An early report from a large precision medicine trial of children, adolescents, and young adults with advanced cancer shows that 24% of young patients who had their tumors tested for genetic changes were eligible to receive one of the targeted therapies being tested—much higher than the 10% scientists had projected. The nationwide trial, known as NCI–COG Pediatric MATCH, is treating patients on the basis of the genetic alterations in their tumors, rather than the type of cancer or cancer site. Launched in 2017, Pediatric MATCH is one of the first large pediatric clinical trials to systematically test drugs that target specific genetic changes in cancers occurring in…
Author: Brett Johnson
The phrase “hide and seek” likely brings to mind laughing children playing a harmless game. But it’s not fun and games when tumor cells hide. Tumor cells that have left the organ where they formed to hide elsewhere in the body can eventually emerge to produce metastatic disease. Killing these cells once they’ve hidden is extremely difficult. The ability of escaped tumor cells to tuck themselves away poses a life-long risk of cancer recurrence for women with breast cancer and for patients with most other cancers. “Very early during tumor progression, cancer cells leave the breast and [can] travel to the lymph nodes, bone marrow,…
Many colorectal cancers are likely to have spread from the site where they first formed to other parts of the body long before the original tumor can be detected by current screening tests, new study results suggest. Most cancer researchers have assumed that the spread, or metastasis, of tumors typically occurs later in the disease process. The general idea has been that as tumors grow and cancer cells accumulate more and more genetic changes, or mutations, some cells acquire the ability to move from the primary tumor into the bloodstream or lymphatic system, to migrate to a distant location in the body, and to grow into…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to treat some patients with advanced esophageal cancer. The treatment was approved for patients with locally advanced or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus (ESCC) that has progressed after treatment with one or more lines of standard therapy. To receive the treatment, patients must have certain levels of the protein PD-L1 in their tumors, as determined by an FDA-approved test. FDA also approved the use of the PD-L1 IHC 22C3 pharmDx test as a companion diagnostic for this indication. FDA previously approved pembrolizumab for patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer that has progressed despite two or…
Finding new ways to help people quit smoking continues to be a challenge. In a recent study, researchers tried a unique approach: training pediatricians’ offices to provide smoking cessation treatment to parents during visits with their child’s doctor. The approach increased the number of people who got treatment and modestly improved smoking quit rates. The study tested the effectiveness of a program called CEASE, which aims to reduce children’s exposure to secondhand smoke—and thereby improve their health—by helping parents to quit. Results of the trial were published August 12 in JAMA Pediatrics. “We’ve made a lot of progress [in reducing secondhand smoke…
Last spring, at the end of his sophomore year of college, Jace Ward developed double vision in his left eye. He thought the problem might have been related to a recent car accident. But when doctors investigated, they found a tumor in his brain. After the tumor was discovered, a biopsy showed that Jace had an almost uniformly fatal form of brain cancer called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), which is usually found in children. “This was my worst nightmare,” Jace said at a recent NCI-sponsored scientific workshop about personal genomic data, where he was a speaker. Jace had been invited to…
Early detection of cancer greatly increases the likelihood of successful treatment. Despite this, the traditional steps in obtaining a diagnosis are time consuming. Patients will typically need to undergo a series of tests to identify what is causing their symptoms. Medical professionals run these tests all at once in order to receive the results as quickly as possible. However, running a multitude of tests is expensive and time consuming. Many tests will yield negative results while costing hundreds to thousands of dollars. Additionally, these tests can take weeks to generate results, often delaying cancer diagnoses and treatment. Luckily, in an…
The first therapies that target mutated forms of the EGFR protein were approved for use in people with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) more than 15 years ago. Updated results from a large clinical trial now show that one of the newest EGFR-targeted drugs, osimertinib (Tagrisso), is more effective than earlier EGFR-targeted therapies in people whose NSCLC tumors have specific alterations in the EGFR gene. In the trial, dubbed FLAURA, patients with advanced NSCLC who received osimertinib as an initial treatment lived approximately 7 months longer than patients treated with erlotinib (Tarceva) or gefinitib (Iressa). And the survival improvement did not come at the cost of safety; the investigators saw no…