OncTimes Talk

Also: (1) Feasibility of patients becoming pregnant while having TKI treatment after having stable disease for at least two years; and (2) Decreased need for allogeneic transplant.

Progress in esophageal cancer is forging ahead at Columbia University in New York. Brian Henick, MD, is a medical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with malignancies of the aerodigestive tract. As Associate Director of Experimental Therapeutics and Director of Translational Research in Aerodigestive Cancers in Medical Oncology, Henick is involved in a wide range of studies at Columbia. Oncology Times correspondent Peter Goodwin recently had the opportunity to ask Henick about new therapy approaches for esophageal cancer, in particular molecular mechanisms and immunotherapies.

Findings from a study of patients receiving targeted therapy for their BRAFV600 mutation-positive advanced melanoma, suggest that switching early to immune checkpoint inhibition appeared to bring better rates of overall survival than saving immunotherapy for use as salvage treatment later on.

The ESMO 2024 Annual Congress heard from the randomized Phase II ImmunoCobiVem trial that a switch to immunotherapy after only 3 months treatment with drugs targeted to the mutation gave equivalent or better survival than continuing with targeted therapy.

At the opening session of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) 2024 Annual Meeting, attended by nearly 30,000 cancer specialists, Oncology Times reporter Peter Goodwin asked the President of CSCO, Xu Ruihua, MD, PhD, Professor and President of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, China, to talk about some of the ways that progress in cancer treatments had been made more productive by co-operation between Chinese and Western centers of oncology excellence.

Journalist Peter Goodwin gives OncTimes Talk a whirlwind review of the top 2022 breast cancer research as he reports live in person from the 2022 ESMO Berlin meeting. Featuring the following interviews with leading experts:

1. Patient-Reported Outcomes Support First-Line Pembrolizumab in TNBC:

David Cescon, MD, PhD, Medical Oncologist and Clinician Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Canada discusses analysis of patient-reported outcomes in the KEYNOTE-355 study in which adding pembrolizumab immunotherapy to chemotherapy did not impair health-related quality of life among patients with previously untreated, programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) -positive advanced, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). :

2. Combination Therapy to Convert Immunologically “Cold” Breast Tumors into “Hot” Ones:

Alex De Caluwe, MD, Radiation Oncologist at the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, Belgium tells us about after his group’s findings from a “safety run-in” of the Neo-CheckRay study which raise hopes that immunologically “cold” breast cancers that do not respond to the new immune therapies such as checkpoint inhibitors could be converted into “hot” tumors, that could potentially be cured by them. :

3. Multidisciplinary Precision Extends Life with Breast Cancer Oligometastatic Disease:

Philip Poortmans, MD, PhD, from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, Senior Staff Member in the Iridium Netwerk’s Radiation Oncology Department, who chaired the “Multidisciplinary Tumour Board” session on Oligometastatic Diseases, tells us how a multidisciplinary approach targeting more than a single site of metastasis could bring significant gains in overall survival to patients whose breast cancer can be described as oligometastatic (having limited spread). :

4. Multidisciplinary Teams Can Help Many Breast Cancer Survivors Start Families:

Radiation Oncologist Orit Kaidar-Person, MD, Head of the Breast Cancer Unit at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Ramat Gan, in Israel, tells OncTimes Talk why powerful new data about pregnancy outcomes among women who have survived breast cancer support the choice many of them take of going ahead with a pregnancy despite facing breast cancer treatment and uncertainties about their future health.