Articles related to CLINICAL TRIALS

In an editorial accompanying the final results of the TOURMALINE-MM1 study, Drs. D’Souza and Lonial question whether overall survival (OS) is “still the gold standard for demonstrating the value of a novel agent in phase III trials early in the disease course given the current treatment landscape.”

According to the results of a study published in Annals of Hematology, two novel analytical approaches for detecting malignant plasma cell clones appear to accurately indicate the course of multiple myeloma (MM) and may be valuable for monitoring patients with serologically nontrackable disease.

The BILCAP study established capecitabine as the adjuvant standard of care for patients after curatively resected biliary tract cancer (BTC). This publication presents the long-term data of that study. In the intention-to-treat analysis, the median OS was 49.6 months in the capecitabine group compared with 36.1 months in the observation group.

Short-term radiotherapy with preoperative chemotherapy followed by surgery (total neoadjuvant therapy, TNT) was compared to standard long-term chemoradiotherapy in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer. At a median follow-up of 35.0 months, 3-year DFS was 64.5% and 62.3% in the TNT and CRT groups, respectively. There was no significant difference in metastasis-free survival or locoregional recurrence, but the TNT group had better 3-year overall survival than the CRT group (86.5% v 75.1%; P = .033). Treatment effects on DFS and overall survival were similar regardless of prognostic factors. The prevalence of acute grade III-V toxicities during preoperative treatment was 26.5% in the TNT group versus 12.6% in the CRT group (P < .001).

This retrospective cohort study included 2,833 patients with stage IB to IIIA NSCLC who enrolled in the Adjuvant Lung Cancer Enrichment Marker Identification and Sequencing Trial (ALCHEMIST) screening study from August 18, 2014, to April 1, 2019. Although 93% received surgical resection, just 53% had adequate lymph node dissection and 57% received any adjuvant chemotherapy. The authors suggest more effort at optimizing use of proven therapies in this patient population.

This study evaluates the effect of including a patient-reported electronic symptom scoring system in terms of outcomes. Symptoms scored included pain, fatigue, disturbed sleep, shortness of breath, and coughing. The intervention group reported fewer symptom threshold events than the control group in hospital and 4 weeks post discharge.