Oncology

Gilead's Veklury gets full approval; AstraZeneca's Tagrisso heads toward second indication in NSCLC; another use for experimental antifungal therapy.

The Johns Hopkins professor and new MHE editorial advisory board member lauds the effects of the Affordable Care Act but holds out for a program that “gets every human being the healthcare that every human being deserves,” in this second part of a four-part series.

COVID-19 is certainly important. But oncologists, people with cancer, and complex ecosystem of cancer care in the U.S. are grappling with other important issues such as reimbursement, distorted incentives, the implications of the massive amount of data that is available, and, of course, high costs and prices. Included are thoughts from five experts on these challenges and how they might be met.

Financial Toxicity is a growing concern for many cancer patients and caregivers, and with the continued rise in treatment costs, it can no longer be ignored.

Actions from FDA this week include approval of a second targted treatment for a Duchenne muscular dystrophy mutation, and filings in COVID-19 and blood disorders.

Underrepresentation of blacks in clinical trials is garnering special attention.

The fast-evolving field of precision medicine offers the promise of more effective treatments and better outcomes, and it’s time that we collaborate to keep outdated clinical and reimbursement practices from slowing it down.

FDA approves Merck's Keytruda for certain patients with metastatic colorectal cancer a month after study results were presented at ASCO.

An off-the-shelf version of CAR-T therapy that uses the immune system’s natural killer cells is a possibility. But the high price of CAR-T shows some doubts about how widely it can be used.

During the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Annual Meeting, Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, and Genentech presented plans for the Prospective Clinico-Genomic study (PCG), a low-interventional pilot that will use a technology-enabled prospective data collection platform to simplify data collection for patients with lung cancer being treated through clinical trials. The idea is collect blood samples using Foundation Medicine’s liquid biopsy assay and analyze the results through Flatiron’s platform, to see if genomic changes can be detected over the course of cancer treatment. Bobby Green, MD, chief medical officer for Flatiron Health, spoke with Managed Healthcare Executive®.

During the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Annual Meeting, Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, and Genentech presented plans for the Prospective Clinico-Genomic study (PCG), a low-interventional pilot that will use a technology-enabled prospective data collection platform to simplify data collection for patients with lung cancer being treated through clinical trials.

Jeffrey Skolnik, MD, vice president, clinical development of Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc Discusses Glioblastoma Treatment in ASCO interview.

Adrian Kilcoyne MD MBA MPH, vice president, US Medical Affairs and HEOR, oncology, AstraZeneca, discusses a paradigm shift in lung cancer treatment due to the overwhelming efficacy of the EGFR-TKI treatment.

Tagrisso, the targeted therapy made by AstraZeneca, could become the treatment of choice for the majority of lung cancer patients with mutations in a certain gene who are treated after surgery, based on findings presented this past weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

Keytruda, the immunotherapy with more than 20 indications in both blood and solid tumor cancers, doubled rates of progression-free survival for certain patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, according to results presented Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

During the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Annual Meeting, Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, and Genentech will be presenting plans for the Prospective Clinico-Genomic study (PCG), a low-interventional pilot that will use a technology-enabled prospective data collection platform to simplify data collection for patients with lung cancer being treated through clinical trials. The idea is collect blood samples using Foundation Medicine’s liquid biopsy assay and analyze the results through Flatiron’s platform, to see if genomic changes can be detected over the course of cancer treatment. Bobby Green, MD, chief medical officer for Flatiron Health, spoke with Managed Healthcare Executive®.

Anna Lee, lead author of the abstract: Changes in Cancer Mortality Rates After the Adoption of the Affordable Care Act, discusses her study with MHE. Lee presented her study May 29 during ASCO 2020's virtual conference.

Sara Douglas, lead investigator of the Abstract: Video Conference Intervention for Distance Caregivers (DCGs) of Patients with Cancer: Improving Psychological Outcomes, discusses her study with MHE's Briana Contreras which will be presented at ASCO 2020.

A fresh look at MURANO data, released this week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Annual meeting, shows the poor outcomes that result when patients halt treatment for good, and highlight the need to manage doses carefully to avoid toxicity.

The 2020 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology that launches today will feature the first results from CITYSCAPE, a trial involving a novel immunotherapy approach in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This phase 2 trial is the first to combine the immunotherapy tiragolumab with atelzolizumab (Tecentriq), the monoclonal antibody that targets the programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1).

Cardinal Health Oncology survey shows oncologists want more training to care for growing number of cancer survivors.

Patients and their oncologists are weighing the pros and cons of delaying treatment. Once the outbreak subsides, how might the practice of oncology change?

Videoconferencing reduced anxiety and stress among “distance caregivers,” according to the results of randomized trial scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act resulted in a decrease in cancer mortality rates that translated into 785 fewer cancer deaths in 2017 expansion states, according to results of a study scheduled to be presented at annual meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which is now scheduled to be held virtually May 29-31 instead of in Chicago.

As president and CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Pat A. Basu, MD, MBA, looks to transform, improve, and influence cancer care on a large scale.