Articles related to Hematology/Oncology

The investigational new drug (IND) application is for GDX012, which also received an FDA orphan drug designation for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The drug’s manufacturer, GammaDelta Therapeutics, is developing the T-cell platform in partnership with Takeda and will initiate a phase I study in late 2021 that will evaluate the treatment’s safety and activity in patients with measurable residual disease-positive AML.

An update from the original ASCO guideline on this topic published in 2012, 60 studies, primarily retrospective, were included in the review. New to this version of the guideline, the Panel offers recommendations on approved doses of immunotherapy and targeted therapies that can be offered to obese patients with cancer.

In this issue of JAMA Oncology, two groups investigate the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, by proxy of antibody assays, in patients with solid malignant neoplasms who were undergoing active cancer therapy. With the concern that patients with cancer may not mount a robust protective immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination, the studies attempt to discover what seropositivity can tell us.

Despite the pandemic interrupting trials and drug development in 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims it is “full speed ahead” on the approval of novel cancer drug therapies. The authors of this Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study wanted to verify these remarks, reviewing the FDA Hematology/Oncology Approvals website to ascertain all hematology/oncology drugs approved in 2020.

In this article from Blood Advances highlighted by helpful visual abstracts, two key points are discussed. First, patient-specific next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based measurable residual disease (MRD) monitoring using non-DTA mutations after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) is independently prognostic for relapse and survival. Second, the kinetics rather than a single time point should be further evaluated when DTA mutations are used for MRD monitoring after alloHCT.

In this interview with Dr. Richard Furman, Professor of Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine, the importance of the CLL14 study is highlighted. In addition, Dr. Furman discusses the best use of venetoclax and whether anti-CD20 agents really add to the benefit of venetoclax treatment and whether a policy of watch and wait is still beneficial for all patients.