Articles related to CHEMOTHERAPY

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.”

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.

Predictive biomarkers are needed to identify patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) that could enjoy treatment de-escalation, with the attendant reduction in incidence of acute and late toxicities. In an observational study of consecutive patients with patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma, pretreatment absolute lymphocyte count was predictive for 5-year overall survival. It also predicted benefit from the use of concurrent cisplatin chemotherapy.

The phase 3 KEYNOTE-048 trial compares pembrolizumab with or without concurrent chemotherapy to cetuximab-chemotherapy in patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck SCC. Patients were evaluated in subgroups based on PD-L1 expression. In median survival, pembrolizumab + chemotherapy outperformed cetuximab + chemotherapy in all patient subgroups regardless of PD-L1 expression. In the PD-L1 CPS 1-19 subgroup, pembrolizumab alone slightly outperformed cetuximab + chemotherapy. In the PD-L1 CPS < 1 subgroup median survival was significantly lower with pembrolizumab alone.