Articles related to Oncology, Surgical

The phase 2 trial of giredestrant in breast cancer patients whose disease has progressed, failed to show benefit.

An 87-year-old white man presented to a hospital emergency surgical department with two round, grayish-brown nodules on his abdomen. He had no other complaints except feeling tired and dizzy for the last few months. He had a 120 pack-year smoking history but was not taking any medications and had not experienced a cough, chest pain, shortness of breath, or other breathing problems.

In a study of parenteral cancer drug pricing at 61 NCI-designated cancer centers, median price markups on 25 commonly used drugs ranged from approximately 120% to 630% over acquisition cost. The paper’s authors recommend public policy prohibiting excessive markup on parenteral chemotherapies as a means to reduce unnecessary financial burden on patients.

“For patients with T1cN1-2 or T2-4N0 (stage II or III), early-stage TNBC, the Panel recommends use of pembrolizumab (200 mg once every 3 weeks or 400 mg once every 6 weeks) in combination with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab after surgery.”

An FDA expert panel voted 16-0, with one abstention, recommending that future FDA approvals of PI3K inhibitors be supported by randomized data. The four currently-approved PI3K inhibitors for treating hematologic malignancies received FDA approval based on single-arm data. Although these drugs have offered durable ORR and improvements in PFS, randomized data presented at the hearing showed they are associated with higher rates of serious adverse events, including fatality.

Compared to chemotherapy alone, adebrelimab plus chemotherapy nearly doubled 2-year OS and more than tripled 1-year PFS in patients with extensive-stage SCLC, according to results presented earlier this month at the AACR Annual Meeting 2022. The phase 3 CAPSTONE-1 study evaluated adebrelimab in combination with carboplatin plus etoposide, as first-line treatment for ES-SCLC.