One question on oncologists’ minds recently is whether treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients with cancer has a negative effect on COVID-19 disease. So far, the data have not shown a deleterious effect, but the definitive answer is unknown. In fact, some experts think immune checkpoint inhibitors may have a positive effect on the virus.
Data from the TRACERx lung study suggest that circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) may be a biomarker for the detection of postsurgical minimal residual disease (MRD) in patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), suggesting which patients are at increased risk for disease relapse and will require more aggressive adjuvant therapy.
A multitargeted RAF inhibitor demonstrated activity in several types of advanced solid tumors associated with different mutations in the RAF family of genes, results of a preliminary clinical trial showed. Of 29 evaluable patients, 3 had confirmed partial responses to treatment with BGB-283, 1 had an unconfirmed response, and 14 [ Read More ]
A noninvasive screening test for coloÂrectal cancer demonstrated potential for identifying cancer and advanced adenomas in community-based patients who previously had not followed national screening recommendations.Almost 90% of patients completed the Cologuard stool DNA test when offered the option, and 15% had positive tests that led to referral for diagnostic [ Read More ]
Targeted therapies used to treat hematologic malignancies can cause unintended cardiac toxicity in some patients and can lead to cardiac-related mortality, according to study results presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting. “Unanticipated cardiac toxicity occurred in about 4% of patients with hematologic malignancies over a 10-year [ Read More ]
Multivitamin supplement use was associated with a reduction in chemotherapy-associated peripheral neuropathy in a subanalysis of the SWOG S0221 trial. Patients who were using multivitamins before chemotherapy had 40% less neuropathy, and those using them during or after treatment had a 23% reduced risk. The results were reported at the [ Read More ]
If you can’t get your lung cancer patients to stop smoking, at least encourage them to exercise. That’s the message from research conducted on a huge cohort of individuals in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), showing that markers of inflammation were significantly reduced among male smokers with [ Read More ]
For protection against breast cancer recurrence, one recently reported study can best be described as “good news, bad news.”At the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, researchers reported a statistically significant dose response for the effects of physical activity on breast cancer recurrence. The catch is that the effect [ Read More ]
An ongoing trial of a novel strategy to evaluate new regimens for early-stage breast cancer has identified another neoadjuvant combination worthy of a phase 3 trial involving patients with HER2-positive disease. The combination of ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) and pertuzumab resulted in an estimated pathologic complete response (pCR) rate of 52% [ Read More ]
Women with clinicopathologic high-risk breast cancer received chemotherapy almost half as often with no increased risk of metastatic recurrence when a cancer gene assay was used to guide decision-making, results of a randomized trial showed. Patients at low risk by the 70-gene MammaPrint assay had a 5-year distant metastasis-free survival [ Read More ]
