Susan London

When given as intended with radiation therapy, the dose-intense Stanford V regimen is well-tolerated, safe, and effective for treating bulky or advanced Hodgkin lymphoma, based on the experience of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Among women at high risk for breast cancer, screening with magnetic resonance imaging is clearly cost-effective in those with BRCA 1/2 mutations but somewhat less so in those whose elevated risk is due to other factors, according to a new study.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can help stratify patients with metastatic breast cancer in terms of likely survival and should therefore be considered for incorporation into the current AJCC staging system, according to a study presented at the 2007 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (abstract 111).

Compared with conventional intensity-modulated radiation therapy for prostate cancer, hypofractionated IMRT is not associated with any increase in sexual adverse effects, finds a randomized trial.

When positioning patients for external beam partial breast irradiation (PBI), body surface mapping is more accurate than either alignment using lasers or alignment using kilovoltage (kV) on-board imaging, a new study shows.

The cytoprotective agent amifostine (Ethyol) did not reduce the rate of acute severe toxicity among patients undergoing combined radiation therapy and chemotherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer, according to a phase I/II study reported at ASTRO 2007 (abstract 10). The trial, RTOG 0116, enrolled women with cervical cancer who had evidence of positive para-aortic or high common iliac nodes.

In the neoadju-vant setting, adding the investigational agent RAD001 (everolimus) to letrozole (Femara) improves antitumor activity in breast cancer patients, with a tradeoff of some increased toxicity, according to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (abstract 2066).

A new method for converting between different definitions of lung volume may help standardize radiation dose reporting for patients receiving radiation therapy for lung cancer, finds a study using four-dimensional CT imaging. 4D-CT is a series of CT scans that measure how much a tumor moves when a patient breathes and allows radiation oncologists to personalize radiation treatment for this motion.

Patients who undergo complete resection of invasive adenocarcinoma of the pancreas are roughly two-thirds more likely to be alive at 5 years if they receive adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation therapy, compared with no adjuvant therapy, according to the 30-year Mayo Clinic experience.

A rapid molecular assay outperforms frozen sections when it comes to detecting breast cancer metastases in sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs), new data show. Moreover, the assay tends to perform better in cases where detection of metastases by frozen section is known to be difficult, such as cases of lobular carcinoma.

Sequential docetaxel (Taxotere)-based chemotherapy did not lead to better outcomes than standard anthracycline-based chemotherapy among women with resected breast cancer in the Taxotere as Adjuvant Chemotherapy Trial (TACT), the largest primary adjuvant trial of taxanes to date.

The combination of nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) and bevacizumab (Avastin) eradicates highly aggressive metastatic breast cancer in a preclinical model, Sophia Ran, PhD, reported at the SABCS (abstract 74).

Investigational agent denosumab is safe and efficacious for attenuating bone loss among women taking adjuvant aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer, according to a phase III randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial reported at SABCS (abstract 47).

Breast cancer patients with isolated tumor cells or micrometastases in sentinel nodes do not have poorer disease-free or overall survival than their counterparts with negative sentinel nodes, researchers reported at the SABCS (abstract 52).

Some breast cancer patients with positive sentinel lymph nodes have factors associated with a low probability of having any other positive nodes and may therefore be able to safely skip completion axillary dissection, new data show.

Two new genomic assays may provide prognostic and predictive information for individual patients with breast cancer, thereby helping to guide treatment decisions, according to data from a pair of studies presented at SABCS.

Women with breast cancer who take adjuvant tamoxifen for 10 years have a lower risk of recurrence than their counterparts who take it for 5 years, although the difference is thus far small, according to early results of the ATLAS (Adjuvant Tamoxifen, Longer Against Shorter) trial presented at SABCS (abstract 48).

When used as adjuvant therapy for node-positive breast cancer, the combination of high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) and stem cell transplantation modestly improves relapse-free survival relative to standard-dose chemotherapy (SDC). But it offers at best minimal benefit in terms of overall survival, according to a meta-analysis presented at SABCS.

Middle-aged women today are about half as likely as their counterparts 25 years ago to die from breast cancer, thanks in large part to the collective effects of modern therapies, according to new data reported at SABCS. Results of the 2005-2006 update of the worldwide overview presented by Richard Peto, PhD, on behalf of the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group were based on data from roughly 350,000 women and 400 randomized trials.

With the combination of radiation therapy and temozolomide (Temodar), some patients with glioblastoma multiforme are now surviving more than 4 years, according to updated results from a randomized phase III trial

Compared with older men, younger men have a similarly high rate of biochemical control of localized prostate cancer when treated with brachytherapy and should therefore be offered this treatment option

A new oral kinase inhibitor that targets the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-b) receptor reduced radiation-induced lung injury in a preclinical model

Adding a radiation therapy boost to the lumpectomy site after lumpectomy with whole-breast radiation therapy reduces the risk of local recurrence, particularly among breast cancer patients with high-risk features, including positive margins.

Patients with locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer and a good performance status have better overall survival and a lower risk of local-regional progression if they receive concomitant chemoradiation instead of sequential chemoradiation, according to a meta-analysis from the NSCLC Collaborative Group presented at this year's ASTRO meeting

New drugs on the horizon could reduce the adverse effects of radiation to the lung, allowing higher doses for lung cancer patients, according to studies presented at the 49th ASTRO annual meeting.