August 2015, Vol 6, No 7

The National Cancer Institute estimates that 231,840 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and nearly 40,300 women will die from the disease in 2015. Overall, 61% of women with breast cancer are diagnosed while the disease is confined to the breast; for these women, the 5-year survival rate is 98.6%. However, for women with metastatic breast cancer, the 5-year survival rate falls sharply, to 26%.

Washington, DC—Personalized medicine is the best way to take advantage of innovation in therapy, but the method in which it is paid for must be addressed to fully realize its potential, said Michael Kolodziej, MD, National Medical Director, Oncology Solutions, Aetna, at the Fifth Annual Conference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

Washington, DC—Emerging trends in oncology care management include economic transparency, high-value narrow networks (now also referred to as “power networks”), patient–provider profile matching, and an evolving role for risk management. Narrow networks have been shown to lower overall costs and premiums, reduce care variation, and increase patient outcomes and satisfaction, said Grant D. Lawless, RPh, MD, Associate Professor, Clinical Pharmacy and Economics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, at the Fifth Annual Con­ference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

Philadelphia, PA—Now that a number of targeted therapies are available for the treatment of cancer, one of the big questions is how to best combine them, especially for patients with few other good treatment options.

New Orleans, LA—Prostate cancer may soon have a new biomarker. The cell surface amino acid glypican-1 (GPC-1) was shown in a pilot study to have specificity of 70% for prostate cancer with a sensitivity of >30%, said Jonathan Henderson, MD, a urologist at Regional Urology in Shreveport, LA, at the 2015 American Urological Association meeting.

A clinical trial has shown that patients with a specific molecular subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) are more likely to respond to the drug ibrutinib (Imbruvica) than patients with another molecular subtype of the disease. The study appeared online July 20, 2015, in Nature Medicine.

Chicago, IL—The results of the phase 3 GADOLIN trial provide the first proof of efficacy for obinutuzumab (Gazyva) in patients with indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Obinutuzumab added to standard bendamustine (Treanda) chemotherapy almost doubled progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with rituximab (Rituximab)-refractory indolent lymphoma—the median PFS was 29.2 months with obinutuzumab plus bendamustine versus 14 months with bendamustine alone.

At the Fifth Annual Conference of the Association for Value-­Based Cancer Care in Washington, DC, Grant Lawless, RPh, MD, FACP, of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, moderated a multidisciplinary panel on value-based care for patients with multiple myeloma.

Chicago, IL—An economic analysis presented by Daniel Goldstein, MD, of Emory University, Atlanta, GA, at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, was conducted to see at what price will necitum­umab (which is currently being reviewed by the FDA for use in metastatic squamous-cell lung cancer) be cost-­effective. According to this analysis, necitumumab will have to be priced at less than $1300 per cycle to be cost-­effective based on the accepted willing­ness-to-­pay threshold of $150,000.

Science and technology have taken us through a dynamic portal, transforming medicine into a business and cancer into an industry that is challenged by its clinical benefits, safety, and cost-effectiveness. We are now witnessing a change in oncology with the migration from doctor- to patient-centric treatment.