ASCO Annual Meeting

Howard Burris, III, MD, chief medical officer and executive director of Drug Development at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute discusses the importance of the ASCO annual meeting, taking place May 29 - June 2.

PracticeNET is an initiative emerging from ASCO's Clinical Affairs Department designed to help practices learn from one another's successes as they move farther away from fee-for-service and toward increasingly cost-effective models of care.

Findings from large, late-stage clinical trials in melanoma, non–small cell lung cancer, and several hematologic malignances are expected to rank among the most clinically significant research findings presented at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

Adding elotuzumab to lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone reduced the risk of disease progression by 30% in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The addition of docetaxel to standard hormonal therapy significantly improved survival among men with newly diagnosed, hormone-naïve advanced prostate cancer.

For those with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer, reducing their risk of recurrence can be as simple as taking the vitamin B3 pill nicotinamide.

Treatment with an intensified chemotherapy regimen was associated with improvements in event-free survival for children with favorable histology Wilms tumor with loss of heterozygosity in chromosomes 1p and 16q.

Edith A. Perez, MD, discusses a genomic analysis of immune function genes and clinical outcome in the NCCTG (Alliance) N9831 adjuvant trastuzumab trial.

Jyoti D. Patel, MD, discusses a phase II trial that looked at olaparib in combination with cediranib versus olaparib alone in recurrent platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer.

Mario Sznol, MD, professor, Internal Medicine, Yale Cancer Center, discusses a phase I trial that examined the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab for the treatment of advanced melanoma.

Continuing EGFR inhibition beyond progression with afatinib plus paclitaxel significantly improved PFS and ORR compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with heavily pretreated metastatic NSCLC.

Nicholas J. Vogelzang, MD,discusses results from the phase III CHAARTED (E3805) study that examined the addition of chemotherapy to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for the treatment of men with newly diagnosed metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.

Angela Dispenzieri, MD, a professor of medicine in the division of hematology at the Mayo Clinic, discusses excitement over the development of CD38-targeted monoclonal antibodies as treatments for patients with multiple myeloma.

The anti-PD-1 humanized antibody pembrolizumab has robust antitumor activity as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced PD-L1-positive NSCLC.

Robert Figlin, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematology Oncology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses recent advances in the field of immunotherapy for kidney cancer.

James R. Berenson, MD, founder, President and Medical and Scientific Director of the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research, President of Oncotherapeutics, discusses the dose-escalation portion of the phase I/II CHAMPION-1 study looking at weekly carfilzomib in combination with dexamethasone for patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.

Adding necitumumab to standard of care with gemcitabine-cisplatin significantly improves survival compared with chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment in patients with stage IV non–small-cell lung cancer of squamous histology.

Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, a professor of medical oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discusses the results of the phase III REVEL study in NSCLC.

Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Giant of Cancer Care, discusses the initial efficacy and safety results from the EORTC 18071 phase III trial, which looked at ipilimumab versus placebo after complete resection of stage III melanoma.

Walter J. Curran, Jr, MD, discusses a report that examined the effect of institutional clinical trial enrollment volume on survival of patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with chemoradiation.

Anas Younes, MD, chief, Lymphoma Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a phase III study of ibrutinib in combination R-CHOP in patients with newly diagnosed nongerminal center B-cell subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Combining panobinostat (LBH589) with bortezomib and dexamethasone delayed disease progression by 3.9 months over bortezomib and dexamethasone alone in patients with relapsed or relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma.

The CD38-specific monoclonal antibody SAR650984 demonstrated encouraging efficacy as a monotherapy and in combination with dexamethasone and lenalidomide without reaching a maximum tolerated dose in patients with heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

Long-term follow-up results demonstrated nearly doubled median OS with the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab compared with either agent alone.

David Spigel, MD, director of Lung Cancer Research at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses current trials involving MPDL3280A in lung cancer.

The addition of the investigational hypoxia-targeted drug TH-302 to dexamethasone has demonstrated beneficial activity and a manageable adverse event profile in the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The novel agents idelalisib and ABT-199 in combination with rituximab have demonstrated impressive activity with manageable toxicity for patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

A joint analysis of two phase III trials involving a total of 4690 premenopausal women with hormone-receptor–positive (HR+) breast cancer demonstrated that adjuvant use of the aromatase inhibitor (AI), exemestane, reduced relative risk of developing subsequent invasive cancer by 28% compared with tamoxifen when both agents were combined with ovarian function suppression (OFS).