Tony Hagen

Testing for driver mutations is essential before initiating therapy in patients with non–small cell lung cancer, because there is a risk that the type of upfront treatment chosen could add to the toxicity of, and spur resistance to, targeted therapy options, Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, said at the 14th Annual New York Lung Cancers Symposium.

Noeadjuvant therapy for lung cancer provides significant benefits compared with adjuvant therapy, according to&nbsp;Jamie E. Chaft, MD. In a presentation at the&nbsp;<em>14th Annual </em>New York Lung Cancers Symposium, Chaft explained why neoadjuvant therapy is beneficial even though adjuvant therapy is still the standard of care at a number of cancer centers.

Announced at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, the FDA is rolling out a pilot program that will provide more information and assistance for acquiring expanded access (EA) to investigational therapies for both oncologists and patients. The program is being called Project Facilitate.

Details on a&nbsp;prototype system were released during the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting by a&nbsp;consortium of cancer care institutions that was designed to use electronic health record systems to provide real-world patient data that could guide research and improve cancer treatment.

Although prognostic indices for mantle cell lymphoma can be useful in the classification of patients, it does little in guiding treatment decisions. Instead of relying on these indices, Simon Rule, MD, advocates for a watch-and-wait approach to managing certain patients&nbsp;with mantle cell lymphoma.

Jacqueline C. Barrientos, MD, MS, discusses emerging agents and combinations in CLL based on recent trial data.

Richard M. Stone, MD,&nbsp;discusses emerging agents and combinations for older patients with AML, along with his preferences for treatment.

At the&nbsp;2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, data demonstrated that use of circulating tumor-cell counts had strong value for selecting endocrine therapy compared to chemotherapy in patients with&nbsp;estrogen receptor&ndash;positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

There has been a rapid expansion to the treatment landscape for adjuvant melanoma and there is no head-to-head comparative data for the challenge of selecting between immunotherapy and targeted therapy. When selecting a type of therapy, communicating relative merits and risks of both options to patients is necessary in making a shared decision, said&nbsp;Hussein Tawbi, MD, PhD.

Richard Furman, MD, discusses how survival times for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia have increased dramatically in the past decade, thanks to an ever-expanding armamentarium of novel agents and more patients now being diagnosed earlier.

Combinations of novel drugs used for treating patients with lymphomas may have the potential to improve responses and overcome resistance to therapy but can be accompanied by unexpected adverse events that demand careful monitoring, Kieron Dunleavy, MD, cautioned during the 2018 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference.

Despite progress seen with immune checkpoint inhibitors in Hodgkin lymphoma, there remains an unmet need for greater responses, which could be filled by potential combination approaches, according to Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD.

The&nbsp;Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services has proposed a slate of changes that would reduce payment for some forms of patient evaluation and management (E/M) and reduce the payment margin over wholesale acquisition cost for Medicare Part B drugs.

Practice-changing improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival rates were seen for patients with pediatric&nbsp;rhabdomyosarcoma with the addition of a course of&nbsp;low-dose maintenance chemotherapy administered after standard-of-care intensive chemotherapy.

According to initial results reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas study, 3 cell-free DNA tests showed high degrees of specificity in identifying signs of early stage lung cancer.

Prices for treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer were more than twice as high for US patients than for their Canadian counterparts, according to a study of costs of treatment in Western Washington (WW) and the province of British Columbia (BC) in Canada.

Findings from the phase III ALEX trial were consistent with earlier results on efficacy and adverse events. Investigators said there were superior patient-reported outcomes for the next-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) alectinib (Alecensa) compared to the standard of care TKI inhibitor crizotinib (Xalkori) for patients with ALK-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

According to findings presented by Martin Reck, MD, PhD, at the 2018 European Lung Cancer Conference, the frontline regimen of atezolizumab, bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel has became a potential new standard of care for the treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

According to 3-year survival findings from the phase II POPLAR study,&nbsp;anti PD-L1 immunotherapy with atezolizumab (Tecentriq) demonstrated strong superiority to&nbsp;docetaxel in locally advanced or metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

Tumor reduction for patients with ER-positive breast cancer can be achieved with endocrine therapy and can&nbsp;possibly avoid the need for chemotherapy or even surgery in some patients. Hyman B. Muss, MD, who presented at the 2018 Miami Breast Cancer Conference, said that deciding how long to continue this therapy can be tricky, however.

Financial toxicity is increasingly recognized as an adverse event of modern oncologic treatment.&nbsp;In recognition of the need to guide patients through this aspect of their cancer journey, the Association of Community Cancer Centers has unveiled Financial Advocacy Services Guidelines 2018.

Experts discusses who will establish quality standards in the new value landscape during the&nbsp;44th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit of the Association of Community Cancer Centers.

The results of the phase III PALOMA-2 study were presented at the 2018 Miami Breast Cancer Conference. According to the deep analysis, the CDK 4/6 inhibitor palbociclib showed significant efficacy in combination with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole in the frontline setting of estrogen receptor-positive, HER2-negative, postmenopausal metastatic breast cancer.

The rising costs of drugs continue to impede cancer program growth, and new technology remains a boon and a bane, depending on its utility for expanding practice capability or its inflexibility to needs, according to the 2017 Trending Now in Cancer Care Survey from the Association of Community Cancer Centers, based in Rockville, Maryland.

According to findings presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, no significant efficacy was seen in a trial to determine the value of trastuzumab plus standard adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with low levels of HER2 protein.

A new Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid&nbsp;Services (CMS) policy to redistribute savings under the 340B Drug Discount Program has been greeted by a mixture of praise and criticism from supporters and critics of the program.

Disease-free survival&nbsp; is maintained in women with postmenopausal hormone receptor-positive breast cancer treated with aromatase inhibitors, even when the treatment is only given for 2 years in comparison with the standard 5 years of additional aromatase inhibitor therapy, according to findings from the phase III ABCSG-16 trial presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.&nbsp;

PARP inhibitors offer great potential to improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer, and evidence will hopefully support their use in the first-line management of these patients,&nbsp;said Susana M. Campos, MD, a gynecologic oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, during her talk at the 35th annual CFS^&reg; meeting.

Understanding genetic abnormalities is key to better improving outcomes in multiple myeloma, particularly for high-risk patients, Shaji K. Kumar, MD, said in his talk at the&nbsp;35th annual CFS.

A healthcare bill has been introduced by the Senate Republicans that would revise many of the changes imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, cutting federal support for Medicaid and repealing the individual and employer mandates for having and providing insurance.