March 2021

Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced that the European Commission (EC) has approved an expanded label for KEYTRUDA, Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, as monotherapy for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients aged 3 years and older with relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin Read more…

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) today announced patient-reported outcomes (PRO) for the investigational use of Verzenio® (abemaciclib) in combination with standard adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET) for the treatment of hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) high risk early breast cancer (EBC). The PRO analysis included patients in both Read more…

“Libtayo monotherapy is the first medicine to demonstrate an improvement in overall survival in women with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer following progression on platinum-based chemotherapy in a Phase 3 trial,” said Krishnansu S. Tewari, M.D., Professor and Director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of California, Irvine Read more…

A high rate of genetic mutations within a tumor, known as high tumor mutation burden (TMB), was only useful for predicting clinical responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors in a subset of cancer types, according to a new study led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Read More…

Margetuximab appears to be more effective than trastuzumab, each with chemotherapy, in women with pretreated ERBB2 (formerly HER2)-positive advanced breast cancer, which remains largely incurable, according to initial results of the SOPHIA trial. Read More…

he addition of palbociclib to a 2-year course of adjuvant endocrine therapy did not meaningfully improve invasive disease-free survival (DFS) over endocrine therapy alone in patients with early-stage breast cancer, according to an interim analysis of a phase 3 trial published in The Lancet Oncology. These findings suggest the combination should not be Read more…

Breast cancer has overtaken lung cancer as the most common form of the disease, accounting for nearly 12% of new cases each year worldwide, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. “For the first time, breast cancer now constitutes the most commonly occurring cancer globally,” Andre Ilbawi, a cancer specialist Read more…

The FDA has granted breakthrough therapy designation to the investigational drug tipifarnib for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic HRAS-mutant head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) with variant allele frequency of at least 20% following disease progression on platinum-based chemotherapy, according to the drug’s developer, Kura Oncology. Read Read more…

In November 2018, the Minimally Invasive GI Surgery team at Cedars-Sinai was approached by Youram Nassir, MD, a referring oncologist, to look into a challenging and complex case of a male patient in his early 50s who had been diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. Read More…

Anthracyclines and taxanes are being used as a standard treatment for breast cancer diagnosed during pregnancy. These chemotherapy regimens allow the continuation of pregnancy without delaying cancer treatment with relatively good maternal and neonatal outcomes. However, their effects on placental function and fetal development are not completely understood. Maternal serum Read more…