There is excitement about immunotherapy for the treatment of several types of tumors, and the list of cancers amenable to this approach is expanding. In addition to the programmed death-1 (PD-1) and its ligand 1 (PD-L1) immunotherapies, chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T)-cell therapy is also garnering much interest, especially in [ Read More ]
Advanced urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) joins the list of tumor types for which treatment with pembrolizumab, a programmed death-1 (PD-1) inhibitor with dual blockade of its ligands PD-L1 and PD-L2, holds promise. Updated safety and efficacy data from the phase 1b KEYNOTE 012 study showed an overall response rate (ORR) [ Read More ]
An analysis of the KEYNOTE-012 phase 1 trial suggests that pembrolizumab has durable efficacy in heavily pretreated patients with programmed death-1 (PD-1) ligand 1 (PD-L1)-positive gastric cancer. Pembrolizumab had a manageable safety profile with no new or unexpected events observed (Abstract 4001). “PD-L1 expression on both tumor and immune cells [ Read More ]
Although acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is predominantly a disease found in children, the incidence peaks again in older adults, who have a high risk of treatment-related mortality. Thus, effective and better tolerated treatment of ALL in older patients is an unmet clinical need, said David I. Marks, MD, PhD, University [ Read More ]
Preliminary clinical trials suggest that the investigational programmed death-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor atezolizumab has excellent single-agent activity and also can be safely combined with platinum-based chemotherapy for the treatment of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Atezolizumab is 1 of 3 anti–PD-L1 agents in development; none is currently approved by [ Read More ]
The Fourth Annual World Cutaneous Malignancies Congress (WCMC) took place in Seattle, WA, on July 24-25, 2015. The WCMC is a 2-day congress dedicated to informing, educating, and fostering the exchange of clinically relevant information in the field of cutaneous malignancies on topics in melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell [ Read More ]
Traditional staging systems for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), such as Rai and Binet, need to be updated in the current era of more effective therapies. A group of investigators has developed a CLL-IPI (International Prognostic Index) scoring system that combines genetic risk factors with clinical stage, age, and ?2-microglobulin into [ Read More ]
The IDH1 gene and the ATRX gene appear to be potential prognostic markers for anaplastic astrocytoma, a rare form of brain cancer, according to findings of a phase 3 trial. Patients with a mutated IDH1 gene survived for a mean of 7.9 years after diagnosis versus 2.8 years for patients [ Read More ]
One of the burning questions about the new agents available to treat melanoma is how best to combine and/or sequence them. A phase 1 study showed the feasibility of combining a BRAF inhibitor and a MEK inhibitor plus a programmed death-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor (MEDI4736). These 3 agents can [ Read More ]
Results from the phase 3 GADOLIN trial provide the first proof of efficacy for obinutuzumab in indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Obinutuzumab added to standard bendamustine chemotherapy more than doubled progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with rituximab-refractory indolent lymphoma: median PFS was 29.2 months with obinutuzumab/bendamustine versus 14 months with bendamustine [ Read More ]
