Onclive Team

The director of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center is named the first holder of the Oscar de la Renta Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.

Ashwani Rajput, MD, a cancer surgeon and researcher with a special interest in health care disparities, has been appointed director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins for the Washington, DC, region.

The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) 2019 Clinical Research Award was presented to Ethan Basch, MD, MSc, Director, Cancer Outcomes Research Program, and Professor, Hematology and Oncology, UNC, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. The award was presented during the ACCC 36th National Oncology Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The slate of biosimilars for cancer is growing, and with this expansion the potential for price competition has improved.

The 2019 ACCC Annual Achievement Award was presented posthumously to Arti Hurria, MD, FASCO, City of Hope.

The ACCC David King Community Clinical Scientist Award was awarded to Paul D. Hansen, MD, FACS, a pioneering leader in research on minimally invasive approaches to major liver and pancreas surgery and the promise these techniques hold for improving the quality of care, the patient experience, and potentially reducing healthcare costs.

The Association of Community Cancer Centers honored the recipients of 2019 ACCC Innovator Awards at the ACCC 36th National Oncology Conference in Orlando, Florida, where this year’s honorees shared innovative strategies and lessons learned from their own experience to enable others to model and scale similar initiatives.

Findings from a national survey show that vaping is not only more common but also more favorably perceived among younger age groups than older adults.

The trial, which received a $4.1 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and Gateway for Cancer Research, combines City of Hope’s unique CAR T cell therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Combining nivolumab with the angiogenesis inhibitor tivozanib led to a high response rate and durable disease control in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, a preliminary open-label study showed.

Treatment with the MEK inhibitor trametinib significantly improves progression-free survival and leads to a strong trend toward improved overall survival in recurrent, low-grade serous ovarian cancer.

Patients with ROS1-positive and NTRK-positive non–small cell lung cancer had frequent and durable responses, which appeared to deepen over time in some cases, with the multikinase inhibitor entrectinib.

Men who received cabazitaxel (Jevtana) as a third-line systemic agent for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer had a significant reduction in radiographic disease progression, leading to a significant increase in overall survival.

A population of predominantly Chinese women with advanced hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative breast cancer obtained significant benefits from treatment with the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib and endocrine therapy.

The tumor-agnostic TRK inhibitor larotrectinib (Vitrakvi) demonstrated marked antitumor efficacy, including objective responses that often persisted for years, and a favorable safety profile.

Adding abemaciclib (Verzenio) and endocrine therapy to trastuzumab (Herceptin) improved progression-free survival in advanced hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer versus trastuzumab and chemotherapy.

The investigational CDK4/6 inhibitor trilaciclib unexpectedly improved survival in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer despite failing to meet a safety-related primary endpoint.

More than 70% of patients with cisplatin-ineligible locally advanced urothelial cancer had objective responses to the investigational antibody-drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab (Keytruda).

The combination of cediranib and olaparib improved progression-free survival in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, although the difference from chemotherapy did not achieve statistical significance.

Patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma obtained clinically meaningful responses and statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival with the combination of atezolizumab and bevacizumab.

Sundar Jagannath, MBBS, discusses the significance the selinexor (Xpovio) approval has for patients with myeloma, the tolerability of the agent, and the management of related adverse events.

We traveled to Pasadena, California, for a State of the Science Summit™ on Ovarian Cancer, which featured insights from City of Hope faculty.

City of Hope shares recent research grants and awards given to faculty at the institution.

The International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology, a not-for-profit global educational organization committed to gastrointestinal oncology, will host the 16th Annual Gastrointestinal Oncology Conference from Oct. 10-11, 2019 at the Hilton Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia.

Ochsner Cancer Institute (Ochsner), along with its Gulf South NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) partners, has been awarded a $13.6 million grant by the National Cancer Institute to expand the successful statewide clinical trials network with a special emphasis on minority and underserved cancer patients.

Patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer and actionable mutations had similar progression-free survival whether treatment guidance came from tissue or circulating tumor (ct)DNA analysis using the Guardant360 assay, a matched retrospective comparison showed.

We traveled to Denver, Colorado, for a State of the Science Summit™ on Gastrointestinal Cancers, which featured insights from University of Colorado and Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers faculty.

Targeted therapies for non­–small cell lung cancer produced mixed results in a novel multiarm clinical trial that matched tumor mutations to drugs targeting the mutations.

Almost 70% of patients with previously treated RET-fusion–positive non–small cell lung cancer had objective responses to the RET inhibitor selpercatinib (LOXO-292), according to data from the phase I/II LIBRETTO-001 trial presented at the 2019 World Conference on Lung Cancer.