May 4th, 2021 - Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which accounts for 85% of all lung cancers, is divided histologically into adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and large cell carcinoma. In the United States, Canada, and many European countries, squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common histologic subtype of lung c...

May 3rd, 2021 - Lobaplatin-based induction plus chemoradiation was as effective as, and safer than, a cisplatin-based regimen in a phase 3 trial of more than 500 patients with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The lobaplatin regimen proved to be a "promising alternative regimen to cisplatin-based treatment," Xing Lv, MD, of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Centre in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues wrote in The ...

May 3rd, 2021 - Second-line treatment with sintilimab improved survival, when compared with docetaxel, in patients with advanced/metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer (sqNSCLC) in a phase 3 trial. Sintilimab improved both overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), according to Yuankai Shi, MD, of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College in Beijing. Shi pre...

May 3rd, 2021 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women often have ongoing symptoms and concerns following treatment for early-stage, low-risk breast cancer, according to a new study. "The study findings underscore that survivorship is rarely easy, regardless of the patient's care path and recurrence risk," Dr. Jessica Schumacher of the University of Wisconsin-Madison told Reuters Health by email. "It is important t...

Apr 29th, 2021 - Federal advisers this week supported the efforts of pharmaceutical companies in 4 of 6 cases in which these firms are fighting to maintain cancer indications for approved drugs. They voted against them in two cases. The staff of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will now consider these votes as they decide what to do regarding the six cases of what they have termed "dangling" accelerate...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Updated guidelines on diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) were published on April 9, 2021 by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in the Annals of Oncology.[1] Diagnosis SCLC should be diagnosed according to the World Health Organization criteria. Currently, no predictive biomarker is available and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and tumor mutation...

Apr 27th, 2021 - Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors has ushered in a new era of cancer therapy, with some patients showing dramatic responses and significantly better outcomes than with other therapies across many cancer types. But some patients do worse, sometimes much worse. A subset of patients who undergo immunotherapy experience unexpected, rapid disease progression, with a dramatic acceleration of d...

Apr 26th, 2021 - Universal multigene panel testing of colorectal cancer patients can detect heritable mutations that would not have been discovered with guideline-based testing, according to new research. A prospective study of universal genetic testing suggested that one in six colorectal cancer patients have an inherited genetic predisposition to the cancer. More than half of the patients with genetic mutatio...

Apr 21st, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. More evidence confirms that antibody-mediated response to COVID vaccination is impaired in patients with blood cancers, but one of the new studies also suggests that timing is important. That study, conducted in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), was published online April 16 in B...

Apr 21st, 2021 - The US Food and Drug Administration today gave an accelerated approval to the immunotherapy dostarlimab (Jemperli) for the treatment of recurrent or advanced endometrial cancer with deficient mismatch repair (dMMR), which are genetic anomalies abnormalities that disrupt DNA repair. Usage of the new checkpoint inhibitor is limited to patients who have progressed on or following prior treatment w...

Apr 21st, 2021 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Immunomedics' antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan can cut the risk of disease progression or death by 59% and nearly double median overall survival among women with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to results from a phase-3 study. In the ASCENT trial of 468 patients, median progression-free survival was 5.6 months with the drug versus 1.7...

Apr 21st, 2021 - As second- or third-line therapy in patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), tislelizumab was well tolerated and prolonged overall survival (OS), compared with docetaxel in the phase 3 RATIONALE 303 study. The results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021: Week 1 (Abstract CT039). Tislelizumab is an anti–PD-1 antibody engine...

Apr 21st, 2021 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, adding daratumumab to proteasome-inhibitor-based triple therapy is associated with high rates of minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity and excellent progression-free survival, according to a small nonrandomized pilot study. "These unprecedented results were found in the absence of autologous bone marrow transplan...

Apr 21st, 2021 - The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published draft guidance recommending trastuzumab deruxtecan for use in the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) as an option for treating HER2-positive unresectable or metastatic breast cancer in adults after two or more anti-HER2 therapies. The decision means it will be the first time trastuzumab deruxtecan (Enhertu, Daiichi Sankyo), a HER2-...

Apr 20th, 2021 - Patients with cancer face an increased risk of arterial thromboembolic events, including myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke, and for some that risk appears substantial, according to a new population-based study. For example, the 6-month incidence of arterial thromboembolism (ATE) was 4.09% among men older than age 75 with diabetes and a diagnosis of bladder cancer but only 0.12% among women ...

Apr 20th, 2021 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Combining an ataxia telangiectasia and rad3-related (ATR) inhibitor with topoisomerase 1 (TOP1) yielded an objective response in more than a third of patients with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) in a phase-2 proof-of-concept trial. SCLC is one of the small-cell neuroendocrine cancers (SCNCs) occurring in various primary sites that lack effective treatments. "SCLC is a...

Apr 20th, 2021 - Cancer surgery is filled with moments of fear, even for doctors. Our cameras follow as an oncologist confronts this anxiety in the second episode of our video series The Oncologists. Follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube

Apr 20th, 2021 - The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2021 is mostly a jamboree of basic research and early-stage clinical study presentations, but some of the presentations feature clinical data that can change oncology practice. This has especially been true in recent years, when the number of phase 3 trials of cancer immunotherapies began to mushroom and investigators and their ...

Apr 19th, 2021 - Tisotumab vedotin (Seagen/Genlab), an investigational antibody drug conjugate directed against tissue factor, has shown promise for patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer. When used as monotherapy in previously treated patients, the drug showed "clinically meaningful and durable" antitumor activity. The confirmed objective response rate (ORR) was 24% and included seven (7%) compl...

Apr 19th, 2021 - Breast cancer is diagnosed in millions of women worldwide each year. The incidence rate continues to climb. Encouragingly, new therapeutic alternatives are quickly emerging for patients. This rapidly evolving landscape means that many previously accepted notions about risk, prognosis, and treatment are also changing. Can you identify which breast cancer facts have become fiction? Test your know...