November 2016, Vol 7, No 10

Copenhagen, Denmark—The current standard for the first-line targeted treatment of metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) came out on the short end of a randomized comparison with the new multikinase inhibitor cabozantinib (Cabometyx), according to results reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—For the first time, a randomized clinical trial has shown that adjuvant therapy improves outcomes in patients with clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (RCC). Adjuvant treatment with sunitinib (Sutent) improved disease-free survival (DFS) by >1 year in patients with high-risk locoregional RCC after nephrectomy, according to results from the S-TRAC clinical trial. Although this is encouraging news, at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress some experts noted they were not ready to adopt it as a new standard of care, because of the associated toxicity and lack of an overall survival benefit.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—Immunotherapy for advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) took a step toward first-line indication as results from a randomized clinical trial showed that patients who received pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy had a significantly higher response rate compared with patients who received chemotherapy alone, reported Corey J. Langer, MD, Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress. The clinical trial results (KEYNOTE-021) were also published in Lancet Oncology, and are available online.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—Immunotherapy competition in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) continued to heat up as atezolizumab (Tecentriq) improved overall survival (OS) versus docetaxel, according to results from the randomized, phase 3 OAK clinical trial reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress by Fabrice Barlesi, MD, Professor of Medicine, Aix-Marseille University, France.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—Patients with heavily pretreated ALK mutation and non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) had significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) after receiving the next-generation ALK inhibitor ce­ritinib, according to results from the ASCEND-5 study reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress by Giorgio Scagliotti, MD, Professor of Respiratory Medicine, University of Torino, Italy.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—Patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who lack targetable EGFR or ALK mutations typically receive platinum-based doublet chemotherapy as first-line therapy. Two phase 3 clinical trials presented at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress compared immunotherapy and platinum-based chemotherapy as first-line treatment for ­patients with NSCLC. In KEYNOTE-024, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was superior to chemotherapy in terms of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), whereas in CheckMate-026, nivolu­mab (Opdivo) failed to improve PFS compared with chemotherapy.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—In recent years, the personal experience of patients with cancer has been recognized as an important factor in determining the value of a treatment. According to patient-reported outcomes from the CheckMate-141 clinical trial presented at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, patients’ quality of life (QOL) remained stable with the immunotherapy nivolumab (Opdivo), whereas it significantly deteriorated with chemotherapy.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—Patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) had a small but significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) but no overall survival (OS) benefit after receiving the multikinase inhibitor nintedanib (Ofev), according to results from the LUME-Colon 1 clinical trial reported by principal investigator Eric Van Cutsem, MD, Clinical Digestive Oncology, University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—A novel approach to targeting the estrogen receptor (ER) led to improved progression-free survival (PFS) in postmenopausal women with advanced, hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer, according to data from the FALCON clinical trial that were reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.
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Copenhagen, Denmark—Adjuvant immunotherapy with ipilimumab (Yervoy) led to significant improvement in long-term overall survival (OS) among patients with high-risk melanoma, according to results from a 5.3-year follow-up in a randomized clinical trial reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and published simultaneously online.
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