Articles

The combined use of effective multidrug chemotherapy regimens and radiation over the past few decades has led to significant improvements in the prognosis of Hodgkin lymphoma, making achievement of a cure a clinical reality for the majority of patients.¹ With current therapies, long-term tumor control may be achieved in 70%-80% of patients.¹ However, a subset of patients do not respond to frontline therapy or relapses following initial response.

Nikhil Munshi believes caregivers should be informed about the newer medicines so they can be aware of potential side effects as well as medicine's responsibility to take a holistic approach to patients' lives post-treatment.

Nikhil Munshi believes caregivers should be informed about the newer medicines so they can be aware of potential side effects as well as medicine's responsibility to take a holistic approach to patients' lives post-treatment.

Highlights from the AVBCC 2016 Conference

Total drug spending in the United States, based on invoice prices, reached $425 billion in 2015, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics report, “Medicines Use and Spending in the U.S.: A Review of 2015 and Outlook to 2020.” When adjusted for net price spending, $310 billion went to drug and biotech companies, but where the other $115 billion went is often omitted from media coverage.

Immunotherapies have changed the way many patients with cancers, including patients with renal-cell carcinoma (RCC), are treated. Although some patients have a dramatic response to immunotherapies that appears to be sustained over the long-term, a large proportion of patients do not respond to treatment with programmed death (PD)-1 or PD ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitors. Therefore, the search continues for biomarkers that can help to determine which patients will likely respond to available checkpoint inhibitors, optimizing treatment selection.

When combined with systemic ipilimumab (Yervoy), the investigational oncolytic viral immunotherapy HF10, a mutation of the HF strain of the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), has local and systemic activity in patients with metastatic melanoma, said Robert Andtbacka, MD, CM, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, during a poster presentation at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting. He added that HF10 substantially improves the response rate of ipilimumab alone and does not exacerbate ipilimumab toxicity.

Collaborative oncology care, which involves incorporating an advanced practitioner (AP) into an oncology practice, will help meet the growing burden of complex care and improve patient satisfaction.