Dave Levitan

In this phase III trial, investigators assessed the clinical efficacy and safety of durvalumab with or without tremelimumab with etoposide and carboplatin or cisplatin chemotherapy followed by durvalumab with or without tremelimumab maintenance therapy compared with EP alone as first-line treatment in extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer.

A phase III trial found bevacizumab and pemetrexed were effective as a maintenance therapy, but researchers do not recommend it to treat non–small-cell lung cancer.

Lurbinectedin may represent a new treatment option as second-line therapy for patients with small-cell lung cancer.

A new study identified several T-cell antigens that are shared between tumor tissue and skin in a cohort of patients with non–small-cell lung cancer who were treated with anti–PD-1 therapy.

A 17-gene signature derived from circulating tumor cells was found to correlate with response to therapy in patients with breast cancer.

Alectinib offered significantly improved outcomes over standard chemotherapy in patients with ALK-positive non–small-cell lung cancer who had progressed on crizotinib therapy.

Maintenance therapy with pazopanib significantly prolonged progression-free survival in patients with extensive-disease small-cell lung cancer, but with toxicity.

NY-ESO-1 SPEAR T-cell therapy showed promising results and was reasonably safe in patients with synovial sarcoma, according to a new study. The addition of fludarabine may be important to achieving those positive results.

Novartis has submitted an application to the FDA to extend the indications for its CAR T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for its use in adult patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma who are not eligible for autologous stem cell transplant.

The second-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor dacomitinib significantly improved progression-free survival over gefitinib as a first-line therapy for EGFR–positive non–small-cell lung cancer, according to a randomized phase III trial.

Maintenance therapy with rituximab following autologous stem cell transplantation prolonged progression-free, event-free, and overall survival compared with observation in patients with mantle cell lymphoma, according to a new study.

Proton-beam therapy was found to be safe for patients with limited-stage small-cell lung cancer in the first prospective registry study of the therapy, with only a small number of high-grade toxicities.

A 70-gene expression score can identify women with indolent breast cancer at “ultralow” risk, according to a new study. Women with such a score have extremely low risk of disease-specific mortality over 20 years without systemic therapy.

Analysis from a phase III trial confirmed the prognostic value of a 16-gene recurrence score in patients with high-risk renal cell carcinoma undergoing adjuvant sunitinib therapy.

A small study found that it is feasible to detect BRCA1/2 reversion mutations in circulating cell-free DNA in patients with recurrent high-grade serous ovarian cancer. Those reversion mutations can help predict poor response to therapy in these patients.

CML patients who have high expression of the T-cell inhibitory receptor (CTLA-4)-ligand CD86 on plasmacytoid dendritic cells have a higher risk of relapsing after discontinuing therapy with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor.

A small study found that patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) who discontinue nivolumab due to immune-related adverse events can continue to derive benefit even after cessation of therapy.

First-line crizotinib therapy offered better intracranial disease control rate than chemotherapy in patients with ALK-positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and stable treated brain metastases.

The FDA granted breakthrough therapy designation to pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an anti-PD-1 agent for the treatment of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer who do not have EGFR mutations or ALK rearrangements.

Lymphocyte infusions are extremely effective therapy in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia who relapse after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and the timing of the infusion is relatively unimportant, according to a new study.

The addition of bevacizumab to erlotinib as first-line therapy yielded a significantly extended progression-free survival in patients with advanced EGFR-mutation-positive non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to a new phase II study.

A simple serum protein test can help guide treatment decisions between chemotherapy and erlotinib as second-line therapy for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, according to results of a phase III study presented at ASCO.

The combination of whole-brain radiation therapy and the EGFR inhibitor erlotinib showed a promising response rate and was well tolerated in a new phase II trial of patients with brain metastases from non-small-cell lung cancer.

Maintenance therapy with both gemcitabine and erlotinib improved progression-free survival in patients with non–small-cell lung cancer who were initially treated with cisplatin-gemcitabine induction chemotherapy, according to a new phase III trial.

Final results of the PARAMOUNT study in non-squamous non–small-cell lung cancer confirmed improved survival with continuation pemetrexed maintenance therapy.

Maintenance therapy with bevacizumab following combination therapy with bevacizumab, pemetrexed, and carboplatin could be an effective treatment for patients with advanced, nonsquamous non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to a new study.

The presence of a mutation in the MEK1 gene in melanoma patients does not cause resistance to BRAF inhibitor therapy in patients that also carry a BRAF mutation, according to a new study. Previously, experts believed that resistance to the drugs in BRAF-mutated melanoma patients could likely be blamed on the concurrent mutation in MEK1.