Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast

By Audio Medica News

As the leading authoritative, peer-reviewed audio source of oncology clinical news for clinicians and healthcare professionals, the AJO Podcast regularly brings you exclusive interviews with the world... more

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FAQs about Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast:

How many episodes does Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 216 episodes available.

Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast episodes:

March 29, 2018 Double Mastectomy: No Survival Gain for BRCA2 Mutation Carriers—AUDIO JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY
BARCELONA—Healthy women with BRCA1 mutations who opted for bilateral prophylactic mastectomy had their lives prolonged in comparison with similar women who did not. But in healthy women with the BRCA2 mutation the procedure did not improve overall survival even though it reduced their risk of breast cancer in the next ten years. These findings were reported at the 2018 European Breast Cancer Conference from an analysis of the Netherlands national Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Netherlands (HEBON) database
“From previous studies we already know that by [having] prophylactic mastectomy you reduce the risk of breast cancer very strongly, but it was not proven that as a consequence survival was better,” said first author Annette Hemskerk-Gerritsen PhD, a post-doctoral researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, talked about the study findings she presented at the conference for the Audio Journal of Oncology
Annette Heemskerk-Gerritsen AJO PRODUCTION MASTER
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5min
March 28, 2018 Polygenic Risk Scores Could Help Predict Second Primary Breast Cancers—AUDIO JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY
BARCELONA—Patients treated for BRCA-associated breast cancers could be given more accurate estimates of the risk for developing second primaries of the contralateral breast by combining polygenic risk scores (PRS) with standard risk factors if study findings reported at the 2018 European Breast Cancer Conference are validated.
The AUDIO JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY heard from lead author Alexandra van den Broek PhD, a genetic epidemiologist from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, how the predictive power of PRSs for a first primary breast cancer in the general population and for BRCA 1 and 2 mutation carriers could also extend to forecasting second primaries of the contralateral breast enabling women to make more informed decisions about their on-going treatment options.
Isabel T. Rubio MD PhD, co-chair of the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference and Director of the Breast Surgical Unit at Clinica Universidad de Navarra, in Madrid, Spain who was not involved in the research said: “Facing a diagnosis of breast cancer and carrying a BRCA mutation is overwhelming for many women. New information on the individual risks of developing a contralateral breast cancer in this population will help in the decision-making process on preventive surgery or intensive follow up. Research like this brings new information to help with these difficult decisions.”
Abstract no: 7:
“The association between Polygenic Risk Scores and contralateral breast cancer risk in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers: analyses in the CIMBA consortium”
https://www.ecco-org.eu/Global/News/EBCC/EBCC11/03/Risk-of-a-second-breast-cancer-can-be-better-quantified-in-women-carrying-a-BRCA-mutation
Read Peter Goodwin's article in ONCOLOGY TIMES

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0min
February 05, 2018 Randomized Study Confirms Rivaroxaban Oral Alternative For Cancer Thromboembolism
ATLANTA—Six months follow up of the Select-D randomized open label multicenter pilot study with 406 patients has confirmed that therapy with the direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) rivaroxaban was a safe and effective alternative strategy to standard treatment with the low molecular weight heparin dalteparin for avoiding recurrences of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in selected patients with cancer. The findings were reported at the 2017 meeting of the American Society of Hematology. Abstract 625: Anticoagulation Therapy in Selected Cancer Patients at Risk of Recurrence of Venous Thromboembolism: Results of the Select-D Pilot Trial
“We found recurrence rates with dalteparin at six months were 11 per cent. With rivaroxaban the recurrence rates were four per cent,” said lead author Annie Young PhD, Professor of Nursing at Warwick Clinical Trials Unit in Warwick University Medical School’s Cancer Research Centre, UK. “Definitely we found that the rivaroxaban recurrence rates at six months were lower than dalteparin.”
READ MORE IN ONCOLOGY TIMES
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15min
February 05, 2018 Rivaroxaban Confirmed as Oral Alternative For Cancer Thromboembolism
ATLANTA—Six months follow up of the Select-D randomized open label multicenter pilot study with 406 patients has confirmed that therapy with the direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) rivaroxaban was a safe
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15min
January 26, 2018 Oral Anticoagulant Edoxaban Alternative for Cancer-Related Thromboembolism
ATLANTA— In patients with a variety of cancers oral therapy with edoxaban—a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC)—was just as effective and safe in terms of the risks of recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE) and bleeding as injections with the low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) dalteparin in the multinational randomized Hokusai VTE-Cancer Study reported at the 2017 American Society of Hematology annual meeting.
LBA-6 A Randomized, Open-Label, Blinded Outcome Assessment Trial Evaluating the Efficacy and Safety of LMWH/Edoxaban Versus Dalteparin for Venous Thromboembolism Associated with Cancer: Hokusai VTE-Cancer Study
“[The] findings show that the edoxaban treatment is non-inferior to the low molecular weight heparin therapy,” said lead author Gary E. Raskob PhD, Dean of the College of Public Health and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City.
READ MORE from the American Society of Hematology Meeting in Oncology Times.

