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BOSTON-In a survey of 103 parents of children who had died of cancer, 89% said their children suffered “a lot” or “a great deal” from at least one symptom of the cancer or its treatment during their last month of life. The symptoms mentioned most often were pain, fatigue, and dyspnea. “Our results suggest that greater attention to symptom control and the overall well-being of children with advanced disease might ease their suffering,” the researchers, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital, Boston, said in their report (N Engl J Med 342:326-333, 2000).

A less frequent dosing schedule of recombinant human erythropoietin (epoetin alfa, Epogen, Procrit) may offer effective and more convenient treatment for the fatigue and malaise associated with cancer therapies, said George D.

A total of 29 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) refractory to therapy, including purine analogs in all cases, were treated with the monoclonal antibody, Campath-1H. (A 30-mg dose of Campath-1H was administered intravenously

ALEXANDRIA, Va-The Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) has doubled the number of issues it publishes each year, but not the number of articles it will accept. The JCO, a publication of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), now publishes two issues monthly, one mailed in the middle and the other at the end of the month.

ROCKVILLE, Md-The FDA has accused Lane Labs-USA, Inc., of Allendale, NJ, with illegally promoting three products as treatments for cancer and other diseases, and is seeking a permanent federal court injunction against the marketing of the products: BeneFin, produced from shark cartilage; SkinAnswer, a glycoalkaloid skin cream; and MGN-3, a rice-bran extract.

WASHINGTON-The Clinton Administration wants to sharply increase funding for studies to determine environmental causes of cancer, particularly of the breast and prostate. The President is asking Congress to provide $27 million in fiscal year 2001 to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Environmental Health Lab, an increase of 56% over the current budget.

We evaluated the safety and efficacy of rituximab (Rituxan) in combination with CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin HCl, Oncovin, and prednisone) in a study of 40 patients (31 treatment-naive, 9 previously treated) with low-grade/follicular

-“Science relies on trust,” Peter Cleaton-Jones, chairman of the Committee for Research on Human Subjects (Medical), University of Witwatersrand, said in an interview about the recently discovered scientific misconduct by

Treatment of recurrent or nucleoside analog–refractory hairy cell leukemia (HCL) may be limited by poor tolerance (eg, interferon), profound CD4 lymphopenia, or comorbid conditions in which prolonged myelosuppression from nucleoside analog

ROCKVILLE, Md-The NCI has awarded the contract to develop and implement the Cancer Trials Support Unit (CTSU) to Westat Corporation (Rockville, Md), a health and social sciences research organization. Westat will work with the Coalition of National Cancer Cooperative Groups and Oracle Corporation’s Health Informatics Consulting Practice.

The program currently sends artists to work in cancer units at New York Hospital (oncology, bone marrow transplant, and pediatric oncology units), Lenox Hill Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital, Roosevelt-St. Luke’s Hospital, and Columbia

A total of 77 patients have been entered into an ongoing, randomized protocol integrating rituximab (Rituxan) with chemotherapy for patients with newly diagnosed stage IV indolent lymphoma. Patients are receiving FND (fludarabine

Newly updated guidelines for treating HIV-infected adults and adolescents are now available and include recommendations for the use of recently developed tests that help determine whether the virus carried by a patient has become

Low toxicity and high efficacy have been observed after treatment of patients with relapsed low-grade follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) using the chimeric monoclonal anti-CD20 antibody rituximab (Rituxan). Since the CD20-

The efficacy and toxicity of readministration of rituximab (Rituxan) in patients with indolent B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) that recurs after an initial response to rituximab are unknown.

With ever more new therapeutic agents in development, more practitioners are needed to shepherd patients through clinical trials-coordinating the trials, developing standardized treatment orders, managing symptoms, providing patient

Iodine-131 tositumomab (Bexxar), a radiolabeled immunoglobulin G2a (IgG2a) monoclonal antibody directed against the CD20 antigen, is effective in the treatment of previously untreated, as well as relapsed and refractory, low-grade and transformed, low-grade non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL).

BETHESDA, Md-Seeking better mice for research, the National Cancer Institute has funded the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium, which will consist of 19 new research groups involving investigators at 30 US institutions. The teams will seek to create models that duplicate the ways human cancers develop, progress, and respond to therapies or preventive agents.

Anti–B-cell monoclonal antibodies have been proven effective in B-cell post-transplant lymphoproliferative diseases (PTLDs; Benkerrou et al: Blood 92,3137, 1998). Other treatments, such as chemotherapy or antiviral drugs, are toxic or

Hepatocellular carcinoma is a major public health problem worldwide, although at present it remains a relatively uncommon cancer in the United States. As pointed out by Dr. Venook in his elegant review of the topic, most hepatocellular carcinomas progress locoregionally. Hepatic failure is the most common mode of death for patients with this disease. For this reason, regional management strategies would appear to be attractive. Dr. Venook is to be commended for an accurate review of the literature regarding this issue. Unfortunately, that literature suffers from many limitations.

