Precision Medicine in Oncology®

The growing incidence of primary liver cancer in the United States poses a great therapeutic challenge.

To great fanfare, Hackensack Meridian Health of New Jersey and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center announced a co-branding partnership that they say would lead to highly fruitful collaborative research and make hundreds of clinical trial opportunities available to their patients.

President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act into law today, earmarking $6.3 billion over 10 years for advancements in precision medicine development, brain research, heroin and prescription drug abuse prevention, and mental health.

Véronique Diéras, MD, Department of Clinical Research, Institut Curie Paris & Saint Cloud, discusses results of a phase II trial exploring the combination of the PARP inhibitor veliparib with chemotherapy in patients with BRCA1/2-mutant breast cancer.

Geoffrey Lindeman, MD, joint head, Stem Cells and Cancer Division at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, discusses a study exploring RANK ligand as a target for breast cancer prevention in patients who harbor the BRCA1 mutation.

Higher levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were associated with improvements in overall survival for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer treated with docetaxel, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab in the phase III CLEOPATRA trial.

Adding the PARP inhibitor veliparib to carboplatin/paclitaxel chemotherapy induced a response rate of 77.8% in patients with advanced BRCA-positive breast cancer.

Viewed by some as a boon for precision medicine, an Alzheimer’s cure, brain research, and opioid abuse prevention, but also seen as weakening the FDA’s regulatory power, the $6.3 billion 21st Century Cures Act passed overwhelmingly in the House Wednesday by a vote of 392-26.

While resistance to EGFR-targeted therapies in non–small cell lung cancer presents a major challenge, there is a silver lining.