ASCO 2015 Highlights

On January 17, 2013, nearly 3 years after its initial proposed rule, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued the long-awaited and much- anticipated HIPAA “omnibus” rule, extending the scope of the privacy law beyond providers to their business associates and subcontractors and adding increased penalties.

Boston, MA—Patients with prostate cancer reported significantly better sexual function for up to 2 years after radiation therapy when they took sildenafil (Viagra) on a daily basis during and after treatment, according to results of a placebo-controlled clinical trial.

San Antonio, TX—Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) was strongly associated with BRCA1 status, but not with BRCA2 status, in a large study of medically insured women. The study showed that the number of patients with BRCA mutations with a TNBC profile is statistically significant.

San Antonio, TX—A multigene score called EndoPredict can help to identify women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer who are likely to develop metastatic disease in the long-term.

San Antonio, TX—Molecular subtyping of early breast cancers using Mamma­Print and BluePrint assays allows the precise and accurate prediction of the molecular phenotype of the disease, which has the potential to guide the selection of personalized therapy if the tests are used prospectively.

Too often, palliative care, which was officially recognized as a medical specialty in 2006, is mistakenly thought to be synonymous with hospice care. Although palliative care includes the coordination of care for patients at the end of their lives, it more broadly aims to reduce patient suffering and is available to all patients with serious disease.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) is of interest to women who are concerned about breast cancer; however, these women are unwilling to pay the current costs, researchers from the Department of Surgery and Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Medical Center, reported at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—For the second- line treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC), the total costs were 14% lower with bevacizu­mab (Avastin) than with cetuximab (Erbitux), according to an analysis presented at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

The preferred screening test for human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER)2 status in surgical esophageal adenocarcinoma specimens is immunohistochemistry (IHC), with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) restricted to cases with an indeterminate (2+) IHC score, according to investigators from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, who proposed a testing algorithm at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Genomic classifiers—in particular, ColoPrint and MSI-Print, best when combined—can identify high-risk subsets among patients with surgically resected stage II and stage III colon cancers, reported researchers from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.