ASCO 2015 Highlights

San Francisco, CA—Updated results from the safety lead-in of the phase 3 BEACON CRC clinical trial show a mature median overall survival (OS) of 15.3 months with the triple-drug regimen of encorafenib (Braftovi), a BRAF inhibitor; binimetinib (Mektovi), a MEK inhibitor; and cetuximab (Erbitux), an EGFR inhibitor, for the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) and BRAF V600E mutation.

San Francisco, CA—Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a second-line therapy improved overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced or metastatic esophageal cancer and high PD-L1 expression compared with chemotherapy, according to findings from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-­­­181 study presented at the 2019 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Adjuvant treatment with durvalumab (Imfinzi), a checkpoint inhibitor, in patients with residual disease after trimodal therapy for advanced esophageal or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adeno­carcinoma was associated with a 79% 1-year relapse-free survival rate in a phase 2 clinical trial. Historically, the 1-year relapse rate has been 50% in patients with GEJ carcinoma who do not achieve a pathologic complete response with trimodal therapy, even with additional chemotherapy, said Hirva Mamdani, MD, Thoracic Oncology, Karmanos Cancer Institute/Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, at the 2019 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is associated with unique adverse events that require vigilant monitoring, aggressive care, and specialized management. Marco L. Davila, MD, PhD, Medical Oncologist, Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy Program, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL, provided an overview of this topic at the 2019 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Promising markers of response to immune checkpoint inhibition include tumor mutation burden (TMB) and genomic markers that reflect a disruption of the tumor immunity cycle, said Natalie Vokes, MD, MPhil, Medical Oncology Fellow, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, at the 2019 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—Reaching pathologic complete response (pCR) after neo­adjuvant chemotherapy correlates with significantly improved event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with localized breast cancer, according to results of a large comprehensive meta-analysis presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—The large, randomized TAM-01 clinical trial demonstrated that 5 mg daily of tamoxifen for 3 years halved the risk for recurrence of breast intraepithelial neoplasia—atypical ductal hyperplasia, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), and lobular carcinoma in situ—in women after surgery and reduced the risk for new contralateral breast cancer by 75% compared with placebo.

San Francisco, CA—Sacituzumab govitecan, a novel antibody-drug conjugate directed against Trop-2, induced responses in nearly 33% of patients with heavily pretreated, relapsed or refrac­tory metastatic urothelial cancer.

San Francisco, CA—First-line therapy with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus ­axitinib (Inlyta) significantly improved overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and objective response rates compared with standard-of-care sunitinib (Sutent) in patients with clear-cell metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) in KEYNOTE-426. The combination of pembrolizumab plus axitinib achieved a significant 47% reduction in mortality risk versus sunitinib (P <.0001).

San Francisco, CA—Darolutamide, an investigational androgen receptor inhibitor, significantly improved metastasis-free survival in men with high-risk nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) compared with placebo in a large phase 3 clinical trial.