Vol. 17/No. 3

George D. Demetri, MD, whose teamwork approach has helped pave the way for new drugs for hard-to-treat sarcomas, was honored in the Gastrointestinal Cancer category with a 2014 Giants of Cancer Care® award, a program that the Intellisphere® Oncology Specialty Group launched to honor leaders in the field.

Pathways are effective tools for reducing unnecessary variability in care, a key factor in achieving better outcomes and more predictable costs.

Researchers at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center are personalizing treatment using tumor xenografts in mice to test and identify more precise treatments for bladder cancer patients.

With the approval of a dual checkpoint blockade treatment in melanoma, researchers hope to have similar success in a phase III trial that combines a PD-L1 inhibitor and CTLA-4 antibody in patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

Clinical trial findings have implications for expanding the use of genomic testing—and thereby potentially increasing treatment options—for the younger lung cancer population.

The greatest concern with the profoundly distressing episode that has unfolded at Duke University in recent years is whether it will truly serve as a learning experience that would help prevent future misconduct— events that have the potential to result in serious harm to highly vulnerable patients with cancer.

As anticancer therapies continue to improve outcomes for patients, questions about how best to deploy these new options abound. In this issue of OncologyLive, we explore two of the pressing questions that have arisen in treating patients with hematologic malignancies.

After a rocky start, drugs that inhibit the epidermal growth factor receptor pathway have evolved into a new treatment paradigm for patients with non–small cell lung cancer whose tumors harbor EGFR mutations.

Early diagnosis and early commencement of the most effective treatment available are essential in managing patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, particularly since therapeutic options have expanded and testing technology has advanced.

Researchers and oncologists are excited about the prospect of MRD becoming equally useful in the assessment and management of patients with multiple myeloma, particularly in light of the development of new, more effective therapies and the current limited ability to assess their effectiveness.