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10min
January 19, 2018 Venetoclax Pro-Apoptotic Therapy Benefits Older Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia
ATLANTA—Adding anti-BCL-2 therapy with the small-molecule drug venetoclax (VEN) to standard low-dose cytarabine (LDAC) chemotherapy tripled response rates over historical comparators and extended survival in older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were ineligible for intensification of their chemotherapy in a phase 1/2 study reported at the 2017 American Society of Hematology annual meeting.
ABSTRACT 890 Phase 1/2 Study of Venetoclax with Low-Dose Cytarabine in Treatment-Naive, Elderly Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia Unfit for Intensive Chemotherapy: 1-Year Outcomes
“With this new combination we seem to achieve very high complete response rates. We achieve response quickly—which means that patients have better quality of life, potentially, and less risk of fatal infections and also less need for blood transfusions and supportive care,” said lead study author Andrew Wei MBBS PhD FRACP FRCPA, a clinical hematologist and head of leukemia research at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.
READ THE ARTICLE IN ONCOLOGY TIMES
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5min
April 20, 2017 Cabozantinib Better for VEGF Resistant Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma

MILAN, Italy—The first choice of therapy for patients with metastatic kidney cancer who have failed VEGF therapy has changed according to experts at the 2016 European Multidisciplinary Meeting on Urological Cancers (EMUC) who assessed phase 3 study data on two different agents—each of which showed clinically meaningful improvements to outcomes.

“There is a new treatment algorithm for individuals who have failed VEGF-targeted therapy,” said Thomas Powles, MBBS MRCP MD, Director of Barts Cancer Centre at St Bartholemews Hospital in London, UK.

“Both the ESMO and EAU guidelines are [now] supporting nivolumab and cabozantinib rather than—[as] previously—supporting axitinib and everolimus.”

He based his comments on observations from the METEOR and CheckMate 025 studies which found that therapy with cabozantinib or nivolumab improved overall survival compared to everolimus.
Peter Goodwin discusses the details of the METEOR findings with him.
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0min
April 18, 2017 Which High-Risk Prostate Cancers Need Multimodality Treatment?
MILAN, Italy—Patients with node-positive prostate cancer being treated with prostatectomy could derive benefit from early multimodality therapy combining androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) with radiotherapy (RT)—on top of surgery—if they have pathological features indicating high risk, according to findings reported at the European Multidisciplinary Meeting on Urological Cancers (EMUC).

Combining ADT with RT soon after prostatectomy improved overall survival as much as 40 per cent in the highest-risk patients according to analysis of data from studies conducted at three institutions—Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN and San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.

“It is the patients who are supposed—technically—to have the worst mortality from the disease that have the best survival when they receive the treatment,” said co-investigator Karim Touijer MD MPh, Attending Physician at the Department of Urology in the Sidney Kimmel Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

He said that while the most common approach to node-positive disease after prostatectomy was observation—followed by treatment only if there was progression—his analysis suggested a potential net benefit from combining RT and ADT in patients who had additional risk factors on top of nodal spread.

He said studies were urgently needed to confirm any benefit since the natural history of patients with nodal disease after radical prostatectomy indicated that even—without further treatment—30 per cent of all patients were free from recurrence by 10 years. And this figure rose to 45 per cent among patients with only one or two nodes.

Pathological features can discriminate the 80 per cent of patients with nodal disease who had favorable characteristics and would be candidates for observation, he said. But it was important to identify those at the high risk because they could benefit from a multimodality approach, he said.

