ASCO Annual Meeting

Researchers are hoping that a new nationwide effort to encourage patients to share their tumor samples and clinical information will lead to new discoveries and better treatments.

A combination regimen of the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and the investigational OX40 agonist MOXR0916 was well tolerated and showed early signs of of antitumor activity in solid tumors.

A regimen consisting of carfilzomib, pomalidomide, and dexamethasone merits further investigation for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma whose disease progresses while on lenalidomide in the earlier stages of disease.

Treatment with the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab demonstrated a median overall survival of 7.7 months and a 1-year OS rate of 43% for patients with recurrent small cell lung cancer.

Intraperitoneal chemotherapy is beneficial and tolerable, and physicians should present it as an option to women who have had successful cytoreductive surgery for their advanced epithelial ovarian cancer.

Andreas Hochhaus, MD, professor of Internal Medicine, Hematology and Oncology, interim head of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, University Medical Center Jena in Germany, discusses results of the phase II ENESTFreedom study, which examined treatment-free survival (TFS) in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who received frontline nilotinib (Tasigna).

The CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib induced a response rate of nearly 20% in heavily pretreated patients with refractory, HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, according to findings from the phase II MONARCH 1 trial.

The anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody isatuximab showed promising signs of activity as a single-agent for patients with heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

Hossein Borghaei, DO, chief, Thoracic Oncology, director, Lung Cancer Risk Assessment, associate professor, Department of Hematology/Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses 2-year follow-up results of the CheckMate-017 and -057 studies, which compared the efficacy of nivolumab (Opdivo) versus docetaxel in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

A biosimilar version of trastuzumab demonstrated equivalent efficacy and safety to the FDA-approved branded drug in a randomized phase III study among patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

The addition of capecitabine to standard adjuvant gemcitabine doubled 5-year overall survival (OS) rates for patients with pancreatic cancer whose tumors were surgically removed.

Immunotherapy agents targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway will be the most robust area for news at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, but there will be much new data about recently approved and novel anticancer drugs for clinicians to digest.

Research into 6 drugs scheduled to be presented during the upcoming 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting stand out as the most noteworthy abstracts on the docket this year because of their potential to influence clinical practice in the near future.

Forty percent of patients with advanced melanoma who started taking pembrolizumab during the clinical trial that led to its initial approval were still alive after 3 years, with many responders in remission even after stopping treatment.

Early findings from a phase III clinical trial suggest that patients with multiple myeloma who receive upfront autologous stem cell transplant survive longer without disease progression than those who receive chemotherapy alone.

Survival outcomes in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer were significantly longer among those with tumors originating on the left versus the right side of the colon, according to a retrospective analysis of the phase III 80405 trial.

Early palliative care integrated with oncology care benefits not only patients with cancer but also family caregivers.

Outcomes were significantly better in clinical trials that utilized a biomarker-based treatment selection strategy compared with non-personalized approaches.

For clinicians, a central message from 2015 ASCO is that a framework for managing immune-related adverse events in patients who receive these immune checkpoint agents is taking shape.

The ASCO annual meeting has retained its core purpose of providing a unique platform for oncologists to interact and exchange the latest practice-changing research.

Combination MEK/BRAF inhibition with trametinib and dabrafenib reduced the risk of death by 29% in patients with BRAF-mutant advanced melanoma.

Julie R. Brahmer, MD, interim director, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, associate professor of oncology, Johns Hopkins Medicine, discusses how the CheckMate-057 trial could impact the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Angus Dalgleish, MD, FRCP, FRACP, FRCPath, FMedSci, professor, Department of Oncology, St. George's, University of London, discusses a study that examined the combination of an immunomodulator with gemcitabine in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Kari Wisinski, MD, medical oncologist with University Of Wisconsin Health and the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, discusses the use of palbociclib for patients with ER-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer.

Jerome G. Kim, MD, medical oncologist, hematologist, Kaiser Permanente, discusses the feasibility of an assessment tool for older adults with cancer using web-based platforms.

Stefani Spranger, PhD, University Chicago Melanoma Intrinsic β-Catenin Committee, discusses the effect of melanoma intrinsic β-catenin signaling on immune exclusion and resistance to immunotherapies.

The combination of dabrafenib, trametinib, and panitumumab showed promising clinical activity in BRAFV600E-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer.

Ruben A. Mesa, MD, deputy director, Mayo Clinic, discusses PERSIST-1, a phase III study which examined pacribitinib as a treatment of myelofibrosis.