Oncology Vol 29 No 7

This article will describe the historic background of Ra-223; outline the clinical studies which led to phase III trials of this agent; highlight key results of these phase III studies; and explore possible future directions for use of Ra-223 and other alpha particles-both in prostate cancer and for management of other diseases.

Elucidation of the underlying mechanisms of action for Ra-223 will soon expand its clinical utility with respect to improved patient selection and integrated bone-targeted therapies.

Our future goal should be to increase the resectability of patients with colorectal cancer and peritoneal metastases by improving selection criteria and by referring early, but also by using systemic therapies in the neoadjuvant setting.

The unprecedented advances in melanoma immunotherapy are sure to pave the way for immunotherapy development in other tumors.

While the headliners for the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting featured mainly immunologic approaches to cancer treatment, with agents such as nivolumab and ipilimumab, the new data in hematologic malignancies highlighted a large number of novel therapies, each of which appears promising.

The 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting delivered new practice-changing results in the area of prostate cancer.

With the presentation and publication of the TEXT and SOFT trials in 2014, along with the aTTom and ATLAS trials in the last few years, deciding among the standard adjuvant endocrine therapy options for premenopausal women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer has become increasingly complicated.

Recent progress in lung cancer was a bright spot at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting. Several studies were presented that either are practice-changing or will likely lead to practice changes in the future.

For breast cancer specialists, much of the excitement at ASCO revolved around the emerging field of checkpoint inhibition in breast cancer and other tumors; however, there were four non-checkpoint presentations in breast cancer that also proved provocative.

Here, we provide an in-depth review of the current evidence for the addition of ovarian suppression to adjuvant endocrine therapy, and we offer recommendations for clinical management.

This review focuses on the underlying rationale for the use of cytoreductive surgery plus hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CS + HIPEC) in the treatment of patients with primary gastrointestinal tumors with metastatic peritoneal disease.

It is clear that in a subset of patients with GI malignancies, particularly the low-grade appendiceal neoplasms, CS + HIPEC can result in improved outcomes and in some cases, long-term remission and occasionally cure.