Virginia Powers

The frontline regimen of atezolizumab (Tecentriq), bevacizumab (Avastin), carboplatin, and paclitaxel has emerged as a potential new standard of care for the treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous NSCLC.

The aim of treating NMIBC is avoid the loss of the bladder and to prevent recurrence and progression to muscle-invasive disease.

A new procedure for monitoring RNA indicators of disease recurrence in urine samples from patients with a history of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer could spare these patients from undergoing multiple cystoscopies during routine follow-up.

As first-line therapy in cisplatin-ineligible advanced urothelial cancer, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was safe and provided tumor reduction as well as durable responses.

Although anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy has greatly improved the treatment of patients with non–small cell lung cancer and is generally well-tolerated, the therapy backfires in a newly defined subset of patients who experience accelerated tumor growth indicative of hyperprogressive disease.

Although second-line treatment with combined pazopanib and gemcitabine demonstrated disease control in the majority of patients with metastatic or relapsed uterine or soft tissue leiomyosarcomas, the phase II UNICANCER SARCOME 11 study did not meet statistical endpoints and is considered a negative trial.

Atezolizumab with bevacizumab provided improved progression-free survival over sunitinib in patients with untreated metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Expanding surveillance after surgery for early-stage non–small cell lung cancer from chest x-ray to follow-up with PET-CT scan did not improve overall survival.

Inhibition of CDK4/6 results in improvements in progression-free survival in women with estrogen receptor-positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer whether it is endocrine sensitive or resistant.

The majority of heavily pretreated patients with high-grade ovarian cancer and germline or somatic BRCA mutations showed a durable response to rucaparib.

Patients with stage Ib-IVa resectable gastric adenocarcinoma undergoing surgery with curative intent had similar survival outcomes regardless of whether they received chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy after surgery.

Adding MM-398 (irinotecan liposome injection; nal-IRI; Onivyde) to 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin had no negative effect on quality of life while significantly improving overall survival in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Combined inhibition of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis with atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and the MEK pathway with cobimetinib (Cotellic) showed promising clinical activity and a good safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with microsatellite stable metastatic colorectal cancer.

The first analysis of a trial investigating durvalumab in combination with gefitinib (Iressa) showed encouraging anti-tumor activity and tolerability in patients with non–small cell lung cancer and EGFR mutations that were tyrosine-kinase inhibitor-naïve.

The first report of results from a phase Ib clinical trial evaluating CRS-207, a live, attenuated, double-deleted Listeria monocytogenes vaccine, in combination with pemetrexed and cisplatin, demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.

A new generation of EGFR-targeted TKIs are poised to displace traditional agents as frontline therapies for patients with lung cancer.