Articles related to Hematology/Oncology

CheckRare provides a list of the orphaned drugs that dominate the US pharmaceutical industry to start 2022. Orphan drugs are defined as those medications that remain commercially undeveloped because they’ve been deemed to have limited potential for profitability. However, nearly half of all novel medications approved by the FDA are orphan drugs.

An oncologist reflects on his last decade as a physician and what he’s learning through the art of oncology — the daily practice that is outside the latest data and is often not explicitly taught in fellowship — that has become ever more important and gratifying. Age, a changing work environment, a pandemic and telemedicine, reports of physician burnout, and colleagues leaving practice — all part of the daily routine. Here, the oncologist shares a few key rules that that have helped and sustained his practice.

A systematic review identified 204 eligible publications from 2000 through 2017, with much of the evidence consisting of systematic reviews of observational data, consensus guidelines, case series, and case reports. Due to the paucity of high-quality evidence on management of immune-related adverse events, recommendations are based on expert consensus.

Research from 20 years (2000 -2020) of studies (293) inform the evidence base for this guideline from ASCO, which addressed six main clinical questions/subquestions on preoperative evaluations, surgical diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, appropriate radiotherapy techniques, the role of systemic therapy, and follow-up evaluations.

The conclusion from the study presented in the Journal of Clinical Oncology: “While VTC added to five-drug interval compressed chemotherapy did not improve survival, these outcomes represent the best survival estimates to date for patients with previously untreated nonmetastatic Ewing sarcoma.”

From JAMA Network Open comes this conclusion: “In this study, the benefit associated with olaparib was reduced, eliminated, or inferior in specific subgroups of patients when treatment outcomes were compared with a more active standard of care, ie, cabazitaxel. While treatment with olaparib was associated with superior rPFS in patients with BRCA1/2 variants, those with other HRR variants may have worse outcomes with this approach, which should be reassessed by national guidelines. Numerous active studies…will add to the data regarding the role of PARP inhibitors in mCRPC.”