Articles related to Oncology, Radiation

Bowing to criticism from doctors, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has again updated its guidelines for prostate cancer. The previous update, released this past September, had changed the recommendation about active surveillance for low-risk prostate cancer to state that active surveillance was no longer the “preferred” management option for patients with low-risk prostate cancer and a life expectancy of 10 years or more. Many physicians criticized this change, saying it could lead to overtreatment of low-risk patients by implying that active surveillance, surgery, and radiation are equivalent management options. As a result, NCCN has further revised its guidelines to now state that active surveillance is preferred for most patients with low-risk prostate cancer and a life expectancy of 10 years or more.

This new study found that patients who underwent radiotherapy to treat head and neck cancer experienced accelerated biological aging of as much as 4.9 years in the period immediately post therapy, with further accelerated aging following over time. The study was conducted at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. Chronological age is a strong risk factor for chronic health problems, including greater inflammation and fatigue.

Adults with confirmed R/R aNHL within 12 months after first-line (1L) chemo-immunotherapy were eligible for the randomized Phase III study, which demonstrated that tisagenlecleucel (tisa-cel) as second-line (2L) treatment in R/R aNHL patients did not have a higher event-free survival (EFS) vs. the standard-of-care (SOC). Read this late-breaking abstract from the ASH Annual Meeting & Exhibition to discover the contributing factors leading to the results, as well as how insights from this study will inform use of cellular treatment in the 2L R/R aNHL setting and the design of future CAR-T trials.

To define the spectrum of alterations common at relapse, the researchers in this study performed integrated profiling of 136 relapsed pediatric AML cases with RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), whole-genome sequencing, and target-capture sequencing. In addition, well-characterized fusion oncoproteins were identified, as were somatic mutations in UBTF (upstream binding transcription factor). See the results from the late-breaking abstract being presented at the ASH Annual Meeting & Exhibition.

In this late-breaking abstract from the ASH Annual Meeting & Exhibition, the researches wanted to address the limited understanding of how and when CH develops, what factors govern its behavior, how it interacts with aging, and how these variables relate to malignant progression. Here are the results from analyzing 1,593 blood DNA samples from 385 elderly individuals, each sampled up to 5 times over approximately 13 years.

A late-breaking abstract from the ASH Annual Meeting & Exhibition. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, international study of 879 patients (median age: 65 (range 19–80) years; IPI 3–5 (62%)), the pola-R-CHP combination demonstrated a 27% reduction in the relative risk of disease progression, relapse, or death compared with R-CHOP, with a similar safety profile in the first-line treatment of patients with DLBCL.