ASCO 2015 Highlights

With the new landscape of healthcare delivery yet to come into sharp focus, employers are living in “the land of confusion,” wondering how they will conform to new requirements, meet the expectations of their employees, and remain profitable, said Peter Hayes, Principal, Healthcare Solutions, Duluth, GA, at the Third Annual Conference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

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

Financial distress is prevalent among insured patients with cancer, and although most patients state a desire to talk to their physicians about costs, this discussion rarely occurs, according to a study conducted at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC.

Cancer rehabilitation is “the next frontier” in survivorship care, according to Julie K. Silver, MD, Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

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.

An examination of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database from 1998 to 2008 revealed that a significant number of patients with cancer receive drugs that are neither indicated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the specific condition nor endorsed by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) compendia—and 18% of the spending on cancer drugs is for off-label drug use.

>A new study supported by the National Institutes of Health Pharmacogenomics Research Network represents a step forward toward personalized medicine in breast cancer prevention among women who are at high risk for the disease.

The FDA denied the approval of a New Drug Application for tivozanib, which was submitted by its manu­facturer (Aveo Pharmaceuticals/Astellas), for the treatment of renal-cell carcinoma.

The FDA approved lenalidomide capsules (Revlimid; Celgene Cor­poration) for the treatment of patients with mantle-cell lymphoma whose disease has relapsed or progressed after 2 previous therapies, one of which included bortezomib (Velcade). Lenalidomide is already approved for multiple myeloma (as is bortezomib).