The AJMC® Precision Medicine in Oncology compendium is a comprehensive resource for clinical news and expert insights for molecular profiling of tumors.
Review Outlines Successes, Limitations of Personalized Medicine in Oncology
May 2nd 2020The evolution of cancer treatment towards a precision-based approach has led to significant progress in cancer therapy. However, some challenges do arise when shifting from an organ-centric concept, guiding treatment choices to a more personalized approach, according to a review published in Cancers.
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We Must Bring Clinical Trials to Our Communities, Burris Says
April 25th 2020There's a way to boost participation in clinical trials and modernize the cumbersome process of patient accrual, noted current ASCO President Howard A. “Skip” Burris, MD, FACP, FASCO, on day 2 of Virtual COA 2020. It means shifting clinical trials out of hospitals and tertiary care centers and bringing them to the patients.
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Dr Dinesh Kapur on Value of Community Oncology, Developing AI Tools for Patient Care
April 22nd 2020The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®) recently spoke with Dinesh Kapur, MD, of Eastern Connecticut Hematology and Oncology, also known as ECHO, an advanced community oncology conference. Kapur spoke about how the value of community oncology, clinicial trials, and how staff are spending remote work days developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools for predictive patient analytics to improve care.
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Dr Howard Burris: Lessons Learned From a Crisis Could Assist Future of Clinical Trials
April 20th 2020At the 2020 Community Oncology Conference, hosted by the Community Oncology Alliance, Howard "Skip" Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, president, chief medical officer, and executive director of drug development for Sarah Cannon Research Institute, will discuss "The Now and Future of Clinical Trials in the Community Oncology Setting." The American Journal of Managed Care® recently spoke with Burris, who is wrapping up his term as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, about how the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is affecting clinical trials as well as other aspects of the future of patient care in community oncology settings.
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Dr Lee Schwartzberg Discusses What to Expect at COA 2020
April 14th 2020The 2020 Community Oncology Conference, hosted by the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), takes place virtually on April 23 and April 24. The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®) is bringing you a series of previews so you can learn more about what you'll hear when you attend this virtual meeting. In this interview we're speaking with Lee Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, the chief medical director of West Cancer Center and the chief medical officer of OneOncology, and who is moderating a stakeholder panel discussion on genomic profiling in cancer.
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Dr Elisabet Manasanch Highlights MRD Assessment Accuracy in Predicting Treatment Progression
April 7th 2020MRD assessments are probably 1 of the most powerful predictors that we have to see how well a treatment has worked, said Elisabet Manasanch, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma and Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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Is There a New CAR T-Cell Treatment for Mantle Cell Lymphoma?
April 3rd 2020Mantle cell lymphoma is a type of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma with a typically poor prognosis. Even with an allogeneic stem cell transplant, patients can become resistant to chemotherapy. Most do not survive 4 or 5 years after diagnosis, and the 10-year survival rate hovers between 5% and 10%.
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Ovarian cancer remains the most deadly of the gynecologic cancers. Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute may have discovered biomarkers that could predict which patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer would benefit from combination poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor/immune checkpoint inhibition treatment, as well as those who should pursue a different course of therapy.
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Dr Elisabet Manasanch: As Data Build on Effectiveness of MRD Testing, Adherence Will Increase
March 24th 2020Although it is true that there are people who still don't use minimal residual disease (MRD) testing, I think that its use is going to pick up based on results of emerging clinical studies, said Elisabet Manasanch, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma and Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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Dr Elisabet Manasanch Outlines Potential of MRD Testing for Treatment Decision Making
March 20th 2020Right now, it's not really used for decision treatment in most centers, but there are a lot of studies that have started this year or starting next year that have MRD as an endpoint so we will see, said Elisabet Manasanch, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma and Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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Novel Blood Biopsy Detects MRD in Early-Stage Breast Cancer
March 17th 2020Metastatic disease is the leading cause of death in the over 600,000 individuals worldwide who die of breast cancer each year. A new blood-based assay to detect minimal residual disease (MRD) in patients with stage 0 to 3 breast cancer was shown to have 100-fold greater sensitivity compared with digital droplet polymerase chain reaction.
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Does Germline Variant Status Influence Treatment Outcome?
March 13th 2020A primary analysis of data from the GeparOcto trial showed no difference in pathologic complete response among patients with early-stage breast cancer enrolled in 2 neoadjuvant treatment arms: sequential intense dose-dense epirubicin, paclitaxel, and cyclophosphamide and weekly paclitaxel and nonpegylated liposomal doxorubicin.
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Clinical Decision Support Tools Transform Point Of Care Delivery
March 8th 2020Can we predict which patients are at high risk of hospitalization? How can we reduce this risk? Debra Patt, MD, MPH, MBA, executive vice president of policy and strategy at Texas Oncology, posed these questions during the ACCC 46th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit.
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Dr Elisabet Manasanch: Flow Cytometry, Sequencing Optimal for Assessing MRD
March 5th 2020Some of the best ways to assess minimal residual disease (MRD) are using flow cytometry or using sequencing, said Elisabet Manasanch, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma and Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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Keynote Address: Using Technology to Intervene Earlier in Cancer and Improve Survival Rates
March 3rd 2020Joshua Ofman, MD, MSHS, gave his keynote address during Patient-Centered Oncology Care, the annual multistakeholder gathering presented by The American Journal of Managed Care® in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Viraj Narayanan Addresses the Adoption Curve Presented by Real-World Data
March 2nd 2020Education efforts among providers, payer, and patients can help answer the fundamental and important questions raised by the use of real-world data, said Viraj Narayanan, MBA, vice president of Life Sciences at COTA Healthcare.
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CAR T-Cell Therapy Improves Health-Related QOL in Adult Patients With R/R DLBCL
February 26th 2020Health-related quality of life (QOL) improved in 54% of patients 18 years or older with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (R/R DLBCL) after therapy with tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah; Novartis), one of 2 FDA-approved chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. The patients’ general health, vitality, physical function, and social function improved the most.
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Biomarker Testing Can Direct Care, but Only If Clinicians Perform the Right Tests
February 20th 2020Opportunities for precision medicine can be lost if clinicians do not perform biomarker testing, and payers may be part of the reason, according to Stuart Goldberg, MD, a hematologist/oncologist and chief of the Division of Outcomes and Value Research at the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.
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Radium-223/Sipuleucel-T Combo Puts the Brakes on Bone-Metastatic CRPC
February 20th 2020Radium-223’s (Ra-223) low levels of alpha particle radiation induce double-strand DNA breaks, which leads to cell apoptosis. Sipuleucel-T (SipT), which is an immunotherapy manufactured from a patient’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells, activates T cells to spur an immune response. Both are used to treat bone-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Study data suggest a synergistic immune effect when Ra-223 is added to treatment with SipT.
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FCM, NGS, and PCR, Oh My! Detecting MRD in Patients With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
February 15th 2020Flow cytometry (FCM), next-generation sequencing, (NGS), and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are the 3 most common methods clinicians use to diagnose minimal residual disease (MRD) in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who have undergone chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or immunotherapy. MRD can be found both in bone marrow via aspiration and peripheral blood circulation through a draw.
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