Articles related to Hematology/Oncology

Dana Farber’s CLL Center associate director Matthew S. Davids, MD, MMSc highlights some of his key takeaways from the recent ASH meeting: Novel treatment approaches in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), including large phase 3 studies, some smaller studies combining novel drugs, and long-term follow-ups of prior phase 3 studies; three reports with practice-changing implications; and a surprising finding in the ECOG 1912 study, which demonstrated an overall survival benefit for patients who received ibrutinib with rituximab.

This update of the GO29365 study shows significant survival benefit with pola + BR vs BR alone in R/R, transplant ineligible DLBCL. In the randomization arms, median progression-free survival was 9.2 vs 3.7 months and median overall survival was 12.4 vs 4.7 months for the pola + BR arm vs the BR arm. In the extension cohort, the OR rate was 41.5%, and the CR rate was 38.7%; PFS and OS were 6.6 months and 12.5 months, respectively.

This open-label, randomized phase II-III study of 191 patients with locally advanced or metastatic BTC compared triplet therapy of oxaliplatin, irinotecan, and infusional fluorouracil (mFOLFIRINOX), with doublet therapy consisting of cisplatin and gemcitabine (CISGEM). Triplet therapy did not outperform doublet therapy in this study.

Individuals with cancer often have an elevated platelet count at the time of diagnosis. But what, if any, is the relationship? This study of nearly nine million individuals followed over 10 years points to a positive correlation.

A JAMA Oncology study of nearly 480,000 patients found immune-mediated diseases are associated with a greater risk of cancer at the local and systemic levels. The findings support the role of local and systemic immunoregulation in carcinogenesis and could lead to a new way of viewing immune-mediated diseases.

The authors of this JCO study used a PET-adaptive approach to reduce the need for radiotherapy (RT) in early PET (-) disease and escalate therapy in patients with PET (+) disease. The study reports excellent outcomes for the approach, which allowed omission of radiotherapy in more than three-quarters of patients.