July 2011

Patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer gained no survival benefit with the addition of cetuximab to chemoradiation.

Patients with anthracycline-treated sarcomas had a 3-fold improvement in PFS with antiangiogenic agent pazopanib versus placebo.

An exploratory analysis of the phase III EMBRACE trial of eribulin mesylate in metastatic breast cancer found the survival benefit and toxicity profile to be independent of age.

Patients with metastatic soft-tissue sarcoma had statistically significant improvement in PFS when treated with mTOR inhibitor ridaforolimus.

Patients with operable gastric cancer had significant improvement in DFS with adjuvant capecitabine plus Xelox following definitive surgery.

Concurrent and continued bevacizumab added to standard chemotherapy with carboplatin/ paclitaxel improved OS in women with high-risk ovarian cancer, according to an interim survival analysis of the ICON7 trial.

Previously unknown genetic methylation patterns and new mutations for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck discovered.

PFS improved significantly in patients with EGFR-mutated advanced NSCLC treated first line with erlotinib versus platinum-based chemotherapy.

Postmenopausal women at risk of breast cancer got good news from the MAP.3 trial results: Exemestane reduced their risk of invasive breast cancer by 65% compared with placebo.

A novel topoisomerase-I inhibitor designated NKTR-102 demonstrated clinically significant activity as a single agent in patients with heavily pretreated ovarian cancer who failed prior PLD.

The use of denosumab to prevent SREs in men with mCRPC has questionable cost-effectiveness as compared with zoledronic acid.

Add-on therapy with an inhibitor of the MET signaling pathway significantly improved PFS and OS in patients with MET-positive NSCLC confirmed by immunohistochemistry.

Amrubicin improved response rates, improved progression- free survival (PFS), and achieved enhanced symptom control with acceptable toxicity compared with topotecan.

Women with recurrent platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer had a 50% improvement in PFS when bevacizumab was added to chemotherapy and continued as maintenance therapy.

Adding oxaliplatin to 5-fluorouracil before and after surgery for the treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer is demonstrating significant benefit.

In patients with metastatic melanoma, the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib led to high objective response rates and durable treatment responses.

Oncologists need to prepare for a new era in which rapidly advancing genetic technology will change the way cancer is treated.

The addition of the PARP inhibitor iniparib failed to improve OS or PFS when added to gemcitabine/carboplatin (GC) compared with GC alone in patients with metastatic TNBC.

Although once considered a promising drug for lung cancer and other tumor types, motesanib added to carboplatin/paclitaxel chemotherapy did not improve overall survival.