ASCO Annual Meeting

Results from a large, phase III trial showed that a single radiation treatment relieves symptoms of spinal cord compression in patients with advanced cancer as effectively as a multifractional course of radiotherapy (RT)

Psychological intervention can substantially lower fear of cancer recurrence in survivors, improving their quality of life, anxiety, and cancer-specific distress, according to a phase II randomized clinical trial presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Frontline treatment with ribociclib plus letrozole improved progression-free survival by 9.3 months compared with letrozole plus placebo for patients with postmenopausal HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer.

Key opinion leaders spoke with OncLive to share the top-5 abstracts they find to be the most exciting and/or potentially practice-changing across breast cancer, lung cancer, genitourinary cancers, gastrointestinal cancers, hematologic malignancies, and supportive care being presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Adjuvant gefitinib reduced the risk of disease recurrence by 40% versus standard chemotherapy in patients with EGFR-positive non­–small cell lung cancer, study reports.

Patients with stage III colorectal cancer who maintained a healthy body weight, engaged in regular physical activity, and adopted other healthy lifestyle behaviors experienced a 42% lower chance of death and a trend toward reduced cancer recurrence.

The efficacy of the human papillomavirus vaccine continues to be impressive, with newly reported findings showing that it reduced the prevalence of high-risk oral HPV infections by 88% in young adults who had at least 1 dose of the vaccine; however, low vaccine uptake remains a concern.

More Stage I cancers were diagnosed after the passage of the Affordable Care Act within five screenable disease types than were diagnosed before ACA implementation.

Findings of a new prospective study suggest that eating tree nuts like almonds, walnuts, and pecans can improve overall survival and reduce the risk of recurrence in patients with colon cancer.

Margaret A. Tempero, MD, director, Pancreas Center, University of California, San Francisco, discusses the HALO 301 trial, which is exploring the addition of PEGPH20 to gemcitabine and albumin-bound paclitaxel as a potential treatment for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Diane Reidy-Lagunes, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses sequencing various treatments for patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs).

James C. Yao, MD, professor, Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, discusses a study exploring health-related quality of life (QOL) in patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs).

Gregory E. Idos, MD, assistant professor of Clinical Medicine, Department of Surgery, Division of Colorectal Surgery, Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, sheds light on the remaining questions with multiplex panel testing as well as the cost effectiveness of it.

Oliver Zill, data scientist, Guardant Health, discusses the somatic genomic landscape of over 15,000 patients with advanced-stage cancer from clinical next-generation sequencing analysis of circulating tumor DNA.

Janice Mehnert, MD, medical oncologist, director, Phase I and Developmental Therapeutics Program, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, discussing promising biomarkers for patients to receive immunotherapy across tumor types.

Jonathan Strosberg, MD, associate professor, Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses the results of the NETTER-1 trial.

William B. Donnellan, MD, investigator, Hematologic Malignancies, principal investigator, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses preliminary results of the ENESTop study, which looked at treatment-free remission (TFR) in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase who were treated with second-line nilotinib (Tasigna).

Charlie Gourley, PhD, MBChB, chair and honorary consultant in Medical Oncology at Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre in the United Kingdom, discusses a study comparing the use of olaparib (Lynparza) after chemotherapy with placebo after chemotherapy in patients with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer.

Shirish Gadgeel, MD, medical oncologist, leader of the Thoracic Oncology Multidisciplinary Team at Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, discusses the KEYNOTE-021 study, which is examining the combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and chemotherapy as a potential treatment for patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

Erica Bell, PhD, assistant professor-Clinical, Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses a mutational analysis examining radiation therapy plus procarbazine, CCNU, and vincristine (PCV) as a potential treatment for patients with high-risk, low-grade glioma.

Charles M. Rudin, MD, medical oncologist, chief, Thoracic Oncology Service, co-director, Druckenmiller Center for Lung Cancer Research, Sylvia Hassenfeld Chair in Lung Cancer Research, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the safety and efficacy of single-agent rovalpituzumab tesirine (Rova-T) in patients with recurrent or refractory small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Leslie M. Randall, MD, associate professor of Gynecology/ Oncology, University of California Irvine, discusses evidence supporting the use of BRCA testing for patients with ovarian cancer.

Howard L. (Jack) West, MD, medical oncologist, director, Thoracic Oncology Program, Swedish Cancer Institute, discusses recent advancements for patients with T790M-mutant non–small cell lung cancer.

​Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, Senior Physician, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute discusses the results of MONARCH1, which looked at abemaciclib as monotherapy in patients with ER-positive breast cancer, after chemotherapy for advanced disease.

Robert Coleman, MD a professor in the Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the importance of BRCA testing for patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Holli Dilks, PhD, director, Personalized Medicine Operations, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses the challenges associated with having a precision medicine-based approach in the field of oncology.

Suzanne L. Topalian, MD, director, Melanoma Program, professor of Surgery, Johns Hopkins Medicine, discusses how the use of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in multiple tumor types has dramatically evolved over the last 4 years.