Articles

An economic analysis of oncology regimens that were previously evaluated in trials conducted by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute has shown that the transition from branded to generic drug costs has a considerable impact on the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of treatment.

Aggressive end-of-life care for patients with terminal cancer and other illnesses is costly and not recommended. ASCO recommends that patients with terminal cancer should receive palliative care rather than interventions that do not prolong life but do add to suffering.

Oral and poster presentations of several promising agents in early- and late-phase clinical trials dotted the program at ASCO 2016. The presentations included studies with positive findings associated with many investigational therapies, including first-in-class therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells for the treatment of patients with B-cell malignancies or acute myeloid leukemia (AML); a vaccine (galinpepimut-S) for the treatment of patients with AML; and a chimeric monoclonal antibody against claudin 18.2 for the treatment of patients with advanced gastric cancers.

The first-in-class antibody-drug conjugate rovalpituzumab tesirine (Rova-T) may be a new treatment option for patients with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), which has a very poor prognosis and few treatment options. Rova-T is particularly promising in SCLC tumors that overexpress the delta-like (DLL) 3 protein, according to first-in-human study results presented at ASCO 2016.

Access and adherence to long-term cancer therapies are emerging as major public health issues around the world, as high out-of-pocket costs for oral oncolytics are linked to nonadherence that can directly affect patient outcomes, said Dawn L. Hershman, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, at ASCO 2016.

In her presidential address, Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, Chief of the Oncology/Hematology Division, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, highlighted the importance of multimodal care and its effect on the quality of care and enhancement of clinical trial participation among patients with cancer.

Hepatic veno-occlusive disease (VOD), also known as sinusoidal obstruction syndrome, is a rare and life-threatening liver condition that is characterized by rapid weight gain, ascites, painful hepatomegaly, and jaundice. It is often observed in patients after allogeneic or autologous hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT), and has also been reported during the treatment of Wilms tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma associated with actinomycin D, and acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

New recommendations issued by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) focus on increasing colorectal cancer screening, which, according to the task force, is “a substantially underused preventive health strategy.” Previous USPSTF guidelines recommended specific screening approaches, including colonoscopy, fecal occult blood testing, or sigmoidoscopy, for adults aged 50 through 75 years.

The multitarget stool DNA test, a noninvasive screening tool for colorectal cancer (CRC), demonstrated potential for identifying cancer and advanced adenomas in community-based individuals who had previously not followed national screening recommendations, reported Mark Prince, MD, MBA, Director of Gastroenterology, USMD Health System, Arlington, TX, at the 2016 American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.

The multitargeted RAF inhibitor BGB-283 demonstrated activity in several types of advanced solid tumors associated with different mutations in the RAF family of genes, results of a preliminary clinical trial showed.