Fran Lowry

Finding an effective treatment for all the complex iterations of cancer is akin to chasing an outlaw through a treacherous mountain range, in the estimation of Louis M. Weiner, MD, director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, DC.

Impressive results from an ongoing study of an anti-HER2 antibody-drug conjugate in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has already fast-tracked a phase III trial.Trastuzumab-DM1 (T-DM1) has demonstrated comparable results to standard treatment but with much less grade 3-4 toxicity in phase II trial results.

Phase II study results are encouraging because this patient population generally sees a median of five prior lines of therapy including transplants, explained Jeffrey M. Besterman, MD, PhD, executive vice president and chief scientific officer for MethylGene, the developer of mocetinostat (MGCD0103).

At a median follow-up of 36 months, multiple survival rates were nearly perfect at 99%. The leader of the Italian study called the low number of treatment failures reassuring news as to the durability of nilotinib response at three years post-therapy

The likelihood of patients achieving complete cytogenetic response at any time was 1.5 times higher with dasatinib (Sprycel) than with imatinib (Gleevec), according to an investigator with the DASISION trial.

The intensified regimen of BEACOPP plus standard therapy ABVD plus radiotherapy bested four cycles of ABVD alone, leading to a significant improvement in tumor control. Final results from the German Hodgkin Study Group trial saw a 7% improvement in terms of freedom from treatment failure between the standard and new treatment arms.

The 24-month follow-up data from the ENESTnd trial showed that patients treated with nilotinib (Tasigna) had significantly better response rates and significantly lower rates of progression to accelerated phase or blast crisis when on treatment

Patients in a major UK/US trial who received imatinib had improved overall survival, event-free survival, and relapse-free survival at three years of follow-up compared with patients who did not receive any imatinib.

Early results from the ICON7 trial suggest that adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard chemotherapy in women with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer reduces the risk of disease progression during the first year of treatment.

For women with hereditary breast cancer, deciding on the best treatment option can be challenging. Three specialists, including medical oncologist Susan M. Domchek, MD, discuss the different approaches to managing breast cancer patients with a family history of BRCA mutations. Dr. Domchek will give a talk at SABCS 2010 on the management of women with a significant predisposition to breast cancer.

Results from ToGA trial also raise questions about treatment costs and how to determine which patients will benefit from trastuzumab addition.

This rare cancer finally sheds its FDA designation as an orphan disease.

Induction chemotherapy has led to improved survival and organ preservation. Combining induction therapy with other treatment modalities is critical for treating this complex disease and attaining optimal outcomes.

It is well known that exposure to chemotherapy or radiation therapy can result in long-term complications for childhood cancer survivors. What is less certain is why some children have to contend with these complications while others do not. Researchers at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., are one step closer to fitting another piece in the survivorship puzzle: They hypothesized that there is some inherent genetic susceptibility that raises this risk.

Current treatment methods may offer little more than overtreatment, while follow up should not automatically mean expensive and unnecessary tests.

One of the largest clinical trials classifies which patients will benefit most from androgen deprivation therapy paired with radiotherapy.

Four years ago, at least five years of statin use was found to be associated with a 53% reduction in the risk of colorectal cancer and that association still stands, according to a coauthor of one of the initial studies to make the statin-cancer connection.

A second round of gefitinib (Iressa) slowed disease advancement in non-small-cell lung cancer patients who failed to respond to first-line treatment, according to a study presented at the 2010 Joint Conference on Molecular Origins in Lung Cancer.

Radioactive iodine has been used traditionally as an adjuvant treatment for high-risk differentiated thyroid cancers.

In order for a new treatment modality to be considered efficacious, it needs to be evaluated by acceptable criteria and demonstrate an improvement on the natural course of the disease.

The Four Corners Breast Cancer Study is a population-based case-control study of women living in the southwestern states-Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah.

Out with the old and in with the new is a commonly followed maxim in medicine given the rapid pace of developments in diagnosis and treatment. Human papillomavirus vaccines are relative newcomers to the cervical cancer armamentarium, but they cannot be relied on to do the job on their own; screening is still a must.

There is a complex array of tests for imaging the abdomen, but there are really only three things that oncologists need to tell radiologists in order to get the most from these imaging studies, according to Fergus V. Coakley, MD, chief of abdominal imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. “We need you to tell us the working diagnosis; what treatment the patient has had; and, the most critical, what is the question you want answered by this test? That’s the most important one,” Dr. Coakley said during a presentation at ASCO 2009 in Orlando.

Annick Van den Abbeele, MD, couldn’t believe her eyes. Dr. Van den Abbeele, the chief of radiology at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, had seen the patient just a month earlier. At that time, the 35-year-old woman had a gastrointestinal stromal tumor in her abdomen that was so large, she looked six months’ pregnant. But at the patient’s follow up FDG-PET study, the tumor was completely gone.

Use of antidepressants, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and possibly tricyclic antidepressants, is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer, according to research by the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. But it’s too soon to make specific recommendations on how to harness this potential value of these drugs in cancer prevention.

HOLLYWOOD, FLA.-Two speakers at the 2009 Palm Beach Cancer Symposium agreed that surgery will always play a role in the treatment of squamous-cell head and neck cancers. The question at issue: Is surgery losing ground to chemoradiotherapy as the primary treatment for head and neck cancer?

ORLANDO-Whom to treat vs whom not to treat remains a major dilemma in prostate cancer care, but distinguishing men who will benefit from treatment from those who will not is not a clear-cut prospect, according to a speaker at the 2009 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

TAMPA, Fla.-Genotyping could become a pivotal part of an individualized treatment program for cancer patients because some patients seem more susceptible to pain than others, according to research presented at the 2009 American Society of Preventive Oncology meeting.

TORONTO-Two large, population-based studies with over 35 years of data revealed some of the factors that have influenced the incidence of thyroid cancer. Two key findings: Canadian men and people living in rural areas generally present with more advanced disease and the incidence of anaplastic thyroid cancer is waning. The studies were presented at the 2009 World Congress on Thyroid Cancer.

ORLANDO-FDG-PET continues to gain ground as the go-to modality for assessing postchemotherapy response, Belgian researchers reported in a poster at ASCO 2009.