Cancer Currents: An NCI Cancer Research Blog
A blog featuring news and research updates from the National Cancer Institute.
Findings from several early-stage clinical trials featured at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago last week reflect the dominant trends in cancer treatment: targeted therapies and immune-based treatments.
Although the results of these trials won’t change patient care immediately, in each case the trial investigators and other researchers agreed that the findings point in that direction.
NCI constantly publishes new information on its websites, so periodically we provide updates on new content of interest to the cancer community.
In the largest study of its kind to date, a test that assesses DNA mutations and other changes in genetic material shed from tumors into the blood—a so-called liquid biopsy—produced results highly similar to those of traditional tumor biopsies.
The patterns of genomic changes identified by the test in a large collection of patient blood samples largely matched patterns of genetic changes seen in large tumor biopsy profilingstudies, researchers reported last week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago.
The standard treatment that some patients with brain cancer receive is likely to change, based on findings from two large clinical trials presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago this week.
Both trials showed that administering the chemotherapy drugtemozolomide (Temodar®) in addition to radiation therapy increased how long patients lived overall and without their disease progressing. The trial investigators and other leading brain cancer researchers agreed that the results of the two trials will change the standard of care.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 18 approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq®) for the treatment of some patients with urothelial carcinoma, the most common type of bladder cancer. The drug, which strengthens the body’s immune response against cancer, is the first new treatment approved for bladder cancer in two decades.
“This is very exciting news for patients with bladder cancer,” said Piyush Agarwal, M.D., head of the Bladder Cancer Section in the NCI Center for Cancer Research's (CCR) Urologic Oncology Branch, who noted that the approval would likely open “a wave of new clinical trials” for patients with bladder cancer. The FDA approved atezolizumab for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma that has gotten worse during or after treatment with platinum chemotherapy.
Researchers have developed an antibody derived from patients with early-stage lung cancer that enlists the immune system to destroy cancer cells.
The antibody killed tumor cells in cell lines of several different cancer types and slowed tumor growth in mouse models of brain and lung cancer without obvious evidence of side effects, the researchers reported May 5 in Cell Reports.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved two drugs for the treatment of patients with advanced kidney cancer. Both approvals are for patients whose cancers have progressed after receiving prior treatment with drugs that block tumor blood vessel growth, known as antiangiogenic therapies.
On April 15, the agency approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx™), and on May 13 it approved lenvatinib (Lenvima®) in combination with everolimus (Afinitor®).
NCI researchers have developed a risk model-based approach for selecting smokers and former smokers who may be candidates for lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT). Using data from two lung cancer screening studies and a U.S. health survey, the researchers estimated that the new approach might prevent more deaths from lung cancer over 5 years than would current screening recommendations.
Results from the statistical analysis appeared in JAMA on May 15.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvednivolumab (Opdivo®) on May 17 for the treatment of some patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). The approval is for the treatment of patients whose disease has relapsed or worsened after they received an autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) followed by brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris®).
Nivolumab—which has already been approved for the treatment of metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, and kidney cancer—is the first immunotherapy agent approved for any type of lymphoma.
In patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, the location in the colon where the tumor originated appears to strongly influence how long patients live, according to a new study.
The study—a retrospective analysis of data from a large NCI-funded phase III clinical trial—found that patients whose cancer originated in the left side of the colon (distal colon) lived more than a year longer after initial treatment than patients whose disease originated in the right side of the colon (proximal colon).
Today, in JAMA Oncology, with my colleagues in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics and elsewhere, we published a study on a risk prediction model developed to assess the absolute risk of breast cancer in women of European background in the United States.
The model takes into effect risk factors that can be modified, like alcohol use, and those that can’t, like family history and the constellation of previously identified common genetic risk variants, or SNPs. This multifaceted model can more precisely identify the subsets of women at highest risk of breast cancer who would be most likely to benefit from alterations to those modifiable factors.
African Americans who are diagnosed with colorectal cancer at a young age have significantly worse survival rates than young white patients, according to a new study.
The disparity was found even among those who were diagnosed with early-stage disease, Elena Stoffel, M.D., of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, and her colleagues reported May 2 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
As Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month comes to a close and summer begins, NCI has launched a new online tool called Moles to Melanoma: Recognizing the ABCDE Features.
The new tool is intended to help educate the public about the appearance and features of common moles (nevi), which pose no health risk, as well as those of atypical moles (dysplastic nevi), which can increase melanoma risk, and actualmelanomas.
Researchers from several NCI-Designated Cancer Centers and NCICommunity Oncology Research Program (NCORP) sites that serve rural parts of the United States recently met with NCI leaders to discuss the disparities in cancer outcomes in many rural areas of the country. The meeting was part of NCI’s efforts to prioritize its research activities to improve cancer control in rural areas.
In this interview, Robert Croyle, Ph.D., director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, discusses some of the issues faced by rural communities and how NCI is approaching this important problem.
Pancreatic tumor cells and neighboring normal cells engage in a two-way molecular conversation that helps drive malignant behavior in the cancer cells, according to new study results.
Working in cell lines from mice, researchers showed that pancreatic cancer cells that have cancer-causing mutations in the KRAS gene can coerce nearby healthy cells to release growth signals. These signals then activate a chain of events in the tumor cells that enhance their ability to survive and multiply.
NCI researchers have identified new therapeutic targets in a common subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Drugs that hit these targets, known as SMAC mimetics, are already under clinical development, and the research team hopes to begin testing them in clinical trials of patients with DLBCL.
In a study published April 11 in Cancer Cell, the NCI researchers showed that the proteins cIAP1 and cIAP2 control the activity of a key signaling pathway in B cells that drives proliferation and survival in the ABC subtype of DLBCL (ABC DLBCL). In cell lines and animal models of the ABC subtype, they found that SMAC mimetics, which inhibit cIAP1 and cIAP2, killed cancer cells and shrank tumors.
May 5, 2016, will forever be noted as a remarkable milestone in the history of cancer control. On that day, the Secretary of Health and Human Services announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had finalized a rule extending its regulatory authority over tobacco products to include cigars, e-cigarettes, and hookah (waterpipe) tobacco.
Although the harms of cigarettes have been well studied, the harms of some other tobacco products are less well understood. We do know, however, that all traditional tobacco products, including cigars and smokeless tobacco, are highly addictive and cause cancer. There is no safe level of use for any of these products.
Health data enthusiasts of all stripes have arrived in Washington, DC, for an annual event known as Health Datapalooza. Incredibly smart participants from government, academia, companies, startups, and patient groups meet to share ideas and brainstorm about how to share and unleash health information to improve health outcomes for all.
Although the meeting is broader than any single disease, it will explore a topic that is central to NCI's efforts against cancer: creating knowledge from data. And the institute is reaching out to the data innovation community to help us do just that.
After rising steadily for decades, the incidence of thyroid cancer in the United States may have stabilized, according to a new study. Although still increasing, the number off new cases has risen at a much slower rate in recent years than in the past.
The incidence of thyroid cancer in the United States began to rise during the early 1990s, with incidence in 2013 triple that of 30 years earlier. But the new analysis found that incidence began to level off in 2009 and remained relatively stable through 2012. The findings appeared April 14 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved venetoclax(Venclexta®) on April 11 for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) whose tumors have a specific genetic alteration.
The accelerated approval is for patients with CLL whose tumor cells are missing a portion of chromosome 17, commonly referred to as a 17p deletion, and who have received at least one prior therapy for their cancer.
.png)
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario