News

The FDA has placed a clinical hold on a phase II study exploring the CD19-targeted CAR-T cell therapy JCAR015 for adult patients with relapsed or refractory B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The European Commission has approved brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) for use as a consolidation therapy following autologous stem cell transplantation in patients with CD30-positive Hodgkin lymphoma at risk of relapse or progression.

The targeted therapy drug everolimus may be safely combined with R-CHOP in newly diagnosed, untreated diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

An ongoing phase II, four-cohort trial involving capmatinib (INC280), an oral MET inhibitor, will determine the clinical activity of the agent in pretreated patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who have undergone one or two lines of therapy.

Three-fourths of patients with advanced lymphoma achieved durable objective responses to treatment with chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy targeting CD19 even after a low-dose chemotherapy conditioning regimen.

As part of our coverage of the annual ASCO conference, we spoke with Dr. Veronika Bachanova on the role of NK cell therapy in hematologic malignancies.

Alectinib improved progression-free survival by 66% compared with the current standard crizotinib as initial inhibitor therapy in patients with advanced or recurrent ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer.

Treatment with single-agent nivolumab improved overall survival and objective response rates compared with investigator's choice of therapy for patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

A novel antiangiogenic gene therapy, added to bevacizumab, led to significantly better overall survival in recurrent glioblastoma multiforme compared with historical patients treated with bevacizumab alone, a small phase II trial showed.

During a session on the second day of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, experts discussed treating patients with chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells).

The majority of patients with clear cell renal cancer saw benefit from pazopanib therapy prior to undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy, according to a single-arm study.

The EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has granted a positive opinion to brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) for use as a consolidation therapy following autologous stem cell transplantation in patients with CD30-positive Hodgkin lymphoma at risk of relapse or progression.

Gene therapy first hit the radar of retinal physicians in 2008, when three independent research groups reported that patients with Leber's congenital amaurosis, a rare genetic retinal disease, had been successfully treated using gene therapy with adeno-associated virus (AAV).

The FDA has approved the combination of lenvatinib and everolimus as a treatment for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) following prior anti–angiogeneic therapy

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) may provide an unlimited number of phenotypically defined, functional and expandable autologous antigen-specific T cells with the characteristics needed to combat cancer.

Mark Ball, MD, discusses the clinical, pathological, and genomic profiles of exceptional responders to anti–PD-1 therapy in renal cell carcinoma, the future of immunotherapy, and what significance genomic testing may hold.

Some patients with mantle cell lymphoma may safely defer treatment for their disease, and, in fact, deferral of therapy was an independent predictor of overall survival.

Researchers in Seattle are reporting success with an experimental therapy that modifies T cells to express a CD19-specific chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) to treat B-cell malignancies.

Gene therapy with the CRISPR/Cas9 system corrects mutations identified with patient-specific models that use stem cells generated from skin.

Study results show that transplanted human retinal stem cells rescue photoreceptors in rabbit retinas for 8 months.

Chris Barker, MD, discusses a study investigating radiation therapy plus the hedgehog pathway inhibitor vismodegib (Erivedge) in patients with locally advanced basal cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Results from a series of preclinical studies are providing proof of principle that gene targeting using CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology can prevent or treat glaucoma associated with mutations in the myocilin (MYOC) gene.

A small study in 30 patients with advanced B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia has further strengthened the faith in the potential of chimeric antigen receptor or CAR-T cell therapy.

First-line osimertinib, a targeted therapy against EGFR mutations, was found to be effective in patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer, resulting in a 77% overall response rate.

Clinicians now have a new targeted therapy option for treating patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have received prior antiangiogenic therapy.

The FDA has granted a breakthrough therapy designation to nivolumab as a single-agent treatment for patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck following a platinum-based therapy.

The FDA has approved cabozantinib as a treatment for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma who have received prior antiangiogenic therapy.

Patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma treated with pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) as a first-line therapy had durable responses in a phase II clinical trial.

Anti–PD-1 therapy in the first-line induced responses in more than half of patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma, with encouraging durability to the responses.

Treatment with single-agent nivolumab reduced the risk of death by 30% and double 1-year overall survival rates compared investigator's choice of therapy for patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.