Improving Outcomes After Frontline Therapy

Thanks to rapid innovation and unmatched dedication from investigators and oncology care providers, patients with cancer are living longer than ever before, motivating further research into optimizing patient outcomes and quality of life after success with frontline therapy.

In an interview with ONCOLOGY®, Elias Jabbour, MD, a professor of medicine in the Department of Leukemia, Division of Cancer Medicine, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, discussed his contributions to the field of medicine and how innovation has paid off in spades.

“Leukemia, in particular, is really evolving at a very high speed. Every year, we see new therapies [and] a new standard of care,” said Jabbour, who is also cochair of the 5th Annual Live Medical Crossfire®: Hematologic Malignancies, hosted by Physicians’ Education Resource, LLC (PER®). “It’s hard to keep pace with the evolution…these are priceless accomplishments that impact the lives of people.”

He went on to detail therapy advancements in pediatric and adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and how growing understanding of the disease’s underlying biology has enabled better treatment selection and even cure in some cases (see pages 304-305).

As more and more therapies and regimens gain FDA approval for the frontline treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), reexamining the standard of care in second and subsequent lines is becoming a top priority. “Treatment paradigms for first-line therapy have shifted and left an outstanding need to understand the optimal management in subsequent lines of therapy to improve patient outcomes,” write Tiffany Y. Shaw, MD, and colleagues in their review of the topic. Based on available data, the authors attempt to provide guidance for oncologists treating patients with RCC following frontline therapy with an immune checkpoint inhibitor alone or in combination with antiangiogenetic tyrosine kinase inhibitors (see pages 306-310).

In this issue’s installment of Clinical Quandaries, Mahmoud Salama, MD, PhD, and colleagues examine the case of a woman, aged 25 years, with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma who undergoes ovarian tissue cryopreservation due to concerns surrounding fertility loss with systemic therapy (see pages 332-334). Fertility preservation represents a significant concern of young female cancer survivors, which has motivated innovative methods for ensuring future potential for childbearing.

As always, the articles within these pages and more on breakthroughs in oncology across multidisciplinary specialties can be found at CancerNetwork.com, home of the journal ONCOLOGY®.