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The robust performance of drugs that target ALK and EGFR has made testing for mutations in these genes routine. But as the cost of sequencing plummets, some clinicians believe that it makes more...

Therapies targeted at the specific genetics of a patient's lung cancer have proved harder to realize than expected.

Ramaswamy Govindan vividly remembers the first time he treated his patients with...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

Oncologists confront numerous hurdles as they attempt to apply the new cancer prognostic and predictive tests. Among them are the complexities of gene arrays that...

Mark Pegram, M.D.

The use of cutting-edge technology and bioinformatics to inform clinical decision-making in oncology is still a ways off, according to Mark Pegram, MD, the Susy Yuan-Huey Hung...

MCED explains why glioblastoma (the most common primary brain tumor) patients who have favorable responses to bevacizumab (Avastin) develop early calcifications in the tumor bed while glioblastoma...

Advanced imaging techniques may be able to distinguish which patients' tumors will respond to treatment with anti-angiogenic drugs and which will not. In patients newly diagnosed with the dangerous...

A new population-based study has found that patients with glioblastoma who died in 2010, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of bevacizumab, had lived significantly longer than...

It's neither. It gives a much better understanding of what happens when Avastin is used. In pharmacology, the term agonist-antagonist is used to refer to a drug which exhibits some properties of an...

J Intern Med. 2008 Sep;264(3):275-87.

Cell culture detection of microvascular cell death in clinical specimens of human neoplasms and peripheral blood.

Weisenthal LM, Patel N, Rueff-Weisenthal...

Cyclin-dependent kinases as therapeutic targets: Examination of palbociclib (PD 0332991) and flavopiridol in human tumor primary culture microspheroids.

Author(s): Robert Alan Nagourney, Eknath A....

Beth Overmoyer, M.D.
Director
Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program
Dana Farber Cancer Institute

The treatment of inflammatory breast cancer requires a “tri-modality” approach, meaning that all...

The shortened daylight of a Maine winter may make for long, dark nights -- but it has shone a light on a novel experimental approach to fighting inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), an especially deadly...

Silvana Martino, M.D.
Director of Breast Cancer Research and Education
The Angeles Clinic Foundation

This is a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. Its name is derived from the fact...

Treatment with palbociclib combined with letrozole resulted in significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) compared with letrozole alone in patients with hormone receptor-positive...

These kinase inhibitors can work across various types of cancer, but often only extend life by around three to six months. However, researchers believe they can unlock the true potential of these...

In an early trial, an experimental breast cancer drug stopped disease growth and shrank tumors by more than 30 percent in some patients.

The pill, bemaciclib, was safe and well-tolerated by women...

Palbociclib doubled the average amount of progression-free survival (PFS) time among patients with advanced breast cancer. But in the first detailed glimpse of its impact on overall survival (OS) - a...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

A study conducted by Canadian investigators and reported in the September 1, 2013 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology examined the impact of Metformin use on...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

The term “triple negative breast cancer” (TNBC) is applied to a subtype of breast cancers that do not express the estrogen or progesterone receptors. Nor do they...

Deferred use of bevacizumab for recurrent glioblastoma is not associated with diminished efficacy

David E. Piccioni, Julia Selfridge, Reema R. Mody, Reshmi Chowdhury, Sichen Li, Shadi Lalezari,...

Ludwig researchers have elucidated a key mechanism by which cancer cells change how they metabolize glucose to generate the energy and raw materials required to sustain runaway growth.

Published...

A novel drug for patients with brain cancer, 2B3-101, has shown preliminary positive results. The Dutch biotech to-BBB has developed Glutathione PEGylated liposomal doxorubicin (2B3-101) and...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

The ethical standards that govern human experimentation have become an important topic of discussion. Clinical trials are conducted to resolve medical questions while...

A proposal for reformulating the foundations of biology, based on the 2nd law of thermodynamics and which is in sharp contrast to the prevailing genetic view, is published in the Journal of the Royal...

Pharmacogenomics can be defined as the study of how a person’s genetic makeup determines response to a drug. Although any number of labs and techniques can detect mutant genes, this area of...

