March 2012, Vol 3, No 2

San Francisco, CA—A large number of patients with metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (mRCC) are ineligible for clinical trials and their clinical outcomes are inferior to those of patients who are trial eligible, according to a study presented at the 2012 Genitouri nary Cancers Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—Nonpharmacologic strategies for prevention of cancer are potentially attractive and costeffective, but success stories are few.
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San Antonio, TX—In a retrospective utilization and cost analysis, nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) therapy was associated with substantially lower total use of prophylactic colony-stimulating factor (CSF) than docetaxel (Taxotere) and paclitaxel (Taxol) in the treatment of breast cancer.
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San Antonio, TX—Assessing all eligible patients with breast cancer for recurrence risk with the 21-gene Oncotype DX assay at diagnosis could save $330.8 million annually by avoiding ineffective chemotherapy, according to data presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
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Grapevine, TX—A New Jersey research team is making the case for relying less on the Oncotype DX test for breast-cancer prognosis and instead focusing on conventional pathological analyses.
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San Antonio, TX—Women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer are unlikely to benefit from dosedense chemotherapy, but many are receiving this type of treatment, which involves the use of colonystimulating factors (CSFs), that is, growth factors. Limiting the use of these therapies in a population that is unlikely to benefit from it, would save nearly $40 million annually, suggests a study presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—For resectable pancreatic cancer, administering chemo - therapy and radiation before surgery results in better outcomes and lower costs than performing surgery first, reported researchers from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston.
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San Francisco, CA—Results obtained on the Oncotype DX Colon Cancer Assay led to changes in treatment decisions 29% of the time for patients with stage II colon cancer, according to a survey of community oncologists reported at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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San Diego, CA—Among patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), costs related to febrile neutropenia (FN) treated with hospitalization exceed $11,000 per episode, researchers reported at ASH 2011.
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San Diego, CA—Survivors of hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) have substantial medical illnesses and psychological symptoms ≥10 years after the procedure, representing a substantial burden to our healthcare system.
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