Latest Conference Articles

The first-in-class prodrug, mipsagargin (G-202), showed promising antitumor activity and enabled patients with advanced sorafenib-refractory hepatocellular carcinoma to achieve disease stabilization.

Liver-targeting treatment with selective internal radiation therapy more effectively controlled liver tumor progression and was better tolerated in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, but the therapy did not improve rates of overall or progression-free survival over sorafenib.

Nadine Abi-Jaoudeh, MD, associate professor, Department of Radiological Sciences, director, Research of Interventional Radiology in the Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California Irvine School of Medicine, discusses the combination of tirapazamine (SR-4233) and transarterial embolization in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Jordi Bruix, MD, head of the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) at University of Barcelona, discusses the recent success of regorafenib (Stivarga) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its impact on the field.

Log10 alpha fetoprotein level in the blood directly corresponded to the months of posttreatment survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, independent of the type of treatment, regional differences, and disease etiology.

Sorafenib-experienced patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma had long-term responses to nivolumab of more than 1 year, according to findings from the CheckMate-040 trial.

Spanish researchers raised a red flag regarding observations of unexpected higher rates of hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence following treatment with direct-acting antivirals for hepatitis C virus infection.

David James Pinato, MD, MRCP, PhD, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Surgery and Cancer, NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, Imperial College London, discusses a study of intratumor heterogeneity in the regulation of immune-tolerogenic pathways in primary and metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma.

Tomi Jun, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses the results of a study of cirrhosis and long-term survival in patients with cryptogenic hepatocellular carcinoma.

Nadine Abi-Jaoudeh, MD, discusses a study of tirapazamine and transarterial embolization and the promise of combinations in hepatocellular carcinoma.

MicroRNA-34a, one of the most documented tumor suppressor microRNAs, is being evaluated as a potential therapeutic target in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Higher levels of hepatocytes positive for pERK immunostaining and greater microvascular invasion have emerged as independent prognostic factors of recurrence in patients following sorafenib (Nexavar) treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma.

Nadine Abi-Jaoudeh, MD, associate professor, Department of Radiological Sciences, director, Research of Interventional Radiology in the Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California Irvine School of Medicine, discusses the potential for immunotherapy in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Amira Abdelhamid, assistant lecturer, German University in Cairo, discusses microRNA-34a and natural killer (NK) cells in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

A meta-analysis found that patients were at no elevated risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma after achieving sustained virologic response following treatment with direct-acting antiviral therapy for hepatitis C compared to interferon therapy.

Martin Dreyling, MD, associate professor, University of Munich, discusses primary results of the pivotal CHRONOS-1 study, which looked at copanlisib in patients with relapsed or refractory indolent B-cell lymphoma, during the AACR Annual Meeting.

Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, chief, Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses weighing the overall survival (OS) benefit with the increased risk of toxicities seen with the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) in treatment-naïve patients with advanced melanoma.

Adding the IDO inhibitor indoximod to pembrolizumab led to an overall response rate of 52% in patients with advanced melanoma, according to findings from a phase II trial reported at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

The IDO1 inhibitor BMS-986205 had "best-in-class" activity as demonstrated by kynurenine reductions and IDO1 inhibition for patients with advanced malignancies in a phase I/IIa study, according to lead investigator Lillian L. Siu, MD, at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

Adding a formulation of the Coxsackievirus A21 (CAVATAK®) to ipilimumab (Yervoy) yielded an overall response rate of 50% and was well-tolerated in immunotherapy-naïve and pretreated patients with advanced melanoma.

A phase II basket trial has been announced to test that mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 and 2 are not driver mutations that should be targeted with direct IDH inhibitors, but instead they create vulnerabilities that can be exploited through treatment with PARP inhibitors.

Treatment with the RAF dimer inhibitor BGB-283 led to clinical benefit for patients with BRAF V600-mutated melanoma, papillary thyroid cancer, and ovarian cancer.

Results of a phase II trial showed that more than 80% of patients with refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma achieved objective responses to treatment with the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel.

Julie R. Brahmer, MD, associate professor of Oncology, Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Johns Hopkins, discusses 5-year follow-up data from the CA209-003 study of nivolumab in previously treated advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Jacob Gersh, PhD, lead physicist at the Gibbs Cancer Center & Research Institute, discusses the CyberKnife.

Kavita Patel, MD, MS, policy analyst, Brookings Institution, discusses the Cancer Drug Coverage Parity Act.

Jason J. Luke, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the controversy surrounding the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) in treatment-naïve patients with advanced melanoma, which was explored in the CheckMate-067 trial, during the AACR Annual Meeting.

Long-term survival in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer who received the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) has proven to be much higher than expected, with 16% of these patients surviving after 5 years, equivalent to about 4 times what would be expected with chemotherapy.

The PD-1 and CTLA-4 inhibitor combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) was associated with a 12% reduction in the risk of death versus nivolumab monotherapy in patients with treatment-naïve advanced melanoma.

Treatment with the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab induced an objective response rate of 33% in patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma in the phase II JAVELIN Merkel 200 study, including 2 additional complete responses since the primary analysis.