Vol. 20/No. 10

Although development outlays with proton therapy have decreased, treatment costs remain higher than for conventional radiotherapy, fueling a debate about whether the benefits justify the costs.

Oncologists looking for options beyond immuno-oncology for treating patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma may soon have a range of targeted therapy choices.

PARP inhibitors alone and in combinations are demonstrating potential in castration-resistant prostate cancer, but questions about survival benefit, toxicities, and efficacy remain to be answered.

Zev A. Wainberg, MD, discusses the future of the combination of dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) in rare cancers and why oncologists should be testing patients for this mutation.

A 2018 Giants of Cancer Care award winner for Lung Cancer, Bruce E. Johnson, MD, has helped define the genomic era in lung cancer care. His notable contributions include characterizing the role that EGFR mutations play in non–small cell lung cancer.

Toll-like receptors, a group of proteins that are components of innate immunity, are emerging as promising targets in a new wave of immunotherapies under development.

There has been a significant evolution in the care of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer over the past 20 years. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg and we are going to see more and more subgroups being defined and refined with many more rationally targeted agents matching these alterations.

A new staging system for head and neck cancers recognizes that patients with oropharyngeal malignancies associated with the human papillomavirus often have an excellent prognosis, but efforts to deintensify therapy for this population based on a fresh understanding of favorable risk factors may be premature.

Improved outcomes such as longer survival have increased interest among patients in pursuing fertility preservation options, and advances in techniques have made it possible for more patients to have children after treatment.

In 2018, primary care physicians faced many of the same challenges as oncologists, according to the 90th Annual Physician Report from Medical Economics.

The optimal integration of new drugs into the treatment paradigm of HCC requires several key developments, including greater research into biomarkers that would help inform therapy choices, earlier treatment for patients diagnosed with HCC, and clinical trials that test combination strategies.

Two novel CAR T-cell therapies designed to attack solid tumors are showing signs of antitumor activity and tolerability in early clinical trial findings, fueling optimism about expanding this emerging form of immunotherapy beyond hematologic malignancies.

The oncology clinical and research communities should demand that essential clinical trials and objectively valid evidence for efficacy and toxicity be obtained and reported before any regulatory agencies or national/international cancer societies support this strategy as a “standard of care” for cancer pain management.