News

The presence of BRAF V600E mutations in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) has long been known to be associated with an extremely poor prognosis with a median survival of about 12 to 15 months in clinical trials. In contrast to melanoma carrying the very same mutation, single-agent BRAF inhibitors, or combinations of BRAF and MEK inhibitors, […]

On October 2, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval for pembrolizumab (Keytruda®) to treat patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors express a protein called PD-L1 and whose cancers progressed after platinum-based chemotherapy. Pembrolizumab targets a protein on immune cells called PD-1, one of a family of so-called checkpoint

This study evaluated a new system for determining the prognosis of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL; N=524) by looking at IGHV and FISH cytogenetics. Low-risk was defined as having mutated IGHV and no adverse FISH cytogenetics, intermediate risk as having either unmutated IGHV or adverse FISH cytogenetics, and high risk as having both. With

According to a study published in The Lancet Oncology, using a genomic test that looks at 50 genes could prevent chemotherapy in up to 40 percent of women with breast cancer. The use of a genomic test that analyzes 50 genes could prevent chemotherapy (QT) in up to 40 percent of women suffering from HER2-positive

Approximately 50% of Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) will acquire resistance by the T790M mutation. Osimertinib is the standard of care in this situation. The present study assesses the efficacy of osimertinib when T790M status is determined in circulating cell-free tumour

The authors assessed the relative contributions of BRAF and TERT promoter mutations to papillary thyroid cancer mortality. Papillary thyroid cancer–specific mortality occurred in as many as 22.7% of patients with the “genetic duet” of both mutations, vs 0.6% with neither mutation, 2.4% with the BRAF mutation alone, and 6.3% with the TERT promoter mutation alone.

Anti-EGFR antibodies are used for the treatment of RAS wild type metastatic colorectal cancer. We previously showed that EGFR gene copy number (GCN) predicts response to anti-EGFR therapy in KRAS exon 2 wild type metastatic colorectal cancer. The aim of this study was to analyse the predictive role of EGFR GCN in RAS/BRAF/PIK3CA wild type

Lung adenocarcinoma patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-activating mutation and genotype p16/CDKN2A homozygous deletion (n = 31) were compared with those without the deletion (n = 96) relative to their response to EGFR-TKI therapy. The deletion was associated with overall poorer response (P = .0027) and lower median PFS (5.3 months vs 10.5 months).

Whether FLT3-ITD, NPM1, and CEBPA mutation statuses were associated with treatment outcomes in patients who had undergone allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) and chemotherapy for AML was investigated in this retrospective study. Of 332 patients with AML in first complete remission (CR1), 85 had undergone allo-HCT. FLT3-ITD was present in 60 patients, NPM1 in 83,

A recent study evaluated the impact of guidelines surrounding the use of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) to determine degree of HER2 gene amplification. Patients remain very confused about how HER2 receptor tests are performed, why there are different ways of doing the tests, and, more concerning, how the tests are interpreted. It is such a