ASCO 2015 Highlights

San Francisco, CA—Ramucirumab as a second-line therapy extended overall and progression-free survival in a phase 3 clinical trial of patients with metastatic gastric cancer, said Charles S. Fuchs, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—A randomized phase 2 study that compared panitu­mumab (Vectibix) and bevacizumab (Avastin) in the first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) showed these drugs to be similar in terms of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) benefits.

The majority of head and neck tumors are associated with a deregulation of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway, which has until now been seen as the culprit in treatment resistance in these cancers.

The HHS has allocated $1.9 million for new telehealth regional resource centers to serve rural and medically underserved populations.

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has announced the launch of its newest online journal, Cancer Immunology Research, in the spring at the AACR 2013 annual meeting.

The Starr Foundation’s sixth Starr Cancer Consortium (SCC) Grant Competition awarded $5 million to 5 cancer research teams focusing on discovering new cancer mechanisms related to genetic mutations or epigenetic involvement in a variety of cancers.

Removing Medicare regulations that are deemed unnecessary or unjustifiably burdensome on providers and hospitals would save nearly $676 million annually, and $3.4 billion over 5 years, through a rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in support of President Obama’s call on federal agencies to modify and streamline regulations on business.

Drug shortages have hit the oncology community hard. Determined to alleviate the much-publicized drug shortage associated with doxorubicin hydrochloride liposome injection (Doxil; Janssen), the FDA expedited the approval of the first generic version of this agent, which is produced by Sun Pharma Global FZE (Sun).

San Antonio, TX—Adding magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to a breast cancer screening strategy for women with a familial risk of cancer costs approximately 2.6 times as much per life-years gained compared with screening with mammography alone, Dutch researchers reported at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

>Dutch researchers have peered into the minds and wallets of a group of men aged 55 to 75 years to determine what they are willing to trade for a reduced risk of prostate cancer–related death or to avoid unnecessary procedures and treatment.