Jason Harris

<br /> Mary-Beth Percival, MD, discusses the ongoing development of FLT3 inhibitors and other current research in patients with AML.

After decades of being considered the &ldquo;graveyard of drug development,&rdquo; melanoma has now become one of the hottest fields in oncologic research. In response to this rapid change in the treatment landscape, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer has issued updated consensus guidelines to help clinicians stratify patients, choose optimal treatment regimens, and manage immune-related adverse events in patients with stage II to IV disease.

Joseph A. Sparano, MD,&nbsp;the current role of liquid biopsy and the ongoing challenge of improving survival for patients with metastatic disease.

Nadeem R. Abu-Rustum, MD, discusses options and treatments that can allow women to maintain their reproductive ability.

Investigators have long known that the combination of antiangiogenic agents and immunotherapy could enhance antitumor response and improve outcomes for patients with certain cancers. But recently, this old idea has become the focus of new research in diseases such as hepatocellular carcinoma, urothelial carcinoma, and endothelial cancer.

In results presented at the European Society for Medical&nbsp;Oncology&rsquo;s 2018 Molecular Analysis for Personalised Therapy Congress, Marlene Kok, MD, PhD, said results from the phase II TONIC study showed that induction therapy with doxorubicin turned &ldquo;cold&rdquo; tumor cells &ldquo;hot,&rdquo; resulting in an objective response rate of 20% following treatment with nivolumab.

The number of women who develop gestational trophoblastic neoplasia during pregnancy is limited, yet physicians believed that a greater understanding of how to manage this disease was necessary. New guidelines were recently issued by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network to help gynecologic oncologists understand how to treat this rare gestational cancer. Generally, the use of single-agent chemotherapy for most patients with low-risk disease is recommended, with the guidelines reserving surgery and combination chemotherapy for patients at high risk of GTN.¹

David G. Maloney, MD, PhD,&nbsp;reviews the latest developments with CAR T-cell therapy in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Guidelines from the International Lymphoma Radiation Oncology Group recommend the use of proton therapy in adults with mediastinal lymphomas and for young women. Specifically, clinicians should consider proton therapy in mediastinal disease that spans below the left main stem coronary artery and is near the front of, behind, or on the left side of the heart.

In a roundtable discussion at the 2018 International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference, Nobel Prize Winner James P. Allison, MD, and other experts discussed the research that is still necessary to bring immunotherapy response rates to 100%.

Patients with nonanaplastic thyroid cancer who received concurrent chemotherapy with intensity-modulated radiation therapy had superior local progression-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) compared with those who received only IMRT, according to recently published results.

Patients with mantle cell lymphoma who were treated with the combination of lenalidomide (Revlimid) and rituximab (Rituxan) continued to have durable responses and manageable side effects at 5 years of follow-up.

Immune checkpoint inhibitor-related toxic events led to deaths in 0.3% to 1.3% of patients, a rate that compares favorably with other treatment modalities, according to results from a retrospective analysis of data collected in Vigilyze, the World Health Organization&rsquo;s pharmacovigilance database.

The next-generation sequencing assay clonoSEQ has gained FDA approval as a test for minimal residual disease in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia or multiple myeloma.

James P. Allison, PhD, and Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD, have been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering research that led to the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of cancer. The award was announced in a statement from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet on Monday.

During a presentation on diffuse large B-cell lymphoma at the 2018 SOHO Annual Meeting, Thomas E. Witzig, MD, discussed several ongoing trials that hope to raise the cure rate above the 80% threshold.

The partial clinical hold previously placed on&nbsp;trials examining tazemetostat in patients with various solid tumors and hematologic malignancies has been lifted by the FDA and enrollment has been reopened.

Based on data from the phase III MURANO trial, the European Medicines Agency&rsquo;s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has recommended the approval of venetoclax&nbsp;for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who have received at least 1 previous therapy. AbbVie, a co-developer of venetoclax with Roche, announced the CHMP&rsquo;s decision in a news release.

The FDA has received a new drug application for&nbsp;erdafitinib as a treatment for&nbsp;patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma and <em>FGFR</em> genetic alterations whose tumors progressed following chemotherapy,&nbsp;Janssen, the manufacturer of the oral pan-FGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, has announced.

Only 1 treatment option is currently&nbsp;available for treating&nbsp;patients with metastatic germline&nbsp;<em>BRCA</em>-mutated triple-negative&nbsp;breast cancer, but research&nbsp;into novel therapies, including PI3K/conjugates could soon result in a host of new therapies for this hard-to-treat disease.

Adding selective internal radiation therapy to chemotherapy improved overall survival by 5 months compared with &nbsp;chemotherapy alone for patients with liver-only or liver-dominant right-sided primary metastatic colorectal cancer, according to results from a post hoc analysis of 2 randomized, controlled trials.

Triple-negative myelofibrosis makes up 10% to 15% of patients with myelofibrosis, but it is associated with higher rates of leukemic transformation and poorer survival. Investigators at the University of Michigan set out to better understand the disease and found that the clinical, cytogenetic, and molecular features of triple-negative myelofibrosis were heterogeneous.

The combination of selinexor and dexamethasone induced an overall response rate of 26.2% and a median overall survival of 8.6 months in patients with penta-refractory multiple myeloma, according to phase IIb results presented at the 2018 SOHO Annual Meeting.

Despite decades of drug development and a deepening understanding of the biology of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, physicians haven&rsquo;t seen much improvement in cure rates, Thomas E. Witzig, MD, said during a presentation at the 2018 SOHO Annual Meeting.

Adding the combination of venetoclax (Venclexta) and navitoclax (ABT-263) to chemotherapy induced an objective response rate of 66.7% in adults with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia or lymphoblastic lymphoma, according to results from a small phase I study presented at the 2018 SOHO Annual Meeting.

The adoption of intensive pediatric treatment regimens has resulted in improved survival for adolescents and young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia over the past decade, said Wendy Stock, MD, at the 2018 SOHO Annual Meeting.

Hydroxyurea has been the primary treatment for polycythemia vera for decades and it works for the majority of patients, said Abdulraheem Yacoub, MD. However, there is a subset of patients who develop resistance or intolerance to hydroxyurea, and investigators are working to find a solution for those patients.

Combining cladribine and low-dose cytarabine alternating with decitabine (Dacogen) resulted in high response rates and improved survival compared with currently established low-intensity therapies for patients with acute myeloid leukemia who are older than 60, according to results newly published in <em>Lancet Haematology.</em>

According to findings from the&nbsp;phase IIIb CONSIGN trial, now published in <em>The Oncologist</em>, safety and efficacy findings&nbsp;for regorafenib in patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer were consistent with previous phase III results.

Bijal D. Shah, MD,&nbsp; discusses the challenge of treating this highly heterogeneous disease, how to choose the optimal treatment regimen, and the ongoing role of BTK inhibitors.