July 2012

A study that unfolded over 17 years has established combination chemotherapy after radiotherapy as a new standard of care for patients with anaplastic oligodendroglial tumors that contain 1p/19q chromosomal co-deletions.

Aflibercept combined with topotecan achieved slightly higher rates of PFS and disease control in patients with platinum-refractory, extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, compared with topotecan alone.

The tyrosine kinase inhibitor cabozantinib met its primary endpoint of progression-free survival in patients with advanced medullary thyroid cancer.

Tivantinib has demonstrated statistically significant improvements in time to progression and overall survival versus placebo among patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.

Ponatinib, an oral multikinase inhibitor, generated significant responses in more than 50% of patients with certain chronic myeloid leukemia subtypes.

The oral multikinase inhibitor regorafenib extended OS in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and improved PFS in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Among patients with early-stage cervical cancer, women aged greater than 65 years are less likely than younger women to be treated with surgery as compared with chemoradiation.

An interim analysis of the COU-AA-302 trial investigating the use of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) in chemotherapy-naïve patients with mCRPC showed a trend toward improvement in PFS and OS.

Two separate clinical trials presented at ASCO 2012 suggest that carfilzomib would be a safe and effective alternative to bortezomib for the treatment of multiple myeloma, following progression.

Erlotinib given as a maintenance therapy did not improve PFS or OS in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer who had received first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.

The phase III VELOUR trial demonstrated that the addition of aflibercept to FOLFIRI improved overall survival compared with placebo plus FOLFIRI in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Research presented at ASCO 2012 demonstrated the efficacy of axitinib (Inlyta) as both a first- and second-line treatment in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

The novel agent OGX-427 delayed disease progression in chemotherapy-naïve patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, according to the preliminary results.

A well-designed study involving hundreds of patients for many years can lead to one- to two-sentence conclusions that create the new standard of care; this year's Plenary Session on Sunday at ASCO was no exception.

New study reveals that widespread molecular screening of non–small cell lung cancer is feasible and can be performed outside of large academic medical centers.

Research presented at ASCO 2012 examined the expanded use of sipuleucel-T, as well as methods to determine which patients might benefit the most from the therapy.

Two phase III studies presented at ASCO 2012 explored the role of lapatinib in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer.

Tivozanib increased progression-free survival and objective response rate in patients with renal cell carcinoma compared with sorafenib.