News

Shortening the intervals between chemotherapy cycles or administering the drugs sequentially compared to current techniques reduces early-stage breast cancer recurrence and mortality, study shows.

PARP inhibitor Rucaparib may soon be available to a wider group of patients with ovarian cancer.

Bevacizumab (Avastin), a VEGF inhibitor, has been granted a full approval by the FDA for the treatment of adult patients with glioblastoma that progressed following prior therapy, according to its manufacturer, Genentech.

The researchers found that job lock was more common among survivors reporting previous health insurance denial and difficulties paying medical bills. Job lock was also more frequent among women and in survivors who had a severe, disabling, or life-threatening health condition.

Trastuzumab (Herceptin) biosimilar MYL-1401O (Ogivri; trastuzumab-dkst), which is co-developed by Mylan and Biocon, has just been approved by the FDA for HER2-positive patients with breast cancer or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, the same indications as trastuzumab.

Most people surveyed think that the cost of cancer care is too high, and some even reported taking action that could jeopardize the outcomes of their treatments to bring the cost down.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a biologics license application (BLA) for mogamulizumab for the treatment of patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) who have received at least 1 prior systemic therapy, according to Kyowa Hakko Kirin, the manufacturer of the anti-CCR4 monoclonal antibody.

Although much success has been seen, 15% of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer will recur. Outcomes for those patients need to be improved, said Sara M. Tolaney, MD.

“Immunotherapy is a new option for patients and is well established,” said George R. Blumenschein, MD. “We are refining how we use it. There will be a number of additional refinements as we have the new data that will be coming forward in the next few months.”

Three CDK 4/6 inhibitors—palbociclib (Ibrance), ribociclib (Kisqali), and abemaciclib (Verzenio)— are game-changers in the field of breast cancer, explained Richard S. Finn, MD.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology, Friends of Cancer Research, and the Food and Drug Administration published clinical trial eligibility recommendations in a special issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology that aim to broaden who can be accepted into clinical trials.

Adjuvant therapy is associated with high toxicity and most patients will derive no benefit, Umberto Capitanio, MD, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, said in a presentation during the 2017 EMUC Congress. However, adjuvant therapy “might show the highest ratio between clinical benefit and toxicity” in this specific subset of high-risk patients.

In an interview with Oncology Nursing News, the assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing discussed a new standard of care with immunotherapy, common side effects, and why patients sometimes withhold information from their healthcare team.

“Are there ways that we can optimize the cure rates with HIFU? When are people recurring? What are we missing when they recur? What are the true rates of complications? We do not know the answer to most of these questions,” says Jonathan Warner, MD.

Palliative care can help alleviate physical symptoms or side effects, ease difficult emotions and anxiety, resolve worrisome questions and even prolong life.

Maria De Santis, MD, associate clinical professor at the University of Warwick, discussed the findings of KEYNOTE-045 and the future of immunotherapy in the treatment landscape of bladder cancer.

Advanced practice nurses, such as nurse practitioners (NPs), are increasingly specializing in their areas of practice. In response, specialty nursing organizations have delineated the scope and standards of advanced practice in these specialty areas.

The FDA has approved sunitinib (Sutent) for use as an adjuvant therapy in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have received nephrectomy and are high risk for recurrence.

The FDA has approved obinutuzumab (Gazyva) in combination with chemotherapy, followed by obinutuzumab alone, for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced follicular lymphoma, according to Genentech, the manufacturer of the therapy.

The FDA has approved fulvestrant (Faslodex) for use in combination with the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib (Verzenio) to treat patients with HR+/HER2- advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have progressed after endocrine therapy.

Current diagnostic measures for ovarian cancer are not extremely reliable. In an effort to diagnose the disease earlier, researchers are working on a blood test that can detect ovarian cancer

Neoadjuvant treatment with the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) demonstrated almost a tripling in objective response rate (ORR) compared with the PD-1 inhibitor alone but at the cost of significant added grade 3 adverse events (AEs) for patients with high-risk resectable melanoma, according to a small study presented at the 2017 SITC Annual Meeting.

Breast cancer, the most common cancer diagnosed in women in the United States, is the second leading cause of cancer death among women after lung cancer. To track trends in disease incidence, mortality, and survival the American Cancer Society (ACS) analyzes data every 2 years.

Aprepitant (Cinvanti), an injectable emulsion, is the second agent in just over two weeks to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea/vomiting (CINV).

Dasatinib (Sprycel) has been approved by the FDA to treat pediatric patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive (Ph+) chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in chronic phase (CP).

The FDA has approved brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) as a treatment for patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) who have received prior systemic therapy, according to Seattle Genetics, which codevelops the antibody-drug conjugate with Takeda.

The FDA has approved letermovir (Prevymis) to prevent cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in adult CMV-seropositive patients treated with an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), based on a significant reduction in CMV infection rates in a phase III study.

Online courses address various topics including distress screening and management, survivorship, palliative care, pain management, communicating prognosis to patients, and hospice referral.

Over the last four years, the Coleman Supportive Oncology Collaborative (CSOC), a group of professionals from academic, community and public cancer centers and hospice providers, has been developinging tools and resources to address gaps in cancer care in the Chicago area.

A recent study examined the incidence of liver cancer in many countries around the world and found that although it is among the leading causes of cancer deaths, in most cases, it can be prevented.