Allie Strickler

Significant progress has been made in recent years in understanding the biology and treatment of neuroendocrine tumors.

Several challenges remain in the treatment landscape of soft tissue sarcoma, a disease whose diagnosis can range from one that is quite indolent for patients, to a more life-threatening, metastatic, aggressive cancer.

Although randomized phase III clinical trials often lead to groundbreaking drug approvals and offer novel therapeutic regimens, Maurie Markman, MD, insists that the search for validated, actionable biomarkers is more important than initiation of new studies.

Patients with non–small cell lung cancer treated in the pembrolizumab arm of the KEYNOTE-024 trial experienced improved quality of life compared with patients who were treated with standard chemotherapy.

Osimertinib (Tagrisso) reduced the risk of disease progression by 70% compared with a chemotherapy doublet in patients with EGFR T790M-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who progressed after first-line targeted therapy.

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, sheds light on the emerging roles of both immunotherapy and targeted agents in the treatment of patients with bladder cancer.

Douglas Arenberg, MD, discusses preliminary findings of a screening study, and the critical importance of maintaining quality tobacco cessation practices in healthcare clinics.

The treatment landscape of renal cell carcinoma is changing at a remarkably fast pace.

Significant progress is being made in the treatment of gynecologic malignancies, especially in ovarian cancer, according to Douglas A. Levine, MD.

Biomarkers play a key role in the optimization of treatments for patients with prostate cancer. According to Mark Stein, MD, they can even serve as clinical endpoints in trials.

Oncologists continue to face several challenges when it comes to the prevention and treatment of cervical cancer, according to Michael Birrer, MD, PhD.

As oncologists await the next major treatment advances in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), the key in the interim is to optimize the available therapies, says Robert Dreicer, MD.

As immunotherapy continues to make headway in several different cancer types, these agents are only just arriving to the treatment landscape of head and neck cancer.

Treatment in lung cancer continues to evolve at a rapid pace with the arrival of a set of efficacious new agents and promising evidence-based data. According to Corey J. Langer, MD, a veritable avalanche of additional data is on the way.

The expression of PD-L1 has been at the forefront of biomarker development for PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, but there is much uncertainty surrounding its use and other biomarkers are needed.

Pembrolizumab reduced the size of tumors in patients with a subtype of soft tissue sarcoma, according to updated interim results from the phase II SARC028, multicenter clinical trial, which were reported at the most recent meeting of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society in Lisbon, Portugal.

A subgroup analysis from a phase III, open-label, randomized study showed that eribulin had comparable activity to dacarbazine in patients with leiomyosarcoma.

Results from the phase II CheckMate-275 trial demonstrated favorable safety and efficacy with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab as a second-line treatment for patients with metastatic urothelial cancer who have progressed on first-line chemotherapy.

First-line pembrolizumab demonstrated significant antitumor activity in cisplatin-ineligible patients with metastatic urothelial cancer.

Results from an expansion cohort of a preliminary clinical trial have shown encouraging activity for a novel antibody-drug conjugate in patients with heavily pretreated advanced ovarian cancer.

Mark Pegram, MD, sheds light on some of the recent groundbreaking trials in HER2-positive breast cancer and how they have come to shape the current treatment paradigm.

Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, discusses the MONALEESA-2 trial, in which the addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to letrozole significantly improved progression-free survival in women with hormone receptor–positive advanced breast cancer.

The PARP1/2 inhibitor niraparib significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer.

Immunotherapy is at the forefront of the burgeoning treatment landscape in renal cell carincoma, according to David McDermott, MD.

A final analysis of the overall survival data from the KEYNOTE-006 trial showed that frontline pembrolizumab was superior to ipilimumab in the treatment of patients with advanced melanoma.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was well tolerated and demonstrated promising antitumor activity in patients with PD-L1–positive advanced cervical squamous cell cancer.

Regular screening for cervical cancer was found to be associated with an overall mortality prevention rate of 83%.

A comparison of anatomic and functional imaging in the assessment of clinical outcomes in patients with Ewing sarcoma has shown that FDG-PET, assessed by PERCIST criteria, was superior in predicting clinical benefits and identifying responses.

A genomic analysis of poorly differentiated neuroendocrine tumors from primary lung and gastrointestinal sites underscores the diversity of these tumors and the evolving need to move toward precision medicine when it comes to treating patients with these malignancies.

The FDA-approved fixed dose of 200 mg of pembrolizumab administered once every 3 weeks yielded durable responses in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.