Despite many doing their research and learning all they can about the COVID-19 vaccine, patients may still come to you for more help. To assist your patients with their questions about the COVID-19 vaccine, here are 12 facts and insights shared by Sherita Golden, MD, MHS, chief diversity officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who specializes in diabetes, heart conditions and patterns of disease in diverse communities.

Messenger RNA (mRNA) is in the spotlight right now as the basis of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines for COVID-19. Thanks to this newfound prominence, its profile has been raised as a powerful tool in cancer research as well. As a courier of genetic information and protein assembler, mRNA can tell scientists which genes are active within a cell and produce the proteins that alert the immune system to the presence of cancer.

Oncology Medical Home (OMH) is a system of care delivery that features coordinated, efficient, accessible, and evidence-based care and includes a process for measurement of outcomes to facilitate continuous quality improvement. OMH can serve as a roadmap to guide how a practice delivers high-quality oncology care (a process of practice transformation) and support (but not define) new models of value-based reimbursement.

Is there a benefit for patients who receive celecoxib as an addition to conventional therapy for women with ERBB2 (formerly HER2)–negative primary breast cancer? A report on the Randomized European Celecoxib Trial (REACT), a phase 3, randomized, double-blind study conducted in 160 centers across the UK and Germany testing two years of adjuvant celecoxib vs. placebo among 2,639 patients recruited between 2007 and 2012, with follow-up 10 years after treatment completion.

According to a press release from April 2021, “the FDA is working toward issuing proposed product standards within the next year to ban menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and ban all characterizing flavors (including menthol) in cigars.” Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, said the agency had now “accumulated sufficient evidence establishing the addictiveness and harm from menthol,” which provides a “trajectory” toward ending tobacco-related disease and death.

Letermovir is a recently approved antiviral shown to decrease clinically significant cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection after hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) in a phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Appearing in Blood, the authors make two key points: 1) Letermovir prophylaxis may be associated with decreased polyfunctional CMV-specific T-cell immunity after HCT, and 2) COMPASS is an analytical tool that can effectively measure polyfunctional CMV-specific T-cell immune responses.