Patients with multiple myeloma (MM) could be in an increased risk of a more severe COVID-19 infection and of more severe associated complications. In this COVID-19 perspective, associate professor Annette Juul Vangsted goes through newly made clinical guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic created by The European Myeloma Network.  Multiple myeloma is an incurable cancer in ...

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) stage III patients are inoperable and are offered chemotherapy or radiation therapy if the patient’s performance status allows it. However, no reduction in relapse is achieved, and the five-year survival rate of this treatment is low. The anti-PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab has shown long-term clinical efficacy as first-line treatment in metastatic ...

The 3 KEYNOTE-189 study has compared pembrolizumab, plus pemetrexed and platinum versus placebo plus pemetrexed-platinum as first-line therapy in patients with metastatic, non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer without sensitizing EGFR of ALK mutation, regardless of PD-L1 aspiration. The final analysis of the study was presented at this year’s ASCO20 congress by Delvys Rodriguez-Abreu, medical oncologist ...

Osimertinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that inhibits both activating EGFR mutations and the EGFR T790M resistance mutation. The question is whether osimertinib can be used at an earlier stage of the disease in a patient group, where the majority is getting progression and frequent central nervous system metastases. The ADAURA study has evaluated osimertinib ...

Non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC) is characterized by an increase in prostate-specific antigen (PSA), serum testosterone at castrate level (<0.5 ng / l or 1.7 nmol / l) and no detected distant metastases in conventional imaging tests, including bone scan. NmCRPC is considered high risk in cases where the PSA doubling time is 10 months ...

A three-year update from the CheckMate-227 trial was presented by Suresh S. Ramalingam, M.D. and professor of hematology and medical oncology, in an oral poster session at this year’s ASCO20 Virutal Scientific program. The results of the CheckMate-227 study showed that novolumab in compilation with ipilimumab for NSCLC continued to show durable and long-term efficacy benefits, including a significant overall ...

Eric J. Small, MD and principal investigator of the SPARTAN study explains the background and study design of the SPARTAN study, that investigated the efficiency and safety of apalutamide for patients with non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer ...

Results from a post hoc analysis of the SPARTAN Phase III study of apalutamide showed that regardless of genetic subclass, the treatment significantly improved the metastasis-free survival of patients with non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC). For more than 50% of patients treated with apalutamide, a ≥ 90% reduction in PSA was observed. The results was ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the format of this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting. The conference ran from 29 – 31 May under the theme ‘Unite and Conquer: Accelerating Progress Together.’ This year’s scientific program featured more than 250 oral presentations and 2,500 poster presentations in 24 disease-based and specialty tracks. In the opening session on ...

Three new therapeutic agents for the treatment of nonmetastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC), apalutamid, darolutamid and enzalutamid, have recently been FDA approved. Not alone are the therapies new, they also open up to the treatment of a whole new group of patients, for whom there was no treatment possibility earlier. It raises several questions. On ...