Rachel Narozniak, MA

The approval of tazemetostat has expanded the portfolio of treatment options for relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma, a disease for which new agents are needed because patients do not uniformly derive benefit from available therapies.

The PARP inhibitor olaparib is now available for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose tumors harbor mutations in homologous recombination repair genes.

Investigators will pit 2 PD-1/PD-L1–pathway agents against each other in a bid to determine which therapy can confer the greatest survival benefit in patients with PD-L1–high, advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

Immunotherapy use is associated with a higher risk for hospitalization and severe coronavirus disease 2019 infection in patients with cancer and the novel respiratory virus.

Ripretinib has become the first therapy specifically approved for the fourth-line treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumors, a clinical setting with an unmet medical need because of the poor prognosis of patients with progressive disease.

Although strategies for treating brain metastases in patients with advanced breast cancer are showing signs of efficacy, new approaches are needed to prevent high-risk, HER2-positive early disease from spreading to the central nervous system.

The coronavirus disease 2019 has disrupted the global delivery of coordinated cancer care, resulting in declines in routine screening and referrals that could lead to thousands of excess deaths due to delayed diagnoses, experts warn.

Under a draft recommendation proposed by the US Preventive Services Task Force, individuals who are at a high risk for developing lung cancer because of their smoking history would begin annual screening with low-dose computed tomography at age 50 rather than the current clinical standard of 55 years.

In non–small cell lung cancer, single cell analytics, genome editing, and next-generation animal models represent just some of the modern modalities advancing translational research.

Efforts are underway to expedite the identification of therapies that offer promise for patients with glioblastoma

Treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors did not increase the risk of mortality in patients with COVID-19 and cancer.

Edgardo Santos, MD, discusses the FDA approval of ramucirumab plus erlotinib for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic NSCLC with EGFR exon 19 deletions or exon 21 (L858R) mutations.

Thomas E. Stinchcombe, MD, discusses brigatinib’s mechanism as well as the next steps to advance the treatment paradigm for patients with ALK-positive NSCLC.

The growing use of genomic profiling technologies will help promote the development of anticancer therapies based on molecular features of a tumor rather than the body site of origin.

Shannon N. Westin, MD, MPH, discusses the rationale for administering the maintenance therapy in this setting and the broader potential of regimens combining PARP with other therapies.

Infigratinib conferred a clinically meaningful progression-free survival and overall response rate benefit when administered as a third- and later-line treatment for patients with FGFR2 fusion–positive cholangiocarcinoma.

EDP1503, an investigational monoclonal microbial product, was safe and well-tolerated when administered in combination with pembrolizumab (Keytruda), and mechanistically drove some of the patient responses seen in a phase 1/2 study.

Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, discusses the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab in metastatic non–small cell lung cancer.

Investigators are using a novel clinical trial design to test multiple treatment strategies in an effort to define the standard of care in squamous cell carcinoma of the penis.

The FDA is presently spearheading several initiatives in light of COVID-19 aimed at refining the role of RWD in cancer care to guide clinical trial development, procure answers to pressing clinical questions, and support regulatory decisions for in vitro diagnostics.

Findings from an observational study of more than 10,000 women with ovarian cancer showed that lipophilic statins were associated with a 43% overall reduction in epithelial ovarian cancer mortality, with declines seen across subtypes.

Institutions are slowly but steadily resuming their investigational efforts, examining both the temporary and lasting effects the pandemic has left on their centers.

Bhavana Pothuri, MD, discusses the practice-changing implications of niraparib’s approval in ovarian cancer.

The recent approval of nivolumab in combination with ipilimumab demonstrates the utility of dual immunotherapy for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

Investigators are testing whether the addition of inhibitors targeting the PD-1 and IDO immune pathways to standard chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting will offer superior outcomes for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, discusses how the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy can address the unmet need in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer and the toxicities seen with the therapy.

The phase 3 IMvigor010 trial comparing adjuvant atezolizumab with observation in patients with muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma failed to meet its primary endpoint of disease-free survival.

Findings from a 5-year analysis of the phase 3 COMBI-AD trial validated the long-term benefit of adjuvant dabrafenib and trametinib in patients with resected, stage III BRAF V600E/K-mutant melanoma.

Developing diagnostics to identify the molecular drivers of breast cancer and model the mechanisms of disease progression will be a key priority of the investigative efforts aimed at improving patient outcomes in the field over the next decade.

Therapeutic options for pretreated HER2-positive breast cancer now include tucatinib (Tukysa) as part of a triplet regimen with a tolerable safety profile that promises improved quality of life.