CHICAGO – Data from a randomized phase III trial showing that many people with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) can avoid surgery to remove the kidney "flipped the existing paradigm," said Sumanta Pal, medical oncologist with Duarte, Calif.-based City of Hope. "Even in the context of patients with advanced disease that has spread to the lungs, liver and other sites [cases account for about 20 percent of all worldwide], we've been removing the kidney, but admittedly this isn't based on a very high level of evidence until now," he said.

CHICAGO – Phase III Impower131 findings with Tecentriq (atezolizumab, Roche Holding AG) when combined with chemotherapy in squamous-cell lung cancer, along with separate discoveries related to a would-be new blood test for early stage lung cancer emerged at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting.

CHICAGO – "It's remarkable to me how the pediatric oncology community manages to continue to make great strides by using old drugs in new ways," American Society of Oncology (ASCO) Chief Medical Officer Richard Schilsky said during the group's meeting, as he spoke about the first advance in 30 years in rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a rare cancer of the muscle tissue that strikes children.

CHICAGO – Rushed oncologists may feel they don't have time to talk through the concerns of older patients with them, and a systematic geriatric assessment (GA) could significantly change satisfaction all around, according to new research detailed at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting by lead study author Supriya Gupta Mohile, Wehrheim professor of medicine at the University of Rochester in New York.

CHICAGO – One of the more eye-opening data rollouts at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) involved an analysis of registry data from a California hospital system showing that women with head and neck cancer were, compared to men, less likely to receive intensive chemotherapy (35 percent vs. 46 percent) and radiation (60 percent vs. 70 percent) relative to men. But, controlling for age and other serious medical conditions, a mathematical model demonstrated that the ratio of cancer to noncancer mortality was two times higher for women than the ratio for men.

CHICAGO – The last full day of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting included hopeful data regarding pancreatic tumors, long known as one of the more aggressive and intractable types. One dataset showed chemotherapy beat standard-of-care (SOC) Gemzar (gemcitabine, Eli Lilly and Co.), which has been favored for 10 years, and the other demonstrated that patients given chemo with radiotherapy before surgery conferred better disease-free survival than starting therapy with resection, the current SOC.

CHICAGO – Speaking at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, John Heymach of Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center, called new phase III data with Merck & Co. Inc.'s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) "a double whammy" of upside for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients: non-chemotherapy benefit with lower side effects. "An era in which chemotherapy was the only option for NSCLC patients has drawn to a close," he said.

CHICAGO – A call for trials more inclusive of racial and ethnic minorities opened the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), as researchers unveiled the first prospective study of the hormonal therapy Zytiga (abiraterone) from Johnson & Johnson for advanced prostate cancer (PC) in black men vs. white men. Findings ratified what clinicians already had observed retrospectively: Black men respond better to the drug than white men.

After the approval by the FDA in February of Apadaz for short-term management of acute pain, eyes turned to Coralville, Iowa-based Kempharm Inc.'s partnering talks, which are expected to yield fruit by the year's end. (See BioWorld, Feb. 26, 2018.)

Excitement ran high last week – at the company, anyway – when Montreal-based Clementia Pharmaceuticals Inc. rolled out positive data from part B of its ongoing phase II trial testing palovarotene, a retinoic acid receptor gamma agonist, to treat the rare, life-threatening genetic bone disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP).