ASCO 2015 Highlights

The safety and durability of responses to multitargeted inhibitors in thyroid cancer are at least partially limited by side effects. In all, 70% of patients with medullary thyroid cancer carry the RET mutation; RET fusions are rare in other types of thyroid cancer. The efficacy and safety of selective RET inhibition in patients with RET-altered thyroid cancer is unknown.

The prognosis of older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has been poor, even after treatment with a hypomethylating agent. A previous phase 1b study of azacitidine (Vidaza) added to venetoclax (Venclexta) showed promising efficacy and duration of response in treatment-naïve patients with AML who were ineligible for chemotherapy.

The combination of carfilzomib (Kyprolis) with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone (KRd) as induction therapy does not improve outcomes in patients newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma compared with the current standard of care with bortezomib (Velcade), lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (VRd).

Leading global drug manufacturers have been called on to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in a myriad of ways; several of their executives discussed those responses in a mid-August webcast from the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

Patients with cancer and cancer treatment dynamics continue to bounce back toward baseline as of late summer 2020, reported experts at the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care August 20 webcast, which focused on economic trends in cancer care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What are the practical implications of a flurry of recent healthcare-related actions taken by Congress, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the White House? In summary, “Some can happen, some will take significant effort, but most are just political grandstanding as we get closer to the election,” said Jayson Slotnik, JD, MPH, Partner, Health Policy Strategies, Bethesda, MD, and moderator of the mid-August webcast from the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

PARP inhibition is moving on from breast and ovarian cancer to the treatment of patients with prostate cancer and BRCA1/2 mutation. Olaparib (Lynparza) reduced the risk for death by 31% versus enzalutamide (Xtandi) or abiraterone (Zytiga) in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and BRCA1 or BRCA2, and to a lesser extent ATM mutations, according to the final analysis of the phase 3 PROfound trial.

The combination of cabozantinib (Cabometyx), a second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), plus nivolumab (Opdivo), an immune checkpoint inhibitor, significantly improved overall survival (OS) and doubled the objective response rates (ORR) compared with the current standard, sunitinib (Sutent), in treatment-naïve patients with advanced renal-cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the results of the phase 3 CheckMate-9ER clinical trial. The results were presented at the 2020 European Society for Medical Oncology virtual meeting and were featured at the meeting press conference.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) is forging a new role in gastroesophageal cancers, according to results of 3 phase 3 clinical trials indicating that nivolumab as first-line therapy or adjuvant therapy can improve survival in patients with gastric and gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer. These results are a “paradigm shift” for these patients, but questions remain, suggested several experts who discussed these results at the 2020 of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) virtual meeting.

A real-world analysis showed that adjuvant immunotherapy in patients with stage III melanoma improved survival, but that only approximately 33% of eligible patients received such adjuvant therapy after ipilimumab (Yervoy) was approved by the FDA for this indication.