Leah Lawrence

The FDA has approved the first cancer therapy biosimilar in the United States, a biosimilar to Avastin (bevacizumab) for the treatment of multiple types of cancer, including colorectal, lung, brain, kidney, and cervical cancers.

A new study found that lenalidomide was effective as a maintenance therapy after first-line treatment in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who did not achieve minimal residual disease negative status after chemoimmunotherapy approaches.

TRC105, a monoclonal antibody against endoglin, failed to improve progression-free survival when added to bevacizumab compared with bevacizumab alone in patients with refractory metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

More than half of patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma treated with a combination of lenvatinib and pembrolizumab responded to treatment at week 24, according to interim results of a phase I/II study presented at the 2017 ESMO Congress.

The FDA has released a statement regarding safety concerns that led to a clinical hold on three trials of pembrolizumab in combination with pomalidomide or lenalidomide for patients with multiple myeloma, and the active role of the FDA in protecting patient safety.

Updated results from the KEYNOTE 059 phase II trial showed that pembrolizumab alone or in combination with chemotherapy has promising antitumor activity for patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer.

One year of combination treatment with dabrafenib plus trametinib reduced the risk for disease recurrence or death by more than half in patients with stage III high-risk BRAF V600E/K melanoma.

Treatment of advanced, non-functional gastrointestinal or lung neuroendocrine tumors with everolimus resulted in improved progression-free survival with no relevant differences in health-related quality of life compared with placebo, according to an analysis of the RADIANT-4 trial.

Anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T-cell therapy was highly effective in patients with high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia who had previously failed treatment with ibrutinib.

The use of hybrid minimally invasive esophagectomy reduced postoperative morbidity in patients with esophageal cancers, according to the results of the MIRO trial.

Chemoprevention with low-dose 13-Cis retinoic acid, a synthetic vitamin A derivative, did not lower the incidence of second primary tumors in patients with squamous cell cancer of the head and neck.

The addition of high-intensity primary tumor ablation in addition to systemic chemotherapy may improve the survival of patients with metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

The FDA has approved the first gene therapy available in the United States, tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), for the treatment of pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Adding obinutuzumab to cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (G-CHOP) failed to improve progression-free survival compared with rituximab plus CHOP in patients with previously untreated diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Pediatric patients with ALK-positive anaplastic large cell lymphomas and inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors had strong responses to treatment with crizotinib.

Participating in a palliative care consultation significantly decreased healthcare use of Medicare beneficiaries with advanced cancer at the end of life.

Prolonged use of bortezomib after treatment with combined bortezomib plus dexamethasone did not result in any significant benefit for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma compared with bortezomib plus dexamethasone alone, but this less dose-intensive approach could be a feasible option for patients who cannot tolerate the standard regimen.

The rate of lymph node positivity in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anus may be overestimated, potentially leading to the overtreatment of patients with chemoradiotherapy.

Patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma treated with lenalidomide maintenance therapy after undergoing autologous stem-cell transplantation had significantly improved overall survival compared with observation or placebo.

Mortality from colorectal cancer has decreased since 1970 in young black patients aged 20 to 54, but has increased in white patients since 1995 in those aged 30 to 39 years and since 2005 in those aged 40 to 54 years after decades of decreasing.

Age may be an important factor in estimating lymph node positivity in thin melanoma, according to the results of a recent study.

African American patients with localized renal cell carcinoma who underwent robotic partial nephrectomy were at an increased risk for positive surgical margins compared with white patients.

Pediatric solid organ transplant recipients account for about 3% of diagnosed pediatric non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases in the United States.

The FDA has granted accelerated approval to nivolumab for use in adult and adolescent patients with MSI-H or dMMR metastatic colorectal cancer.

Two studies on Lynch syndrome highlight cancer screening and surveillance opportunities.

Arsenic trioxide consolidation was well tolerated in pediatric patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia and allowed for significant reductions in cumulative anthracycline doses.

Germline mutations in pancreatic cancer susceptibility genes were commonly identified in a group of patients with pancreatic cancer who did not report a significant family history of cancer, according to the results of a single-center study.

Opioid prescriptions were significantly higher among cancer survivors compared with controls, even years after attaining survivorship.

Standard-dose pembrolizumab with four reduced doses of ipilimumab followed by standard-dose pembrolizumab had a manageable safety profile and antitumor activity in patients with advanced melanoma.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) for adult patients with chronic graft vs host disease who have failed on one or more lines of prior systemic therapy.