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., and Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2013; 369:2369-2371December 19, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1314561

Article

This year marks 60 years since James Watson...

(Reuters Health) - Routine genome-wide screening of cancers is likely a long way off, a new paper says.

The technology, known as next-generation sequencing, promises to revolutionize doctors'...

Replies to comments regarding personalized cancer treatment, as published in the December 15, 2013 "ASCO Post" (American Society of Clinical Oncology publication).

By Larry Weisenthal, MD...

The addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard adjuvant therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer failed to improve invasive disease-free survival (iDFS) in a randomized clinical trial.

Patients...

The first presentation of the BEATRICE trial, evaluating adjuvant Avastin with a physician’s choice taxane- and/or anthracycline-based regimen in patients with triple-negative disease, was at the...

Direct anti-tumor and anti-vascular effects were studied of Tykerb, Nexavar and Avastin in fresh biopsy specimens of breast cancer and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Breast...

All women in the BEATRICE trial with triple negative early breast cancer received chemotherapy. One half were also given Avastin (bevacizumab). There was no difference in outcome with or without...

A new study strengthens the evidence that pathological complete response (pCR) is a good surrogate marker of longer-term efficacy in the neoadjuvant drug treatment of breast cancer.

pCR, which is...

Robert A. Nagourny, M.D.
Rational Therapeutics

A study published in the October 20 Journal of Clinical Oncology (Use of early tumor shrinkage to predict long-term outcome in metastatic colorectal...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.
Medical and Laboratory Director
Rational Therapeutics, Inc.
Long Beach, California

I recently had an interesting conversation with a physician regarding her patient...

As our understanding of breast cancer biology continues to advance, this disease has come to be understood as many different diseases. Original categorizations based on histology lead to lobular...

Direct anti-tumor and anti-vascular effects were studied of Tykerb, Nexavar and Avastin in fresh biopsy specimens of breast cancer and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Breast...

A study was presented at the 2009 American Society of Clinical Onocology (ASCO) breast cancer symposium in San Francisco about progress in drug selection through the use of cell-based functional...

Larry Weisenthal, MD, PhD

The last issue of The ASCO Post reports encouraging results with platinum-based treatment of triple-negative breast cancer (September 15, 2013).

We predicted these...

At ESMO, experts assess the clinical use of genome sequencing

Vienna—Should oncologists begin using deep genome sequencing in their clinical practice? Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies...

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have come a long way since 1977 when Frederick Sanger developed chain-termination sequencing, but are they ready for prime time in drug selection?
...

There is the issue about cell-lines vs fresh cells. Cell-lines have always played, and continue to play, an important role in drug screening and drug development.

The problem is that cell-lines do...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

During the 1960s, 70s and into the 90s, a field of investigation arose that examined buyer’s practices when it came to the consumption of goods and services. Algorithms...

Accuracy and clinical utility of in vitro cytometric profiling to personalize chemotherapy: Preliminary findings of a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Sub-category: Molecular Diagnostics and...

Needle biopsies assay on 33 pretherapy primaries and 17 mBCs. NGS of 3,230 exons in 182 cancer-related genes and 37 introns in 14 genes. 117 "potentially" targetable driver mutations were identified...

Researchers have realized that cancer biology is driven by signaling pathways. Cells speak to each other and the messages they send are interpreted via intracellular pathways known as signal...

According to Dr. Eric Topol, Director, Scripps Translational Science Institute, recent studies have highlighted the potential value of whole genome or exome sequencing to precisely guide therapy for...

Adding bevacizumab to frontline radiation and temozolomide therapy for glioblastoma produced disappointing results in a double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III trial.

Bevacizumab (Avastin)...

As for the quality-of-life and symptom end points of the RTOG 0825 trial, Dr. Tsien said she agrees that the effects of Avastin in reducing vascular permeability and edema might lead to a "pseudo...

A heated debate has again developed over the use of Avastin for the treatment of glioblastoma, this time in the front-line setting in combination with chemotherapy in newly diagnosed patients.
...

The angiogenesis inhibitor bevacizumab (Avastin) failed to increase overall survival (OS) or statistically significant progression-free survival (PFS) for glioblastoma patients in the frontline...

