Articles

New York, NY—How to integrate the many new drugs recently approved for multiple myeloma into clinical practice was a topic addressed by Carol Ann Huff, MD, Director of the Myeloma Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, at the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Congress on Hematologic Malignancies.

New York, NY—In a presentation at the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Congress on Hematologic Malignancies, Ranjana H. Advani, MD, Saul Rosenberg Professor of Lymphoma, Stanford University Medical Center, CA, and Vice Chair of the NCCN’s non-Hodgkin and Hodg­kin lymphoma guidelines panel questioned the necessity of using radiotherapy in patients with stage I or stage II Hodgkin lymphoma.

New York, NY—Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was a hot topic at the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Congress on Hematologic Malignancies. Jessica K. Altman, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, assured attendees that time was not standing still for patients with AML.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.