Oncology

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offers the promise of more effective treatments and better outcomes, and it’s time that we collaborate to keep outdated clinical and reimbursement practices from slowing it down.

In this week's episode of Tuning Into The C-Suite podcast, MHE's Briana Contreras chatted with David Calabrese, R.Ph, MHP, who is senior vice president and chief pharmacy officer of pharmacy care services company, OptumRx. David is also a member of Managed Healthcare Executives’ Editorial Advisory Board. During the discussion, he shared the OptumRx Quarter 2 Drug Pipeline Insights Report of 2020. Some of the information shared includes the three notable drugs currently being reviewed or those that have been recently approved by the FDA. Also discussed were any interesting industry trends to watch for.

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.

Kathi Mooney, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, interim senior director of population sciences at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, discusses hospital-at-home programs and how they are common in countries with single-payer systems and include patients with conditions ranging from cellulitis to heart failure. The benefits include the familiarity of home surroundings, avoidance of hospital-acquired infection, and less de-conditioning from being in a hospital bed.

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?