Wayne Kuznar

Articles by Wayne Kuznar

Long-term follow-up of patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma treated with venetoclax monotherapy indicate that remissions are durable in a meaningful proportion and that late-onset toxicities are uncommon.

Combination therapy with acalabrutinib plus bendamustine and rituxumab showed an overall response rate in excess of 90% of patients with treatment-na&iuml;ve mantle cell lymphoma and an ORR of 85% in patients with relapsed/refractory disease in an ongoing open-label phase Ib study.<sup>&nbsp;</sup>The safety profile was consistent with expected safety profiles for acalabrutinib and BR, said Tycel Phillips, MD, who presented the data at the 2018 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

A biomarker subgroup analysis of the&nbsp;phase III IMpassion130 study in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer or inoperable locally advanced TNBC found that progression-free survival and overall survival improvements&nbsp;with the addition of first-line atezolizumab&nbsp; to nab-paclitaxel were&nbsp;exclusive to patients with PD-L1 expression &ge;1% in immune cells.

Durable responses were achieved with acalabrutinib therapy for patients with relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma, with 40% still on treatment for more than 2 years, according to long-term follow-up findings presented at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting.

According to a presentation of findings from the&nbsp;phase II CLARITY study at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting, ibrutinib in combination with&nbsp;venetoclax demonstrated tolerability among patients with relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The combination also induced minimal residual disease negativity in the marrow in&nbsp;39% of these patients after 12 months.

The rate of the 3 most common adverse events reported by US patients on niraparib who were started on 200 mg/day in real-world clinical practice is markedly less than the rate of AEs experienced by those enrolled in the pivotal phase III ENGOT-OV6/NOVA trial, in which patients were started at a 300-mg daily dose of niraparib, according to data presented at the 2018 ESMO Congress.

According to results from an interim analysis of an ongoing single-arm open-label phase II study, pembrolizumab demonstrated promising antitumor activity in patients with high-risk nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer that are unresponsive to Bacillus Calmette-Gu&eacute;rin and refused or were ineligible for cystectomy.

Data from a posthoc analysis of the phase II QUADRA trial support the use of niraparib in later lines of therapy in patients with relapsed ovarian cancer who have&nbsp;<em>BRCA</em> mutations, said Kathleen N. Moore, lead investigator of the trial. According to findings reported at the 2018 ESMO Annual Congress, when used in the fourth line or later, niraparib exhibited an overall response rate of approximately 30% in this subset of patients.

Cisplatin plus radiotherapy improved overall survival compared with cetuximab plus radiotherapy in patients with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer, according to late-breaking research from the De-ESCALaTE HPV trial presented at the 2018 ESMO Congress.<sup>&nbsp;</sup>Results from this trial support the use of chemoradiotherapy as the standard of care for treatment in this patient population.

Among men&nbsp;in the ongoing phase II TRITON2 trial with&nbsp;BRCA1/2 alterations, 51%&nbsp;had a confirmed prostate-specific antigen response to rucaparib (Rubraca), according to preliminary data reported in a poster presentation by&nbsp;Wassim Abida, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the&nbsp;2018 ESMO Congress.

Progression-free survival was found to be almost identical at 48 weeks with&nbsp;MYL-1401O in combination with a taxane as initial therapy followed by MYL-1401O monotherapy as maintenance versus trastuzumab in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, according to phase III findings of the&nbsp;HERITAGE trial. Results of the trial were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

The investigational second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor dacomitinib demonstrated an improved median overall survival of 34.1 months compared to 26.8 months with&nbsp;gefitinib as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced,&nbsp;<em>EGFR</em>-mutant non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, according to data from a open-label, phase III trial presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.<sup>1</sup>

Ribociclib in combination with fulvestrant showed an improvement in progression-free survival in postmenopausal women with&nbsp;hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer; the benefit was seen both in treatment-naive patients, and in patients who had received 1 prior line of therapy, according to the results from the phase III MONALEESA-3 trial presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting.

Ipatasertib, an oral AKT inhibitors, demonstrated early survival results as a part of a frontline combination regimen with paclitaxel for the treatment&nbsp;of locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to interim results of the phase II LOTUS trial.

Recommendations from the first set of NCCN guidelines on the management of cancer in patients with HIV reflect that there are worse overall and cancer-specific survival outcomes seen in the HIV-infected population compared with the general population. The guidelines&nbsp;advise that HIV status alone should not be used for decisions about cancer treatment.

Risk stratification to guide molecular testing and treatment is emphasized in the latest prostate cancer guidelines from the NCCN. Recommendations for germline testing, molecular testing, and initial therapy have been developed for each risk category, each of which has its own management page in the newest version of the NCCN guidelines.