Sarcoma

The developer of evofosfamide announced that two phase III trials of the agent in advanced soft-tissue sarcoma and in advanced pancreatic cancer did not meet their primary endpoints.

Imatinib had no impact on failure-free or overall survival in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor, but it did have an effect on relapse-free survival.

A treatment strategy including dose intensification with interval compression, use of the most active agents available, and the use of irinotecan as a radiation sensitizer led to a promising event-free survival rate in certain patients with metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma.

The FDA announced the approval of trabectedin (Yondelis) for the treatment of liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma that is either unresectable or has metastasized.

The US Food and Drug Administration has granted a Priority Review designation to eribulin for the treatment of inoperable soft-tissue sarcoma.

Vascular reconstruction increases morbidity in sarcoma patients undergoing resection vs those without vascular procedures, but oncologic outcomes are similar.

Trabectedin was found to offer superior disease control to dacarbazine in patients with advanced liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma.

Preoperative chemotherapy, both with or without concurrent radiotherapy, is feasible among patients with localized, high-risk soft-tissue sarcoma, according to a new phase III trial.

Adding bevacizumab to paclitaxel did not improve outcomes in a phase II trial of patients with angiosarcoma.

A retrospective study was used to develop nomograms predictive of both metastasis-free and overall survival for patients with nonmetastatic osteosarcoma.

In a phase I study, gemcitabine given concurrently with fixed-dose EBRT showed promising results following surgery in patients with high-risk soft-tissue sarcoma.

Sarcomas are a heterogeneous and motley collection of cancers, which struggle with an identity crisis on many levels. The trials often lump vastly different subgroups, and are often unable to collect sufficient numbers of any one disease subtype to complete a unique cohort.

Advanced imaging techniques could allow clinicians the ability to determine as early as 9 days into sarcoma treatment whether the therapy will be effective in a given patient, according to a new University of Michigan study.

Early trial results found that the addition of olaratumab to doxorubicin dramatically improves survival in patients with advanced soft-tissue sarcoma.

In this video, Dr. Tap discusses a randomized phase Ib/II trial that found that adding olaratumab to doxorubicin dramatically improved survival in patients with advanced soft-tissue sarcoma.

Treating advanced sarcoma with the chemotherapy agent eribulin improves overall survival compared with treatment with standard therapy with dacarbazine.

Trabectedin failed to improve progression-free survival outcomes compared to doxorubicin as first-line therapy for advanced/metastatic soft-tissue sarcoma.

T cells that express a HER2-specific chimeric antigen receptor showed promise as a treatment for HER-2 positive sarcoma in a small phase I/II trial.

The risk of bone metastases from GISTs, though rare, should be considered during long-term follow-up of patients, especially in those with liver metastases.

In patients with high-risk localized disease, the use of systemic chemotherapy should be strongly considered to delay recurrence and/or reduce the patient’s risk of developing metastatic disease. In patients with metastatic disease, systemic chemotherapy remains the mainstay of treatment.

The unfortunate fact remains that the main chemotherapy option for patients with adult soft-tissue sarcoma is doxorubicin, a drug first identified 4 decades ago.

While the future is bright for the development and investigation of novel chemotherapeutics for treatment of soft-tissue sarcoma, investigators will need to gain better insight into the molecular drivers of pathogenesis, and give continued thoughtful consideration to clinical trial design.

Although rare, long-term recurrence of soft-tissue sarcoma is possible, and patients with retroperitoneal, very large sarcomas, or high-grade disease should undergo long-term follow-up to detect late disease recurrence.

A new study found that clinicians may be able to safely substitute cyclophosphamide for ifosfamide in the consolidation treatment of standard-risk Ewing sarcoma.

Patients with first relapse rhabdomyosarcoma treated with a chemotherapy backbone of vinorelbine/cyclophosphamide plus temsirolimus had a superior event-free survival compared to patients treated with the same backbone plus bevacizumab.