Solid Tumors

Boston, MA—In a first-of-its-kind study, aprepitant (Emend), a centrally acting neurokinin (NK)-1 antagonist indicated for the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV), led to a reduction in cough frequency and an improvement in the objective and subjective measures of cough in patients with lung cancer.
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San Antonio, TX—A genomic classifier is now available that can predict a low or high risk for metastasis in men with prostate cancer who have rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) after a prostatectomy. The good news is that this test is reimbursable by Medicare.
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Breast cancer is the leading cause of premature death in women. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), more than 40,000 US women will die of breast cancer in 2015.
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Patients with early breast cancer and a low Oncotype DX recurrence score can safely receive treatment with hormone therapy alone and avoid chemotherapy, according to results of the TAILORx trial, which was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.
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San Francisco, CA—A new genetic test may allow clinicians to improve their therapy decisions by better categorizing patients into specific subtypes compared with conventional immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) subtyping. According to data presented at the 2015 Breast Cancer Symposium, the BluePrint 80-gene assay reclassifies approximately 23% of tumors, allowing for more effective therapy selection, particularly in patients with triple-positive (HER2-positive/hormone receptor–positive) disease.
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San Antonio, TX—Supplements that are often sold in supermarkets and health food stores to promote “men’s health” or “prostate health” do not provide any clinical benefits to men with prostate cancer, according to the results of a retrospective study presented at the 2015 American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting. Men’s health supplements did not significantly prevent distant metastasis, prostate cancer–related death, or treatment-related adverse events in this first-of-its-kind study.
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Boston, MA—Fertility preservation by controlled ovarian hyperstimulation with concurrent letrozole (Femara) is safe in women with breast cancer, according to a single-center, prospective study on the long-term safety of fertility preservation by the use of ovarian stimulation and concurrent aromatase inhibitors in women with breast cancer, presented at the 2015 Best of ASCO meeting in Boston. Controlled ovarian hyperstimulation had no impact on relapse-free survival and enabled live births in a substantial proportion of women who later chose to retrieve their frozen embryos or oocytes.
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Boston, MA—What is the best chemotherapy regimen to use for patients with locally advanced nonsquamous non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC)? The phase 3 PROCLAIM trial attempted to answer this question, but the study failed to determine the best regimen for this patient population.
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Chicago, IL—Lenvatinib (Lenvima) was approved by the FDA in February 2015 for the treatment of patients with advanced radioactive iodine (131I)-­refractory differentiated thyroid cancer based on the SELECT trial results. Investigators looked at which patients will preferentially benefit from this oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). At the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, 2 subgroup analyses of SELECT shed light on patient selection for treatment with lenvatinib.
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San Diego, CA—The introduction of 2 therapies for the treatment of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC)—the orally administered abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and enzalutamide (Xtandi)—has prompt­­ed Leslie Hazel-Fernandez, PhD, Comprehensive Health Insights, Louisville, KY, and colleagues to conduct a qualitative study to evaluate the personal and other factors that influence the use of oral drugs among patients with mCRPC, as well as to gauge caregivers’ and physicians’ experiences with patients who use these oral medications. The results of this study were presented at the 2015 Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy annual meeting.
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