Drs. Lee and Levine have written a thoughtful, thorough review of the management of venous thromboembolism in cancer patients. Venous thromboembolism remains an important, common, and potentially fatal complication of cancer and many of its therapies. Certainly, the incidence of upper extremity and catheter-related thrombosis has increased significantly in recent years with the widespread use of central venous catheters. On the other hand, recent years have also brought new, less invasive methods of diagnosis and the promise of still more new diagnostic methods to come.

When one considers the frequency with which practicing oncologists encounter situations and issues involving venous thrombosis in their patients, it is remarkable how little attention has been paid to this problem in the oncology literature or standard textbooks of oncologic theory and practice. Although the topic of hypercoagulability in cancer patients has been the subject of several excellent articles,[1,2] these reviews, while exhaustive with respect to pathophysiology, provide relatively little information of practical use to the oncologist.

In his review, Dr. Venook correctly argues that, in the majority of pa;tients, hepatocellular carcinoma results from underlying liver disease; the most common culprit is cirrhosis, which, in turn, is frequently related to hepatitis B and/or hepatitis C exposure and alcohol abuse. Given that patient outcomes are determined by the “interplay between tumor growth and adequate hepatic reserve,” and that most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma eventually die of liver failure, Dr. Venook argues that there is a good rationale for locoregional tumor control of hepatocellular carcinoma. Locoregional therapies may include hepatic intraarterial (HIA) chemotherapy, transarterial chemoembolization, Lipiodol chemo-embolization, radiation therapy (conformal external radiation therapy or intraarterially delivered radiation), or ablative procedures. These therapies are less aggressive than conventional resectional therapies, such as cryosurg-ery, percutaneous ethanol injection, radiofrequency ablation, and other intratumoral therapies.

The growing quantity of clinical research data has created a need to find ways to effectively provide an overview of information that addresses specific medical questions. Meta-analysis is being used ever more frequently for this purpose. Therefore, it is important to recognize both the strengths and weaknesses of this analytical methodology.

In general, results with autologous stem-cell transplantation for patients with follicular NHL have been disappointing, without the evidence for cure observed in patients with large B-cell NHL (Rohatiner et al: J Clin Oncol 12:1177-1184, 1994;

Hairy cell leukemia is one of the success stories of hematologic oncology. The purine analogs cladribine (Leustatin) and pentostatin (Nipent) are similarly active, with responses in more than 90% of patients, including 65% to 85% CRs

Rituximab is generally well tolerated, with toxicities that tend not to overlap with those resulting from chemotherapy. Moreover, in vitro data suggest that monoclonal antibodies may sensitize lymphoma cells to the effects of chemotherapeutic

Campath-1H is an unconjugated, humanized monoclonal antibody directed against the CD52 antigen present on B cells, as well as T cells and other mononuclear cells. In phase II trials, this antibody has shown impressive activity in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia (T-PLL) but limited activity in NHL (Österborg et al: J Clin Oncol 15:1567-1574, 1997; Pawson et al: J Clin Oncol 15:2667-2672, 1997; Lundin et al: J Clin Oncol 16:3257-3263, 1998). In CLL, responses to Campath-1H have been reported in 30% to 70% of patients who had not responded to prior treatment, including fludarabine (Fludara), with complete response (CR) rates ranging from 4% to 50%. More than two-thirds of T-PLL patients have achieved CRs, but these do not seem to be durable. Only 14% of patients with low-grade NHL achieved partial responses (PRs), although responses were noted in about half of a small number of patients with mycosis fungoides.

Ibritumomab tiuxetan (Zevalin) is a murine IgG directed against CD20 and conjugated to yttrium-90. The basic antibody is the murine rituximab. The yttrium-90 isotope was selected because it has a number of properties that are considered to be more favorable than those of iodine-131. These include the fact that ibritumomab tiuxetan is a pure beta-emitter, with higher energy and a longer path length. Ibritumomab tiuxetan has been reported to induce responses in 67% of patients with intermediate- and high-grade NHLs and 82% of those with low-grade NHL who had not been treated previously with rituximab (Witzig et al: J Clin Oncol 17:3793-3803, 1999).

Few advances in the treatment of multiple myeloma have been made in recent years, and this disease remains incurable. The observation that about 20% of plasma cells from myeloma patients express CD20 has led to some interest in studying monoclonal antibodies in this disorder. Treon et al (abstract #1398) reported the preliminary results of their phase II trial with rituximab in previously treated multiple myeloma patients. Among nine patients evaluable for response at the time of the report, there was one PR in a patient with mostly CD20-positive bone marrow plasma cells.