Articles

Contemporary treatment has led to improvements in survival for all patients with metastatic testicular germ-cell tumors (GCTs), including poor-risk patients, although they still have worse survival. A new study shows that if poor-risk patients receive curative therapy and survive for at least 2 years, their survival approaches that of favorable-risk and intermediate-risk patients. The study supports no further routine scanning 2 years after diagnosis in surviving patients.

More than 50% of women with early-stage endometrial cancer had open surgery, in contradiction to recommendations in clinical guidelines, according to a study reported at the 2016 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) annual meeting.

An ongoing clinical trial of a novel strategy to evaluate new chemotherapy regimens for patients with early-stage breast cancer has identified another neoadjuvant combination therapy worthy of a phase 3 clinical trial involving patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

The first liquid biopsy used to detect gene mutations that are associated with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was approved by the FDA. The cobas EGFR Mutation Test v2 (Roche Molecular Systems), a blood-based companion diagnostic for erlotinib (Tarceva), is indicated as an initial test to detect EGFR gene mutations in patients with NSCLC.

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are the mainstay of therapy for patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation–positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the updated National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) NSCLC guideline. The NCCN guideline recommends EGFR testing as part of a broad molecular profiling in patients with NSCLC.

A “liquid biopsy” was able to detect 2 mutations in the ESR1 gene that predicted worse overall survival (OS) in women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive metastatic breast cancer who were originally enrolled in the phase 3 BOLERO-2 clinical trial, according to results presented at the 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.