Articles

San Francisco, CA—Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is associated with unique adverse events that require vigilant monitoring, aggressive care, and specialized management. Marco L. Davila, MD, PhD, Medical Oncologist, Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy Program, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL, provided an overview of this topic at the 2019 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Promising markers of response to immune checkpoint inhibition include tumor mutation burden (TMB) and genomic markers that reflect a disruption of the tumor immunity cycle, said Natalie Vokes, MD, MPhil, Medical Oncology Fellow, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, at the 2019 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—Reaching pathologic complete response (pCR) after neo­adjuvant chemotherapy correlates with significantly improved event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with localized breast cancer, according to results of a large comprehensive meta-analysis presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—The large, randomized TAM-01 clinical trial demonstrated that 5 mg daily of tamoxifen for 3 years halved the risk for recurrence of breast intraepithelial neoplasia—atypical ductal hyperplasia, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), and lobular carcinoma in situ—in women after surgery and reduced the risk for new contralateral breast cancer by 75% compared with placebo.

San Francisco, CA—Sacituzumab govitecan, a novel antibody-drug conjugate directed against Trop-2, induced responses in nearly 33% of patients with heavily pretreated, relapsed or refrac­tory metastatic urothelial cancer.

San Francisco, CA—First-line therapy with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus ­axitinib (Inlyta) significantly improved overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and objective response rates compared with standard-of-care sunitinib (Sutent) in patients with clear-cell metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) in KEYNOTE-426. The combination of pembrolizumab plus axitinib achieved a significant 47% reduction in mortality risk versus sunitinib (P <.0001).

San Francisco, CA—Darolutamide, an investigational androgen receptor inhibitor, significantly improved metastasis-free survival in men with high-risk nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) compared with placebo in a large phase 3 clinical trial.

San Francisco, CA—Moving PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitors to an early line of therapy, immediately after chemoradiation, has improved survival for patients with unresectable, stage III non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Orlando, FL—Options for the treatment of patients with advanced hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2­negative breast cancer are expanding. The updated National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline (version 1.2019) for the management of invasive breast cancer is focused on HR-positive, HER2-negative disease. William J. Gradishar, MD, Director, Maggie Daley Center for Women’s Cancer Care, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, discussed the updated guideline at the NCCN 2019 Conference.

Orlando, FL—The updated National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline for non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC; version 3.2019) is focused on improving patient outcomes with immunotherapy. Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is recommended as the preferred first-line immune checkpoint inhibitor for patients with ≥50% of tumor cells that express PD-L1. First-line immunother­apy is restricted to NSCLC without EGFR or ALK mutations.