In his research from the three institutions patients with node-positive prostate cancer were divided into three groups after prostatectomy—those who had additional treatment with external beam RT, those who received the same RT combined with ADT, and patients assigned to no further treatment until relapse.

“We looked at a combined data set of nearly 1400 patients [who] received one of three strategies: Observed until they failed biochemically then treatment started, or: Automatically received hormonal therapy for life, or: Received the combination of hormonal and radiation therapy,” he said, adding that patients who received the combination of ADT and external beam RT started with the worst disease yet had the best overall survival.

Local Treatment Benefit
Touijer said they concluded there was great value in local control of the disease, despite the belief that if a patient had lymph-node metastases after radical prostatectomy the disease was already distant and systemic.

“What this data shows us is that maybe some patients are like that but not all of them, and not the majority, [and] that if we still focus—with all the treatments that we have available—to control the disease locally and regionally we can improve survival,” he said.

Not all Nodal Disease the Same
And analysis of the National Cancer Database (including 70 percent of all patients treated at US cancer centers) had given “external validation of these findings”.

“Close to 5 000 patients were treated by observation followed by treatment after failure, radiation alone, hormonal therapy alone, or a combination of hormonal and radiation therapy,” he said, noting that subcategories of patients with nodal disease clearly needed different treatment since there was a wide spectrum of risk and patients with the worst pathological features benefited the most from
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0min
March 12, 2017 Women With DCIS Live Longer Than General Population
Audio Journal of Oncology
AMSTERDAM—Women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast were found to live longer than women in the general population according to a study from the Netherlands reported at the 2017 European Cancer Congress (ECCO).
Full Interview Transcript
LOTTE ELSHOF speaks with Peter Goodwin at the European Cancer Congress, ECCO 2017 in AMSTERDAM
Peter Goodwin
YOU WERE LOOKING AT CAUSE SPECIFIC MORTALITY IN PATIENTS WITH DCIS, WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO DO IN THIS STUKDY?
Lotte Elshof
We looked at patients treated for DCIS – a potential precursor lesion to invasive breast cancer and we assessed cause specific mortality. So we looked at DCIS patients and during follow up see if they had died from what cause they had died and then we compared mortality with mortality in the general population. We wanted to look at [whether] DCIS patients had increased risk of dying.

WHY DID YOU WANT TO LOOK AT DCIS?

DCIS is a potential precursor to invasive breast cancer. So some DCIS lesions will progress into invasive breast cancer and invasive breast cancer can metastasise and then cause death so it’s an important thing to look at the outcomes of DCIS and there are a lot of uncertainties and anxiety associated with DCIS because many patients diagnosed with DCIS think they are diagnosed with breast cancer. But it’s not breast cancer, yet.

TELL ME WHAT YOU DID IN THE STUDY?

We looked at patients diagnosed with DCIS between 1989 and 2004 and we looked at the causes of death in this population and we compared these observed death numbers with the expected number of deaths.

QUITE A BIG GROUP?

Yes. Almost 10 000 women with DCIS

WHAT DID YOU FIND?

We found that DCIS patients older than 50 at diagnosis were at lower risk of dying compared to the general population. And—it may sound a bit counter-intuitive—but we think it is because these patients are mostly screen-detected so they go to the population-based screening program for breast cancer and these patients are likely to be more health conscious.

DETAILS—A THREE TIMES HIGHER RISK?

We saw that DCIS patients had lower risk of dying despite their increased risk of dying from breast cancer. So if you compare the risk of dying from breast cancer to the general population we see that they have an increased risk. But then if we look at absolute numbers—the risk a woman [actually] had—then the risk is very low. So after ten years 2.5 per cent of the women died from breast cancer but compared to the general population this is only slightly increased risk.

AND YOU ALSO MENTIONED THAT THE RISK OF DEATH FROM BREAST CANCER WAS INDEPENDENT OF TREATMENT?

Yes we found that no matter what treatment the risk of mortality was so low. So we compared women treated with breast conserving therapy alone, breast conserving therapy with radiotherapy, and mastectomy and we saw no differences in breast cancer mortality.

PRACTICAL MESSAGES FOR DOCS?

