Interviews

Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, shares a message with oncologists regarding molecular testing in patients with lung cancer. He says the most important message is that molecular characterization of the patient’s tumor must be done in order to best treat the patient.

Peter Voorhees, MD, discusses the latest data for the use of pomalidomide-containing regimens for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. He highlights data from 2 randomized clinical trials that demonstrated an improvement in responses with pomalidomide-based triplets.

Heather A. Wakelee, MD, discusses recent research investigating antiangiogenic agents and checkpoint inhibitors in the frontline for patients with <em>EGFR</em>-positive non&mdash;small cell lung cancer. The most promising data were demonstrated in the phase III IMpower150 trial.

The research around best radiation-based treatment options for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma are over 15 years old, but the standard of care for long-term management of the disease is still conventional chemoembolization, according to Emil I. Cohen, MD, assistant professor, Georgetown University Hospital.

Patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia typically have low response rates to chemotherapy. However, some subsets of patients, particularly those with targetable mutations, may have long-term survival when given a novel FLT3 inhibitor like gilteritinib, as seen in the ADMIRAL trial, says Mark J. Levis, MD, PhD.

Pashtoon M. Kasi, MBBS, MD, MS, clinical assistant professor of internal medicine, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, discusses how serial testing via liquid biopsies in patients with gastrointestinal cancers can provide oncologists with a better picture of the patient&rsquo;s condition and potential acquired mechanisms of resistance.

Ravi Salgia, MD, professor and chair, Department of Medical Oncology &amp; Therapeutics Research, associate director for clinical sciences, City of Hope, Durante, California, says there is a difference between precision medicine and personalized medicine.

Michael J. Mauro, MD, discusses how 4 FDA-approved frontline therapies are providing benefit to patients with chronic myeloid leukemia

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, discusses the evolving role of neoadjuvant endocrine therapy in the breast cancer space. She says there is particular interest in using this therapy in patients with HER2-positive and triple-negative breast cancer, but it can be more challenging in patients with ER-positive disease.

Shlomo Koyfman, MD, discusses factors that are associated with the risk of recurrence and death in patients with papillary thyroid cancer with hobnail morphology, an aggressive variant that has been associated with poorer outcomes.

David Polsky, MD, PhD, discusses the findings from a liquid biopsy analysis of the COMBI-d trial, which is a phase III trial investigating the combination of dabrafenib and trametinib or dabrafenib alone in patients with BRAF V600E/K&ndash;mutant melanoma. Investigators found an association between the presence of baseline circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and a poor prognosis with the treatment of BRAF inhibitors.

Simon Rule, MD, PhD, discusses the current treatment approaches for patients with mantle cell lymphoma in both the United Kingdom and the United States. He says treatment strategies are pretty well established on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Howard S. Hochester, MD, discusses findings from the pooled safety analysis of TAS-102 in previously treated patients with colorectal cancer and gastric/gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.

Matthew Galsky, MD, discusses how the phase II HCRN GU14-182 study helps to define the role of switch maintenance therapy in patients with urothelial cancer. The study looked at maintenance with pembrolizumab versus placebo following frontline chemotherapy in patients with metastatic urothelial cancer.

Naval G. Daver, MD, discusses how the efficacy compares between first- and second-generation FLT3 inhibitors in acute myeloid leukemia.

Alain Borczuk, MD, discusses the current role for liquid biopsies versus tissue biopsies in lung cancer and the challenges that need to be overcome in this space.

Martin E. Gutierrez, MD, director, Drug Discovery/Phase I Unit, and co-chief and medical oncologist, Divisions of Thoracic Oncology and Gastrointestinal Oncology, John Theurer Cancer Center, Hackensack University Medical Center, discusses the early findings for H3B-6527, an FGFR4 inhibitor, as a treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma

Evan Y. Yu, MD, discussed the key takeaways from the phase Ib/II KEYNOTE-365 trial, which evaluated different novel pembrolizumab (Keytruda) combinations in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Charu Aggarwal, MD, MPH, the Leslye M. Heisler Assistant Professor for Lung Cancer Excellence at Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and other researchers conducted a prospective study using next-generation sequencing as a biomarker to predict response and progression-free survival rates in patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer &nbsp;receiving pembrolizumab monotherapy. The data were presented during the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Ana Oaknin, MD, head of the Gynecologic Tumors Unit, Vall d&rsquo;Hebron University Hospital,&nbsp;and principal investigator, Gynecological Malignancies Group, explains the rationale for analyzing anti&ndash;PD-1 monotherapy with&nbsp;dostarlimab in patients with microsatellite instability&ndash;high and microsatellite stable endometrial cancer.&nbsp;

Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD,head of the Department of Cancer Medicine,&nbsp;Institut Gustave Roussy, University of Paris-Sud, gives highlights on the updated findings from the phase III ARAMIS trial using darolutamide for the treatment of patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, recently presented during the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting.&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;

Pancreatic cancer with&nbsp;<em>BRCA1</em>and&nbsp;<em>BRCA2&nbsp;</em>mutations has shown positive responses to the PARP inhibitor olaparib in preliminary trials.&nbsp;

Jurgen Wolf, MD, discusses the importance of broad genomic testing to identify alterations in patients with advanced non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). By identifying molecular alterations and driver mutations early on, patients can receive matched targeted therapies at a time in the course of disease when the treatments would have the greatest impact.

Mark G. Kris, MD, discusses the importance of delaying relapse in patients with&nbsp;<em>EGFR</em>-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer. He shares the significance of the findings from the phase III RELAY trial, where the goal was to delay the time to relapse by adding ramucirumab to erlotinib.

Phillipe Moreau, MD, discusses the results from the randomized, open-label, multicenter phase III CASSIOPEIA trial. The results of the trial led to&nbsp;a priority review designation from the FDA for the combination of daratumumab plus bortezomib, thalidomide, and dexamethasone for patients with treatment-na&iuml;ve multiple myeloma who are candidates for autologous stem cell transplant.

<em>FLT3</em> mutation analysis in laboratories has brought on reimbursement barriers in clinical oncology. Jordan Clark, chief commercial officer, Diaceutics, a diagnostic development and commercialization company, spoke to <em>Targeted Oncology</em> about the cause of reimbursement issues and how the problem affects all parties involved.

Alexander D. Guminski, MD, PhD, discusses the 12-month follow-up data from a phase II study investigating the role of cemiplimab as a treatment for patients with metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.

Hussain Borghaei, DO, MS, discusses the significance of the overall survival data update from the KEYNOTE-001 trial. This trial investigated the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab as a treatment for patients with advanced non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.