by chronic lymphocytic leukemia, with remissions possibly lasting more than a decade for patients with significant disease burden when treated with CD4+ CAR T cells

Over the past decade, cancer regimens featuring CTLA-4 inhibitor monotherapy have largely been replaced by combination regimens pairing these agents with anti–PD-1/ PD-L1 antibodies.

Numerous classes of STING agonists are being evaluated for use, including novel cyclic dinucleotides, next-generation noncyclic dinucleotides, bacterial vectors, and ENPP1 inhibitors.

A significant proportion of patients who complete 2 years of immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment experience long-term progression-free survival.

Treatment options have expanded widely for patients with multiple myeloma over the past several years, resulting in significantly improved outcomes for these patients.

A recent study found no difference in invasive disease–free survival between patients with HER2-negative breast cancer who took a full-strength aspirin daily and those who did not.

Although numerous therapeutics are available for the management of metastatic renal cell carcinoma in the first-line setting, there are few options and little guidance on the approach to adjuvant therapy.

The field of gynecologic cancer continues to leverage the role of immunotherapy and novel treatments to treat patients who have new diagnoses or who have recurrent disease.

Chimeric antigen receptor T cells manufactured using the Sleeping Beauty transposon in donor-derived cells and differentiated toward the cytokine-induced killer cell protocol induce a sustained response with minimal toxicities in patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

For patients with hepatocellular carcinoma treated in the second-line setting, the combination of regorafenib and nivolumab following 2 cycles of regorafenib monotherapy appeared safe, according to phase 1/2a study.

Treatment with atezolizumab plus bevacizumab in the first-line setting achieved better responses for patients with unrespectable hepatocellular carcinoma when their disease had a viral versus nonviral etiology and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio was less than 3.6.

Targeted therapy with tyrosine kinase inhibitors is necessary after surgery for patients with metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors with residual disease requiring resection to prevent disease recurrence.

Patients with sarcoma may respond to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors, but identifying patients who are most likely to respond to this therapy is an ongoing obstacle and suggests the need for further research.

Successful CAR T-cell production was achieved in all 11 patients who underwent apheresis and cell production but were still alive at the time of infusion, according to result presented during the BMT- EHA 4th European CAR T-Cell Meeting.

There remains a need for biomarkers of primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor subclones to characterize invasion or metastasis, according to Jonathan A. Fletcher, MD.

Amid the surge of the omicron variant, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the orally administered antiviral combination, which can reduce the rate hospitalization or death by 87% compared with no treatment.

An announcement, made on February 2, 2022, heralded the return of an initiative begun under President Barack Obama in 2016, when President Biden was vice president.