February 2012, Vol 3, No 1

Two phase 3 international clinical studies show that initiating therapy with bevacizumab in combination with standard chemotherapy extends progression-free survival (PFS) in women with advanced ovarian cancer, and women at high risk for disease progression may live longer with the addition of bevacizumab to standard therapy (Burger RA, et al. N Engl J Med. 2011;365:2473-2483; Perren TJ, et al. N Engl J Med. 2011;365:2484-2496).

he addition of pertuzumab to trastuzumab and docetaxel as first-line therapy for women with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer significantly prolongs progression-free survival (PFS) compared with the use of the 2 agents without pertuzumab, according to results of a new phase 3 clinical trial (Baselga J, et al. N Engl J Med. 2012;366:101-119).

Feedback from their peers helped physicians refrain from ordering unnecessary tests for patients with newly diagnosed cancer, according to a recent study (Miller DC, et al. J Urol. 2011;186:844-849. Epub 2011 Jul 23).

New York, NY—Men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) now have several different treatments that improve their survival—docetaxel (Taxo-tere), cabazitaxel (Jevanta), abiraterone (Zytiga), and sipuleucel-T (Provenge).

San Francisco, CA—Two treatments sig­nificantly extended survival in men with metastatic castration-resistant pros­tate cancer (CRPC) in separate phase 3 clinical trials reported at the 2012 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—A new, large comparative effectiveness analysis of 3 techniques for delivering radiation therapy for the treatment of localized prostate cancer supports intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) as the current standard, said Ronald Chen, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology, University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, and Research Fellow, Sheps Center for Health Services Research, UNC at the 2012 annual Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

American adults would be willing to pay a median of $263 for a perfect prostate cancer prediction test and $232 for a perfect breast cancer prediction test, according to a recent survey (Neumann PJ, et al. Health Econ. 2012;21:238-251).

Miami, FL—Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing of genetic tests represents personalized medicine in evolution. High-throughput genetic technologies have made it possible to evaluate individuals at a relatively affordable price, but a number of technologic, social, regulatory, and ethical issues must first be settled before DTC genetic testing takes personalized medicine to new heights.

San Antonio, TX—In a randomized phase 2 study of patients with metastatic breast cancer, peripheral neuropathy was less likely to occur in patients receiving eribulin mesylate than with ixabepilone.