Latest Conference Articles

Switching neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens based on PET imaging after induction chemotherapy improved pathologic complete response rates in patients with esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers.

A watch-and-wait approach is emerging as a potential treatment strategy for patients with rectal cancer.

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who engaged in daily moderate physical activity demonstrated a reduction in mortality and cancer progression.

Howard A. "Skip" Burris, MD, president of Clinical Operations and chief medical officer at Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses updated findings from the MONALEESA-2 trial, which explored first-line treatment with ribociclib plus letrozole in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, associate director, Clinical Research, Breast Oncology, Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancers, senior physician, instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses a phase Ib/II trial exploring eribulin mesylate (Halaven) in combination with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

The combination of pembrolizumab and eribulin demonstrated a 33.3% objective response rate for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who received 0 to 2 prior lines of therapy.

The artificial intelligence computer program Watson for Oncology (WFO) achieved a high degree of concordance with tumor board recommendations in a double-blinded validation study in Bengaluru, India, according to results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy may pose a risk of cardiovascular disease to postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer, raising the possibility of a long-term complication in an era of growing survivorship when patients are treated with estrogen-targeting drugs for years.

Women who are experiencing symptoms of menopause are less likely to adhere to treatment, according to findings presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A subgroup analysis of the randomized MONALEESA-2 trial showed that patients with advanced HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, and visceral metastases obtained a significant benefit from treatment with the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib combined with letrozole.

Treatment with sacituzumab govitecan was well-tolerated and induced durable responses, some lasting longer than 1 year, for heavily pretreated patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Findings from the first prospective, randomized clinical trial to evaluate modern scalp-cooling demonstrate that the system is safe and effective in reducing hair loss in women being treated with chemotherapy for their breast cancer, especially for those on taxane-based regimens.

​Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, medical oncologist, associate professor of Medicine, medical director, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Clinical Research Unit, UCLA, discusses the findings of the neoMONARCH trial, a neoadjuvant regimen combining the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole, which induced a response rate of 54.7% in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer.

John Robertson, MD, professor of Surgery, University of Nottingham, Royal Derby Hospital Centre, United Kingdom, discusses a subgroup analysis of the FALCON trial, which compared treatment with fulvestrant (Faslodex) versus anastrozole (Arimidex) in patients with HR-positive advanced breast cancer.

An attempt to strengthen neoadjuvant treatment of patients with locally advanced HR-positive and HER2-positive breast cancer by adding estrogen deprivation therapy to a standard regimen failed to significantly improve response rates but did illustrate the extensive toxicity of the chemotherapy agents used in this setting.

A biomarker analysis of participants in a phase II breast cancer trial demonstrated potential for identifying tumor markers to predict susceptibility to specific therapies.

Adjuvant ibandronate (Boniva) added to hormone therapy did not provide a clinical benefit to postmenopausal patients with HR-positive, early-stage breast cancer, according to findings from the phase III TEAM IIB trial.

A neoadjuvant regimen combining the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole induced a response rate of 54.7% in patients with HR+/HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer, according to findings from the phase II neoMONARCH trial.

Determination of the PD-L1 status of a patient’s tumor has become increasingly important for informing the clinical decision whether to offer certain immunotherapeutic agents, making standardization of the tests and antibodies used to determine the PD-L1 status necessary to provide accurate and consistent results.

Median progression-free survival was improved by 2.1 months with the addition of the pan-PI3K inhibitor buparlisib to fulvestrant for women with HR-positive/HER2-negative advanced breast cancer who received a prior aromatase inhibitor and progressed on or after an mTOR inhibitor.

According to the results of the phase III StaMINA trial evaluating posttransplant therapy in multiple myeloma, a second a round of chemotherapy or stem cell transplant does not improve progression-free survival or overall survival compared with the current standard course of treatment alone.

Early data from a phase I/II study suggest that the combination of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) and nivolumab (Opdivo) may be an active and well-tolerated outpatient regimen in patients with relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma after failure of standard frontline chemotherapy.

Geoffrey Lindeman, MD, joint head, Stem Cells and Cancer Division at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, discusses a study exploring RANK ligand as a target for breast cancer prevention in patients who harbor the BRCA1 mutation.

Noah S. Kornblum, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and attending physician of medicine, Montefiore-Einstein Center for Cancer Care, discusses the phase II PrECOG 0102 trial, which explored the addition of everolimus (Afinitor) to fulvestrant (Faslodex) as a treatment for patients with metastatic hormone receptor (HR)–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.

First results from the phase III DATA study show no advantage to extending anastrozole therapy from 3 years to 6 for the primary endpoint of 5-year adapted disease-free survival.

Extending letrozole therapy in women with early-stage, HR-positive breast cancer who completed 5 years of prior hormone therapy did not yield a statistically significant improvement in either disease-free or overall survival, but prolonged use of the aromatase inhibitor may be beneficial in some subgroups of women with a higher risk of recurrence.

The genomic landscape of recurrent metastatic estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer differed significantly from the mutational profile of primary disease in a study that sheds light on acquired resistance mechanisms to anticancer therapies.

Durvalumab treatment in the second-line setting or beyond demonstrated clinical benefit and led to durable responses in heavily pretreated patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

Adding the PARP inhibitor veliparib to carboplatin/paclitaxel chemotherapy induced a response rate of 77.8% in patients with advanced BRCA-positive breast cancer.

Treatment with the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab significantly improved overall survival compared to standard chemotherapy in patients with non–small lung cancer who progressed on platinum-based chemotherapy.