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The first study to assess the addition of temozolomide (Temodar) chemotherapy during short-course radiation therapy, followed by monthly maintenance of temozolomide in elderly patients with glioblastoma showed a significantly reduced risk for death, said the study co-author James R. Perry, MD, FRCPC, The Crolla Family Endowed Chair in Brain Tumour Research, Odette Cancer and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centres, Toronto, Canada, in a plenary session at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

The national Cancer Moonshot initiative, led by Vice President Joe Biden, was established to accelerate the progress in cancer outcomes, including prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. First introduced in January 2016, the initiative is focused on moving cancer research forward in a meaningful way by encouraging greater cooperation between cancer research institutions and increasing data-sharing for that purpose, said Douglas R. Lowy, MD, Acting Director, National Cancer Institute (NCI), at the 2016 American Association of Physicists in Medicine annual meeting in Washington, DC.

Every patient with cancer and cancer survivors should undergo screening for pain at each follow-up visit, and clinicians should individualize the recommendations for intervention as indicated by each patient’s self-reported pain, according to the first-ever clinical guidelines for managing pain in cancer survivors recently published by a panel of experts convened by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

In the past year, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) have introduced frameworks that seek to determine clinical value in relation to cost for a variety of cancer treatments.

On April 11, 2016, the FDA approved venetoclax (Venclexta; Janssen) tablets, a first-in-class BCL-2 inhibitor for the treatment of patients with CLL plus chromosome 17p deletion, as detected by an FDA-approved test (Vysis CLL FISH probe kit), who have received at least 1 previous therapy.

Many significant and interesting topics highlighted at ASCO 2016 are discussed in this publication, covering clinical, safety, and economic issues related to cancer therapies.

Men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer can safely undergo radiation administered in larger fractions for 4 weeks (moderate hypofractionation) as an alternative to conventional radiation administered for 8 weeks, according to the results of a randomized, controlled, noninferiority clinical trial presented at ASCO 2016.

The first randomized trial to compare robotic-assisted prostatectomy with conventional open radical prostatectomy found no meaningful differences between these techniques in urinary and sexual function or in the rate of positive surgical margins in men with localized prostate cancer in the first 12 weeks after surgery (Yaxley JW, et al. Lancet. 2016 Jul 26. Epub ahead of print).

Evidence is mounting that 2 immunotherapies are better than 1 as first-line treatment of patients with advanced melanoma. A phase 3 clinical trial showed that nivolumab plus ipilimumab was superior to ipilimumab or nivolumab alone, and a phase 1 trial suggests that pembrolizumab can be safely and effectively used in combination with other drugs as first-line treatment in this setting. Both studies were presented at ASCO 2016.