CancerNetwork®’s Week in Review: March 29, 2021
Take a look back at some of the important news and notes from last week in the world of oncology, featuring news about prostate cancer, breast cancer, precision medicine, and gynecologic cancers.
Each Monday, CancerNetwork® highlights the most important content from the previous week in oncology news.
Among the top news from last week was a conversation published in the Journal ONCOLOGY® with John L. Marshall, MD, focusing on the role of precision medicine in the future treatment of gastrointestinal cancers.
Phase 3 Trial of 177Lu-PSMA-617 Meets Survival End Points
Novartis announced that its investigational targeted radioligand therapy 177Lu-PSMA-617 demonstrated statistically significant improvements in overall and radiographic progression-free survival versus standard-of-care therapy in patients with progressive prostate-specific membrane antigen–positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.
The investigational agent is a precision cancer therapy that combines a targeting compound, or ligand, with a therapeutic radioisotope that binds with prostate cancer cells that express PSMA.
Data presented at the Society of Surgical Oncology 2021 International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care found that breast pathologic complete response, or pCR, was predictive of nodal pCR for patients with HER2-positive and triple-negative breast cancer treated with chemotherapy.
“These findings support the incorporation of axillary surgery de-escalation strategies in neoadjuvant chemotherapy trials,” Weiss concluded.
Precision Medicine Takes Center Stage in GI Cancer
In order to properly utilize cancer therapies for personalized care, adequate molecular testing must be performed in patients who are eligible for these therapies, with this necessity becoming more and more prevalent in the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies.
In the March issue of ONCOLOGY®, we spoke with John L. Marshall, MD, director of the Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center as well as cochair of the 6th Annual School of Gastrointestinal Oncology®, about the rise of molecular profiling in GI cancer.
Ursula A. Matulonis, MD, on Various Advancements in Gynecologic Cancers Presented at SGO 2021
CancerNetwork® sat down with Ursula A. Matulonis, MD, who is chief of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as well as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, to discuss data presented at the virtual Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer and what abstracts she believes have the greatest potential to shift the treatment paradigm in various gynecologic cancers.
Data from the phase 2 OVARIO study showed extended progression-free survival benefit of niraparib plus bevacizumab in patients with heavily pretreated advanced ovarian cancer.
The study assessed newly diagnosed patients with high-grade serous or endometrioid stage IIIB to IV epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer who had a previous complete response, partial response, or no evidence of disease result on frontline platinum-based chemotherapy plus bevacizumab. Patients were treated with niraparib and bevacizumab to improve PFS.
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