[Wow! This is blockbuster news! In one study, patients who were expected to benefit the most from Avastin based on "genetic" testing had the worst survival rates.]

(AP) - New research raises fresh...

The drug bevacizumab, also known by the trade name Avastin, shrinks tumors briefly in patients with an aggressive brain cancer known as glioblastoma multiforme, but then they often grow again and...

New research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center shows that patients suffering from aggressive brain tumors can be effectively treated with smaller radiation fields to spare the rest of the brain...

John de Groot, M.D.
MD Anderson Cancer Center

Gliomas. These primary brain tumors arise within the brain, but we don't know the cell of origin.

There are multiple grades of gliomas -- grade...

Lawrence Recht, M.D.
Director of Adult Neuro-Oncology
Stanford Cancer Institute

The foundation for glioblastoma treatment includes surgery, radiation and the chemotherapeutic agent,...

Incidence and risk of central nervous system metastases as site of first recurrence in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer treated with adjuvant trastuzumab

E. M. Olson 1, M. Abdel-Rasoul 1,...

During the past decade it has been frequently observed that patients with breast cancer treated with a taxane-containing chemotherapy regimen, either in the adjuvant setting or in the metastatic...

Researchers have been focusing on the development of sensitive assays that allow the specific detection of single tumor cells or small amounts of cell-free tumor DNA in the peripheral blood of cancer...

Circulating cell-free DNA carrying tumor-specific alterations (circulating tumor DNA) is more effective at monitoring metastatic breast cancer than current biomarkers approved by the US Food and Drug...

The area of pharmacogenomics was ripe for proprietary tests invented alongside a drug and owned by the drug developer and/or a partner in the diagnostic field.

HercepTest uses immunohistochemistry...

Dako, an Agilent Technologies Company and worldwide provider of cancer diagnostics, announced today it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the addition of Kadcyla in...

Herman Kattlove, M.D.

New drugs are beginning to make a dent in the invincibility of metastatic prostate cancer. The basis for these advances began with a professor at my medical school, Charles...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

An interesting paper was published in the January 10 NEJM (Abiraterone in Metastatic Prostate Cancer with Previous Chemotherapy, Ryan et al). The study randomized 1,088...

Abiraterone in Metastatic Prostate Cancer without Previous Chemotherapy

Charles J. Ryan, M.D., Matthew R. Smith, M.D., Ph.D., Johann S. de Bono, M.B., Ch.B., Ph.D., Arturo Molina, M.D.,...

Abiraterone in Metastatic Prostate Cancer Without Previous Chemotherapy

N Engl J Med. 2012 Dec 10; CJ Ryan, MR Smith, JS de Bono, et al

(OncologySTAT) - Abiraterone plus prednisone...

According to Dr. Bruce Roth, Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, primary hormonal therapy, either by surgical removal of the testicles or the administration of an...

I've heard from breast cancer patients who were bumped from the T-DM1 clinical trial because of disease progression, which meant that their cancer was growing despite the drug. Bumped off the trial...

The FDA just approved the new treatment for about 20% of breast cancer patients who have a particular form of the disease that overproduces the protein HER-2.

The drug now called Kadcyla, combines...

Cell-lines (as described in the article above) are useful for experimentation in labs as they are always available to researchers as a product and do not require harvesting (acquiring of tissue from...

In laboratory studies, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a way to personalize chemotherapy drug selection for cancer patients by using cell lines created from their...

Robert A. Nagourney, M.D.

It was during the last weeks of December that a particularly interesting article crossed my desk. The study done by a group from Toronto, Canada, is entitled Variable...

(ChemotherapyAdvisor) - The appearance of new genetic mutations during cancer therapy has long been correlated with drug resistance, treatment failure, and ultimately, relapse. But using single-cell...

This is the second significant cancer advance out of Toronto hospitals just this month, and the second to home in on the healthy tissues that lie in proximity to tumours.

In a major breakthrough,...

In a major breakthrough that will change the way cancer is studied and treated in the future, Toronto scientists have discovered a key reason why many tumours may return after chemotherapy.

In a...