Barbara Boughton

Patients with early-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a favorable prognosis can be treated with less intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy regimens without affecting outcomes. This is the first study to show that less intensive therapy can be used without sacrificing benefits, according to lead author Andreas Engert, MD, and colleagues.

The saying that “knowledge is power” holds especially true when it comes to a lymphoma diagnosis, and there are best practices for clinicians who want to fully educate their patients. Presentations at ASH 2010 offer data and advice on how to approach&#151and improve&#151education efforts among clinicians and patients.

Canadian researchers also find that patients are not having recommended cancer screening studies done on a regular basis.

Combined with first-line chemotherapy, intravenous delivery therapy also confers a survival benefit over oral bisphosphonates. Gareth J. Morgan, MD, PhD, lead investigator of the Medical Research Council Myeloma IX study, will share additional trial results at ASH 2010.

Eighteen-month follow up supports lower-dose nilotinib as the new standard of care for newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia. The ENESTnd trial (Evaluating Nilotinib Efficacy and Safety in Clinical Trials of Newly Diagnosed Ph+CML Patients) enrolled 846 patients at 217 sites in 35 countries. Timothy P. Hughes, MD, MBBS, will present an update to the ENESTnd trial at ASH 2010.

Physicians must engage and educate patients about significant risk for cardiovascular disease.

HIV’s disruption of immune system function may cause the immune system cells themselves to become cancerous, NCI researchers have concluded. If so, this might explain why patients with AIDS are 100 times more likely to be diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma than the general population.

Mismanaged therapy at one institution has dealt a blow to the field, but practitioners explain why the technique remains worthwhile.

Testing for EGFR and ALK mutations reveals tumor behavior and helps tailor treatment.

Surgical intervention for mesothelioma has become widely accepted, but controversy persists: Should surgery be the standard of care or should it be offered only to select patients? According to scientific literature, surgery decreases morbidity and mortality while also improving outcomes compared with adjunctive therapy alone.

PHOENIX-Locoregional nodal relapse is very common in adenocarcinoma of the stomach, even after surgery, and this high failure rate has been used to justify additional therapies to improve outcomes.

A novel drug that targets an important protein receptor that supports B-cell lymphoma cells produced significant responses in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients who had failed prior therapies. Results from the phase II trial of fostamatinib disodium in 68 heavily pretreated relapsed and refractory B-cell NHL patients revealed that the treatment has significant promise and should undergo further clinical testing, according to lead investigator Jonathan W. Friedberg, MD, of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester in New York.

PHOENIX, Ariz.-In patients with intermediate thickness localized melanoma, wide excision surgery is usually curative, but metastasis to regional lymph nodes can occur. Some clinicians advocate immediate elective lymphadenectomy in these patients who have positive sentinel node biopsies as a way to improve tumor staging and survival.

PHOENIX, Ariz.-Accurate local staging with imaging modalities is important for guiding breast cancer treatment in order to achieve clear margins and avoid recurrent disease.

SAN FRANCISCO-As a single agent, pralatrexate (PDX) shows promising clinical activity in relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma, producing responses in 27% of the patients enrolled in a major prospective clinical trial.

In the past decade, core biopsy has largely replaced fine-needle aspiration for breast tissue evaluation. The latter technique’s inability to distinguish between invasive cancer and in situ cases and a general unease among pathologists not trained in cytopathology (in interpreting cells rather than tissue) are two of the main reasons that FNA has fallen out of favor (Diagnostic Cytopathology online, November 19, 2008).

SAN FRANCISCO-Adding thalidomide to a regimen of bortezomib (Velcade), melphalan, and prednisone nearly doubled the rate of complete responses and improved the overall response rate in elderly patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, according to the results of a phase III trial.

SAN FRANCISCO-Mismatched cord blood can be a suitable alternative for stem cell transplants for patients with acute leukemia, especially in emergency situations, according to research presented at ASH 2008.

Thalomide may not be the best partner for bortezomib (Velcade) in combination therapy for elderly multiple myeloma patients. Based on the results of a phase III clinical trial, bortezomib, prednisone, and thalidomide achieved equivalent outcomes when compared with a similar combination therapy using melphalan, but led to more serious adverse events, particularly thromboembolic complications.

Dexamethasone in the induction phase of chemotherapy led to a one-third reduction in the risk of relapse, compared with standard treatment, in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, according to results of an international trial, which were presented this week at the American Society of Hematology meeting in San Francisco.

Two of the largest trials to date on the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia indicate that the combination treatment of fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab (Rituxan) should become the new standard of care for both untreated and previously treated patients.

Dexamethasone in the induction phase of chemotherapy led to a one-third reduction in the risk of relapse, compared with standard treatment, in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, according to results of an international trial, which were presented this week at the American Society of Hematology meeting in San Francisco.

Age alone should not prohibit patients with acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes from receiving curative allogeneic stem cell transplantation, according to researchers from Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

A new technique to expand cord blood cells has demonstrated mixed results with myeloid engraftment in patients achieved in an average of 16 days. But results from the preliminary clinical trial indicate that the technique is logistically cumbersome and will most likely require modification before it can be a viable alternative for patients, according to Seattle-based investigators.

Sargramostim (Leukine) paired with a patient-specific immunotherapy mitumprotimut-T (Specifid), failed to reduce time to remission in patients with CD20+ follicular lymphoma following therapy with rituximab (Rituxan), according to the highly anticipated results of a phase III clinical trial.

Between YouTube and MySpace, it doesn’t take much to become an Internet sensation. But Randy Pausch, PhD, may have been one of the few Web stars who deserved the attention.