Ben Leach

The new indication for pertuzumab (Perjeta) as part of a three-drug neoadjuvant regimen for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer marks the first time the FDA has authorized a therapy based on pathologic complete response.

After decades with few available therapies, a flurry of FDA drug approvals has provided oncologists with a variety of options for treating patients with advanced melanoma.

Patients with DCIS who received an MRI added to mammography before or immediately after receiving a lumpectomy did not experience an improvement in the rate of disease recurrence

Few of ASCO's past presidents were faced with the multitude of challenges that arose during the presidency of Sandra M. Swain, MD, who is medical director of the Washington Cancer Institute at Medstar Washington Hospital Center and a professor of Medicine at Georgetown University, and is currently ASCO's immediate past president.

The list of agents currently available to treat soft-tissue sarcoma is rather short, with no drugs being approved on the basis of an improvement in overall survival in approximately 20 years.

The Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, conducted from January 1997 to February 2003, demonstrated that the 5α-reductase inhibitor (5-ARI) finasteride reduced the risk of developing prostate cancer in men being regularly screened for the disease

The PAM50 test, designed to determine a risk of recurrence score for patients with breast cancer, adds significant prognostic information to clinical decision making and might be superior to other risk assays.

The monoclonal antibody ofatumumab has received Breakthrough Therapy designation from the FDA that could allow for earlier use in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

The FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 13-0 with one abstention in support of pertuzumab in combination with trastuzumab and docetaxel for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer in the neoadjuvant setting.

The hope for many targeted therapies is that they will eventually be used in patients with earlier stage disease; for the breast cancer drug pertuzumab (Perjeta), that hope is being put to the test.

An updated analysis of the results of a phase III clinical trial showed that radium-223 dichloride (Xofigo) significantly improved overall survival and delayed time to the first skeletal-related event in patients with metastatic prostate cancer.

The investigational MAGE-A3 immunotherapeutic did not significantly extend disease-free survival (DFS) in certain patients with postsurgical melanoma when compared with a placebo in a phase III study.

The FDA has given priority review designation to sorafenib for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic RAI-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer.

A two-pronged approach that includes carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA-125) testing proved highly accurate in screening women for ovarian cancer, including aggressive forms of the disease.

High doses of interleukin-2 could be used to treat patients with melanoma whose disease has metastasized to the brain, potentially expanding options in a population facing a grim prognosis.

Patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma could experience a greater quality of life and the same treatment benefit with pazopanib as opposed to sunitinib.

Adding ruxolitinib to capecitabine significantly improved the survival rate of a subgroup of patients with recurrent or treatment-refractory pancreatic cancer compared with patients in the same population who received capecitabine alone.

The use of a chemoresponse assay to assess therapy choices for patients with recurrent ovarian cancer correlated with dramatic improvements in overall survival and progression-free survival.

A subgroup analysis from a phase III study showed that certain patients may benefit more from eribulin than capecitabine, and quality of life data suggest that patients may prefer eribulin because of a lower frequency of certain adverse events.

Finding new ways of manipulating the body's own defenses to better combat various hematologic malignancies is yielding some interesting results and could represent a very promising new field of care for patients dealing with these disorders.

Adverse events associated with ipilimumab for the treatment of metastatic melanoma are better understood after further analysis of clinical trial data that led to the FDA's 2011 approval of the drug.

Amid a flurry of new drug approvals, the AUA has issued its first set of guidelines for the management of patients with mCRPC, which included an extensive role for abiraterone acetate at several stages of the disease.

Nearly two decades after clinical trials began, the investigational immunotherapy Allovectin failed to meet key endpoints in a phase III trial in patients with stage III/IV metastatic melanoma and will no longer be developed.

A phase III trial exploring necitumumab plus chemotherapy as a first-line therapy for patients with metastatic squamous non-small cell lung cancer has demonstrated an improvement in overall survival when compared to chemotherapy alone.

The investigational antibody lambrolizumab demonstrated significant antitumor activity and good response rates as well as a tolerable toxicity profile in patients with melanoma.

Patients with mutations of BRCA1 or BRCA2 who received tamoxifen after their initial diagnosis of breast cancer reduced their chances of developing contralateral or secondary breast cancer by more than half.

Combination treatment with selumetinib and dacarbazine significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with BRAF-positive melanoma.

A detailed analysis of previously reported data on the multikinase inhibitor cabozantinib in medullary thyroid cancer found that patients with mutations of RET and RAS experienced a significantly higher benefit than patients without those mutations.

The results of the first prospective multicenter trial of cryoablation in lung cancer show that this emerging treatment may be a safe, effective, and minimally invasive method of helping a specific group of patients with advanced disease.

Approximately one-third of cases of oropharyngeal cancer carried antibodies to one of the driver proteins from HPV16, and those antibodies could be detected more than 10 years prior to the diagnosis of the cancer.