Darcy Lewis

Articles by Darcy Lewis

Updated breast cancer guidelines have led to clearer diagnosis and management protocols in the past 2 decades, making them a necessary tool to help oncologists stay current in the face of a rapidly evolving knowledge base. To address less common HER2 result patterns, updated guidelines are reclassifying these cases to either HER2-negative or -positive groupings.

A new exploratory study has found that increased levels of plasma VEGF-A and serum thyroglobulin adversely affected clinical outcomes in patients with radioactive iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer, although no biomarker successfully predicted sorafenib response. This study, which was published recently in Clinical Cancer Research, was a retrospective analysis conducted using samples from the earlier phase III DECISION trial.

Target resequencing and DNA profiling of purified tumor samples collected from younger patients with mantle cell lymphoma found that mutations of <em>KMT2D</em> and disruption of <em>TP53</em> by deletion or mutation were associated with an increased risk of progression and death, both in univariate and multivariate analysis, from standard treatments, according to a study published recently in <em>Haematologica</em>.<br /> &nbsp;

A neoadjuvant regimen of dabrafenib plus trametinib in patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF&nbsp;</em>V600E&ndash;mutated anaplastic thyroid carcinoma offered a feasible way to prepare patients for life-extending and quality-of-life-enhancing surgical resection, according to the results of a case series report of patients with locoregionally advanced ATC at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

In patients with <em>RAS </em>wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer, maintenance therapy with single-agent panitumumab was inferior in terms of progression-free survival compared with a combined regimen of panitumumab plus fluorouracil and leucovorin; however, the combination regimen showed a higher rate of treatment-related toxicities, according to results from the phase II noninferiority VALENTINO trial.<br /> &nbsp;

The MDM2 antagonist idasanutlin was found to be clinically active and well tolerated in patients with previously treated polycythemia vera. Additionally, on-target <em>TP53 </em>pathway activation was observed in treatment-refractory patients with PV who were treated with idasanutlin, according to the results of a phase I clinical trial.<br /> &nbsp;

A combined regimen of pazopanib and trametinib was tolerable at full single-agent doses in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer according to the results of a multicenter phase I trial expansion cohort. The expansion cohort showed that the combination has clinical activity in DTC but did not achieve the pre-specified response rate, according to a new report in&nbsp;<em>Clinical Cancer Research</em>.

Treatment with erlotinib significantly extended progression-free survival in patients with stage IIIA-N2&nbsp;<em>EGFR-</em>mutant non&ndash;small cell lung cancer compared with a combined chemotherapy regimen of gemcitabine plus cisplatin, according to clinical trial results published recently in the&nbsp;<em>Journal of Clinical Oncology</em>.

An updated systematic review and new meta-analysis of the incidence of subsequent malignant neoplasms following thyroid cancer has found that there was no significant increased relative risk of breast cancer, salivary cancer, or combined hematologic malignancies based on whether or not patients had received radioactive iodine.