Oncology Vol 30 No 1

There has been rapid progress in the treatment of metastasis associated with cutaneous melanoma, including impressive results achieved with targeted molecular therapies and immunotherapies, and it is possible (but still unproven) that patients with metastasis from conjunctival and eyelid melanomas may benefit from these new therapies.

Advanced gastrointestinal malignancies are a major oncologic challenge for which successful durable personalized therapies are currently lacking.

It remains difficult to decipher which patients are appropriate candidates for conversion therapy vs upfront surgery. Therefore, in predicting potential outcomes, several factors should be considered. Here, we will attempt to address such factors and provide insights.

In this Q&A we examine Right-to-Try drug laws and discuss tips for clinicians with terminally ill patients who have exhausted all their therapy options.

In all other settings, giving chemotherapy just to make us feel better emotionally in exchange for potential harm to the patient is not the right strategy. We need to find better treatments for this new clinical indication.

There is clear proof of principle for adjuvant therapy in patients at high risk for tumor recurrence, such as those with resected metastatic colorectal cancer. For that reason, this strategy has been largely adopted, especially using 5-FU– and oxaliplatin-based regimens, thereby mirroring the approach in resected stage III colon cancer.

The advent of immunotherapy presents us with new treatment approaches in gynecologic cancers, with preliminarily promising outcomes. Multiple clinical trials are currently being conducted to better define the role of immunotherapy. Further investigation is warranted to develop and identify predictive biomarkers.

Improvements in neoadjuvant therapy for soft-tissue sarcomas will require the development of more efficacious systemic therapies and, if possible, the performance of histology-specific, prospective, randomized clinical trials to advance the field.