December 2015

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for women diagnosed with breast cancer can help shrink a tumor prior to surgery, which can make the procedure minimally invasive and potentially influence prognosis.

Amid a growing understanding about the role of epigenetics as a driver of cancer, researchers have turned their attention to a key player in the process: histone deacetylases.

Amid an expansion of therapeutic options for men with advanced prostate cancer, evidence is building that introducing recently developed agents and regimens earlier in the treatment timeline can benefit patients in several disease settings.

Although legitimate questions have been raised over the years regarding the generalizability of clinical study results in the nonresearch setting, patients with cancer have benefited greatly from the appropriate conduct, completion, and ultimate reporting of such trials in the peer-reviewed medical literature.

Jimmie C. Holland, MD, whose emphasis on patients’ psychosocial needs helped humanize cancer care, was honored in the Supportive Care category with a 2014 Giants of Cancer Care® award, a program that the Intellisphere® Oncology Specialty Group launched to honor leaders in the field.

The search for biomarkers that can help clinicians match patients with effective therapies continues at a torrid pace in oncology. Yet in the parlance of basketball, not all biomarkers translate into slam dunks when it comes to clinical utility.

As the class of agents targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway expands in non–small cell lung cancer, so does the potential population of patients who would be candidates for the groundbreaking immunotherapy.

Although prolonged autophagy can result in cancer cell death, recent investigations suggest that therapy-induced autophagy is a reversible response that promotes cancer cell survival, and thus may diminish the efficacy of some therapeutic agents.

The efforts of the Kentucky LEADS Collaborative offer a unique opportunity to change the face of lung cancer in Kentucky by harnessing new lung cancer care and control strategies.

During the past several years, there has been considerable discussion-and even intense debate- within the oncology literature regarding the currently documented benefits of precision cancer medicine.