This study provides accurate risk estimates—relative risks and absolute risks— which are important information to the patient. And I think these patients should be told they have a precursor lesion of invasive breast cancer but not yet invasive breast cancer and it should provide reassurance.

WHAT DOES THIS IMPLY FOR LOOKING FOR DCIS BECAUSE MANY WOMEN GET WORRIED BY THE DIAGNOSIS?

Yes. It’s a very worrying diagnosis. It’s associated with a lot of anxiety and confusion. It means that we sometimes find lesions that we would have rather not detected but because of screening we will find those lesions and the screening program also has a lot of benefits. So it’s not that we say that we don’t need to screen but there are always harms against benefits and some DCIS detection would be beneficial.

YOU DON’T WANT TO C
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5min
January 02, 2017 First-Line Pembrolizumab Boosts Survival in PD-L1-Positive Advanced Lung Cancer
Audio Journal of Oncology, January 2, 2017
COPENHAGEN—Patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) expressing the programmed cell-death ligand 1 (PD-L1) protein responded better to initial treatment with the anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy pembrolizumab—and lived longer with fewer toxicities—than to standard chemotherapy in the international KEYNOTE-024 (NCT02142738) study reported to the European Society for Medical Oncology 2016 congress. (Abstract LBA8_PR.)
http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/suppl_6/LBA8_PR.full?sid=57db4b00-dd13-4ca0-ac50-086c77db63c0
Lead author Martin Reck MD PhD, a thoracic oncologist from the Grosshansdorf Lung Clinic near Hamburg in Germany, said the open-label, phase 3 study compared pembrolizumab checkpoint inhibition with platinum-doublet chemotherapy as first-line therapy for patients whose lung cancers had PD-L1 tumor proportion scores (TPS) of 50 percent or greater and did not have treatable epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations or anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) translocations.
“These data are changing our management of patients with lung cancer,” he said adding that the results implied PD-L1 had emerged as an important predictive biomarker for treating patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and that for patients whose tumors have it expressed pembrolizumab was an attractive new option in first-line treatment.
“The efficacy has been clearly better for pembrolizumab compared to chemotherapy, and the tolerability has been clearly better. So this tells us that we have to change our diagnostics for lung cancer. So besides the diagnostics for EGF receptor or ALK translocation we have to implement PD-L1 testing in our up-front diagnosis for lung cancer because we have got a completely new treatment option for this group of patients,” Reck told the Audio Journal of Oncology.
In the KEYNOTE-024 study patients with nonsquamous NSCLC were randomized either to 35 cycles of pembrolizumab, or between four and six cycles of investigators’ choice of platinum doublet chemotherapy (carboplatin or cisplatin plus pemetrexed, carboplatin or cisplatin with gemcitabine, or carboplatin plus paclitaxel) with optional pemetrexed maintenance.
The primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS). Secondary end points were overall survival (OS), overall response rate (ORR), and safety.
After a median follow-up of 11.2 months, nearly half of the 305 patients randomized to pembrolizumab chose to continue with their allocated initial therapy while only ten percent of those in the chemotherapy arm opted to continue with their initial treatment. Crossover was allowed, and when the disease progressed 44 percent of patients initially assigned to chemotherapy crossed over to pembrolizumab.
Disease Progression
Patients initially assigned to treatment with pembrolizumab lived a median of more than ten months before their disease progressed compared with only six months for those receiving chemotherapy. The immunotherapy was also associated with higher ORR (45percent compared with 28 percent) and longer duration of response —the median was not reached in the pembrolizumab arm and was 6.3 months with chemotherapy.
Overall Survival
Six months after starting treatment 80 per cent of patients who started on pembrolizumab were alive compared with only 72 per cent for those initially allocated to chemotherapy. This was equivalent to a 40 per cent reduction of mortality risk for patients on pembrolizumab monotherapy—despite the high crossover rate.
Toxicities
Toxicities of any-grade were less common with immunotherapy (73 percent of patients had toxicities versus 90 percent with chemotherapy), and grade three-to-five treatment-related adverse events (AEs) were half as common with permbrolizumab. (27 percent versus 53 percent).
Stefan Zimmermann, MD, from Hôpital Fribourgeois, HFR Hôpital Cantonal, in Fribourg, Switzerland, who chaired a news bri
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11min

FAQs about Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast:

How many episodes does Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 216 episodes available.

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