The results of a new study found that patients receiving chemotherapy and radiation therapy simultaneously for abdominopelvic cancers were at higher risk of developing secondary sarcoma compared with patients who received surgery or radiation therapy alone for their treatment. "To our knowledge, this is the largest and most comprehensive series to estimate the risk of secondary sarcoma in a large group of adult patients treated for multiple primary abdominopelvic cancers...

In advanced gastric cancer and gastroesophageal junction cancer, treatment options remain limited. Results of the phase 3 CheckMate 649 and phase 2/3 ATTRACTION-4 studies, both of which investigated chemotherapy with or without nivolumab in patients with previously untreated unresectable, advanced, or recurrent gastric/gastroesophageal junction (G/GEJ) cancer, were recently presented at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020. CheckMate 649 reported significant impr...

Data from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-062 trial have revealed that in patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction (G/GEJ) cancer with a programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) combined positive score (CPS) of 1 or greater, first-line pembrolizumab, alone or in combination with chemotherapy, is noninferior but not superior to chemotherapy alone. In patients with a PD-L1 CPS of 10 or greater, pembrolizumab monotherapy showed a possible benefit, but one that cannot be considered definitive o...

The FDA has now approved azacitidine tablets (Onureg®, Celgene) for the maintenance treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) after intensive induction chemotherapy in patients who are unable to complete intensive curative therapy and who have achieved complete remission (CR) or complete remission with incomplete blood count recovery (CRi). The approval was based on data from the multicenter, double-blind phase 3 QUAZAR trial (NCT01757535), in which 472 patients with AML who achieved CR or CRi w...

For patients with stage III epithelial ovarian cancer, adding hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) to primary cytoreductive surgery (PCS) increases survival compared with PCS alone, according to results of a retrospective study now published in JAMA Network Open. Of all the gynecologic cancers, ovarian cancer is the most deadly. This may be due in part to the fact that in almost 70% of cases, by the time a patient is first diagnosed with ovarian cancer, it has already spread beyond ...