ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Twenty practices in three countries elevated their standard of care and achieved Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) Certification in the second quarter of this year. The American Society of Clinical Oncology, Inc. (ASCO®) commends these practices that have demonstrated their commitment to providing the highest-quality oncology care to their patients, communities, and contemporaries.
July 16, 2019
July 10, 2019
Today, organizations representing patients, providers, medical researchers, survivors, and their families joined together to call on Congress to improve access to clinical trials for patients with life-threatening diseases. The coalition, which is made up of 86 supporting organizations, is urging Congress to pass the bipartisan CLINICAL TREATMENT Act (H.R. 913), which would guarantee coverage of the routine care costs of clinical trial participation for Medicaid enrollees with a life-threatening condition.
June 28, 2019
“We applaud the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for its recommendations on cancer control in the United States. The report examines the oncology community’s efforts over the past 10 years and lays out a comprehensive path for addressing the complex issues facing the entire cancer care continuum, from government agencies to the individual physician.
June 3, 2019
CHICAGO – The randomized OSLO-COMET trial found that laparoscopic surgery did not change chances of survival, when compared to open surgery, to remove metastases that had spread to the liver in patients with colorectal cancer. Overall, patients lived more than 6.5 years after surgery, regardless of whether it was laparoscopic or open.
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 3, 2019
CHICAGO – A study looking at 10,500 health records of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (aNSCLC) patients from ASCO’s CancerLinQ database found that the use of expanded clinical trial inclusion criteria, as proposed by ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research in 2017, would nearly double the percentage of patients eligible to enroll in clinical trials – from 52.3% to 98.5%. The expanded clinical trial eligibility criteria would allow aNSCLC patients with brain metastases, previous or concurrent cancers, and limited kidney function to enroll in clinical trials.
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 3, 2019
CHICAGO – A single arm, phase II clinical trial of 125 patients showed treatment with enfortumab vedotin (EV) – a new agent targeting Nectin-4, a protein found in 97% of urothelial cancers – produced responses in 44% of patients with locally advanced or metastatic forms of urothelial cancer. Patients had previously been treated with platinum chemotherapy and a PD-1 or PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor, but the cancer had progressed despite these treatments.
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 3, 2019
CHICAGO – A recent survey of U.S.-based physician members of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology found that 64% of respondents experienced sexual harassment in training or practice; among women, the rate was 71% and among men it was 51%. Only 10% reported the incident(s) to officials. In addition, women were more likely than men to respond that gender affected career advancement (34% vs. 10%) and played a role in setting their salary (42% vs. 6%).
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 2, 2019
CHICAGO – A new study analyzing demographic statistics from the National Cancer Database identified multiple socio-economic factors, including private insurance, living in a regionally higher-income area, and receiving treatment in certain practice settings as being associated with longer survival for patients with multiple myeloma. Furthermore, researchers found that neither race (black or white) nor gender had a significant impact on survival.
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 2, 2019
CHICAGO – Previous racial disparities in timely cancer treatment between African American and white patients practically disappeared in states where Medicaid access was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a new analysis of electronic health records of over 30,000 patients. The study, based on data from Flatiron Health, also found that after Medicaid expansion African American patients had the greatest rate of improvement in receiving care within 30 days of diagnosis as compared with white patients.
These findings will be presented in ASCO’s Plenary Session, which features four studies of great importance to patient care, out of the 5,600 abstracts accepted to the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 2, 2019
CHICAGO – An analysis of data from the National Cancer Database found that after implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), ovarian cancer was diagnosed and treated at an earlier stage among women under age 65. More women also received treatment within 30 days of diagnosis, thereby increasing chances of survival.
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 2, 2019
CHICAGO – An interim analysis of the international randomized, phase III ENZAMET trial found that 80% of men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC) who received the non-steroidal anti-androgen (NSAA) medicine enzalutamide (Xtandi) along with the standard of care treatment were alive after 3 years compared with 72% of men who received other NSAAs along with standard treatment. The study was led by the Australian and New Zealand Urogenital and Prostate (ANZUP) Cancer Trials Group.
These findings will be presented in ASCO’s Plenary Session, which features four studies of great importance to patient care, out of the 5,600 abstracts accepted to the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 2, 2019
CHICAGO – The randomized, phase III POLO trial found that maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) significantly delayed the progression of metastatic pancreatic cancer in patients with BRCA gene mutations compared with placebo (median progression-free survival: 7.4 months vs. 3.8 months, respectively). In the trial, olaparib was administered to patients with cancer that had not progressed after completion of initial platinum-based chemotherapy, and after two years, 22.1% of people receiving olaparib had no disease progression vs. 9.6% for those treated with placebo. While overall survival data are not yet mature, this is a significant advance given that the median survival of metastatic pancreatic cancer is currently less than one year.
These findings will be presented in ASCO’s Plenary Session, which features four studies of great importance to patient care, out of the 5,600 abstracts accepted to the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
June 1, 2019
CHICAGO – Five-year data from the phase Ib KEYNOTE-001 clinical trial show that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was safe and effective and substantially increased overall survival for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (aNSCLC). Specifically, 23.2% of people who had not previously been treated with chemotherapy and 15.5% of previously-treated patients were alive after five years, with the greatest benefit observed in patients with higher PD-L1 expression. This represents a marked improvement over 5-year survival rates from the pre-immunotherapy era, which averaged 5.5% for aNSCLC. This is the longest follow-up study to date of people with aNSCLC treated with pembrolizumab, according to the researchers.
The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting and is in press with the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
June 1, 2019
Chicago — In an effort to advance cancer data sharing and improve the quality and coordination of patient care, three of the nation’s leading health and technology organizations have established a core set of data elements and recommended technical specifications (the Minimal Common Oncology Data Elements, or “mCODE”) that are essential for capturing and reporting the characteristics, treatments, and outcomes of every cancer patient and should be contained in each patient’s electronic health record (EHR). The mCODE™ initiative, a collaboration between the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Inc. (ASCO®), its wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary CancerLinQ LLC, the MITRE Corporation, and the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Foundation (Alliance Foundation), released the initial set of common cancer data standards and specifications today at ASCO’s 2019 Annual Meeting in Chicago and published them online at mCODEinitiative.org.
June 1, 2019
CHICAGO – The international, randomized phase III MONALEESA-7 trial found that adding ribociclib to standard-of-care endocrine therapy significantly improved overall survival for premenopausal women with advanced HR-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer compared with endocrine therapy alone. After 42 months of follow-up, the survival rate was 70% for women who took the combination therapy compared with 46% for women who received endocrine therapy only. Advanced breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women 20 to 59 years of age.
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