ASCO 2015 Highlights

Timothy Sherwood, MD, the thoracic surgeon who was featured in Part 2 of this series, referred Alberta Hickman for prehabilitation before operating on her after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Alberta received her care at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, VA, which recently adopted the STAR Program, a best practices cancer rehabilitation model of care. The medical team published Alberta’s story as a case report, because she did so well and her physical function improved after surgery compared with her baseline status before the operation. Moreover, she had a shorter-than-usual hospital length of stay for this type of surgery. This is Alberta’s perspective about cancer prehabilitation in her own words.

San Antonio, TX—Adding an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA) to best supportive care failed to demonstrate noninferiority for progression-free survival (PFS) compared with best supportive care alone in patients with metastatic breast cancer, in a clinical trial known as EPO-ANE-3010 that was requested by the FDA.

San Antonio, TX—Results of a new nutrition study show that women who reduced their intake of dietary fat for 5 years after being diagnosed with early breast cancer had significantly lower rates of death from all causes compared with controls, at 15 years of follow-up; this reduction was seen specifically in women with hormone receptor (HR)-­negative breast cancer. No long-term effect of dietary fat reduction on mortality was observed in women with HR-positive breast cancer. The results of the study, called Women’s Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS), were presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Disease progression is slower and overall survival (OS) is greater in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who are being monitored for their response to tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy and show good adherence. However, few clinicians monitor response and adherence to oral TKI treatment in patients with CML.

An investigational first-in-class ­anticancer quinolone derivative, vosaroxin, extended median over­­all survival (OS) when used with cytarabine (Cytosar-U) in a phase 3 clinical trial of patients with relapsed or refrac­­tory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), although the difference was not significant.

San Francisco, CA—In patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) is increasingly used to evaluate response to treatment. An antibody that recruits the body’s T-cells to attack MRD in patients with ALL whose disease is in remission can prevent full relapse.

Screening for cancer is suboptimal among some immigrant populations, especially those whose primary care physicians are trained in foreign countries, according to results of a new study of primary care practices in Canada; specifically, women from South Asia whose family physicians were trained in South Asia were less likely to be screened for cervical cancer than nonimmigrant women whose physicians were not immigrants.

Orlando, FL—The total costs of renal surgery are not limited to hospitalization but accrue long after discharge. According to data presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, most patients took more than 30 days off work after radical or partial nephrectomy, with the average estimated wages lost to unpaid time exceeding $10,000.

Orlando, FL—A new retrospective study of 87,562 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between January 2005 and June 2013 show that the incidence of prostate cancer and men with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) >10 decreased gradually between 2005 and 2011. However, the incidence of high-risk prostate cancer at diagnosis increased annually by 3% between 2011 and 2013, totaling 6%. This increase could lead to an additional 1400 prostate cancer deaths 10 years later.

Orlando, FL—Previous studies have shown that a history of testicular cancer increases the risk for developing prostate cancer. A new study presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium shows, for the first time ever, a link between a history of testicular cancer and an increased likelihood of intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer sometime in the future.