Personalized Medicine

Lugano, Switzerland—The genomic basis of primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL), a very aggressive and incurable type of lymphoma, has not been understood until now. At the 2013 International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma, a team of researchers from the Mayo Clinic and from the University of Virginia presented its recent findings at a poster session involving the most comprehensive study to date of the genomic landscape of PCNSL.

Orlando, FL—In screening colonoscopies, high adenoma detection rates (ADRs) by physicians are associated with fewer missed cancers and with better survival from colorectal cancer (CRC), according to 2 studies presented at Digestive Disease Week 2013.

The management of patients with prostate cancer will be advanced by 2 new genetic tests—Oncotype DX prostate cancer test and Prolaris.

A secondary analysis of a large study on intermittent versus continuous androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) has confirmed the importance of aiming for very low testosterone levels in men after they are diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to new data presented at the 2013 Canadian Urological Association annual meeting.

Evidence-based drug sequencing should form the basis of treatment for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), according to a new guideline from the American Urolo­gical Association (AUA) released at the 2013 AUA annual meeting.

Getting technical information about companion diagnostic tests required to make formulary decisions about oncology drugs may not be easy, according to a small telephone survey conducted by Aashish Surti, PharmD can­didate, and Iris Tam, PharmD, Di­rector, Managed Care Med­i­­cal Com­mu­n­i­­cations, Genentech. They reported their survey results in a poster presented at the 2013 Academy of Man­aged Care Pharmacy (AMCP) meeting.

Analysis of circulating DNA provides information about secondary mutations that cause drug resistance in patients with previously treated gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), reported George D. Demetri, MD, Director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, at the 2013 American Association for Cancer Research meeting.

Washington, DC—Among women with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, patients with the highest expression of HER2 had the best outcomes in treatment with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1; Kadcyla), according to a biomarker analysis of the phase 3 EMILIA trial which was presented at the 2013 American As­sociation for Cancer Research annual meeting.

Therapeutic development in head and neck cancer could eventually hone in on a handful of gene-expression patterns and signaling pathways that can identify a few discrete subtypes of the disease, data from The Cancer Genome Atlas suggest.