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All Oncology News

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, of NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center

December 4, 2020 — Adjuvant nivolumab demonstrated clinically meaningful improvements in relapse-free survival, overall survival, and distant metastasis-free survival vs placebo in patients with high-risk resected melanoma, even after accounting for disease stage and post-recurrence survival, supporting the use of the anti–PD-1 antibody as a standard adjuvant therapy.

Robert Iannone MD, MSCE, executive vice president of research and development of Jazz Pharmaceuticals

December 3, 2020 - Lurbinectedin plus doxorubicin failed to significantly improve overall survival versus physician’s choice of topotecan or cyclophosphamide/doxorubicin/vincristine in patients with small cell lung cancer who progressed after 1 previous platinum-containing line of treatment, missing the primary end point of the phase 3 ATLANTIS trial.

cancer drugs

Having patients go on drug holidays or intermittent therapy is a common strategy during treatment of prostate cancer and several other malignancies, whether to provide temporary relief from adverse effects influencing quality of life, to prevent long-term health impacts, or to lessen drug resistance that would render the therapy ineffective.

Breast Cancer

December 2, 2020 - Four pivotal trials––KATHERINE, FeDeriCa, DESTINY-Breast01, and HER2CLIMB have not only amplified the armamentarium in HER2-positive breast cancer, but have illustrated the importance of neoadjuvant therapy, alternative administration methods, high-potency HER2-targeted therapy, and inclusion of all-comers with brain metastases in clinical trials.

fda

December 1, 2020 - The FDA has approved pralsetinib for the treatment of select patients with advanced or metastatic RET-mutant medullary thyroid cancer who require systemic therapy or RET fusion-positive thyroid cancer who require systemic therapy and who are radioactive iodine-refractory.

FDA

December 1, 2020 - A rolling submission of a biologics license application to the FDA has been initiated for the CD20-directed monoclonal antibody ublituximab in combination with the PI3K-delta and CK1-epsilon inhibitor umbralisib for the treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Maurie Markman, MD

The repercussions of delays in diagnosing cancer, either through screening or the presence of early symptoms, and of required modifications in standard-of-care management paradigms in the COVID-19 era are only now beginning to be fully appreciated.