Lisa Astor

Lisa Astor is the Associate Editorial Director for Targeted Oncology. Astor received her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from New York University.

Articles by Lisa Astor

The FDA has granted an accelerated approval to the combination of pembrolizumab and lenvatinib for the treatment of patients with advanced endometrial cancer who have disease progression following prior systemic therapy. The indication applies to patients who are not candidates for curative surgery or radiation and who have disease that is not microsatellite instability–high or mismatch repair deficient.

The combination of carfilzomib, dexamethasone, and daratumumab led to a 37% reduction in the risk of progression or death compared with carfilzomib and dexamethasone alone in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma in the phase III CANDOR trial. According to a press release from Amgen, this met the primary endpoint of progression-free survival for the trial.

The FDA has issued a warning for a rare, but severe, lung inflammation that could be caused by the use of CDK4/6 inhibition in patients with advanced breast cancers. The warning applies to treatment with palbociclib, ribociclib, and abemaciclib specifically, but warnings of the risk of lung inflammation have been approved to be added to the prescribing information for the entire class of CDK4/6 inhibitors.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a Biologics License Application for enfortumab vedotin for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who have previously received a platinum-containing chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant/adjuvant, locally advanced, or metastatic setting and a PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor.

In the phase III QUAZAR AML-001 trial, an investigational oral azacitidine therapy, CC-486, induced a statistically significant improvement in overall survival compared with placebo when used as a maintenance therapy in the treatment of patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia who achieved a complete response or CR with incomplete blood count recovery following treatment with induction chemotherapy.

Atezolizumab monotherapy demonstrated a statistically significant overall survival benefit in comparison with chemotherapy doublets in patients with untreated advanced non&ndash;small cell lung cancer with high PD-L1 expression and without <em>ALK </em>or <em>EGFR </em>mutations. This met the primary endpoint for the phase III IMpower110 trial, according to initial results release by Genentech, the developer of the PD-L1 inhibitor.

Cabazitaxel in combination with carboplatin demonstrated an improvement in progression-free survival in comparison with cabazitaxel alone in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Adverse events were more common with the combination regimen, but the doublet was generally well tolerated.

The addition of nivolumab to the standard of care temozolomide and radiation therapy was not additive in terms of progression-free survival compared with standard of care alone in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme that is O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase-methylated, according to results released from the phase III CheckMate 548 trial.