City of Hope

An interview with Joseph R. Mikhael, MD, MEd, on findings from a Quality Improvement initiative presented during the 64th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mikhael is a professor in the Applied Cancer Research and Drug Discovery Division at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, an affiliate of City of Hope Cancer Center, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Irene M. Kang, MD, from City of Hope, shared some of the results from her analysis of cognitive impairment in women with breast cancer who participated in the RxPonder study, which assessed which patients would benefit most from chemotherapy.

Jana K. Dickter, MD, associate clinical professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, City of Hope, addresses what health systems need to do to improve HIV therapy accessibility and affordability.

Patients with Medicare Advantage (MA) were 1.5 times more likely to die within a month of surgical removal of their stomach or liver, and twice as likely to die within a month of oncologic surgery of the pancreas, compared with patients with traditional Medicare.

Jana K. Dickter, MD, associate clinical professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, City of Hope, discusses a patient's experience being the oldest person to successfully undergo a stem cell transplant while living with HIV and leukemia.

Joseph Alvarnas, MD, vice president of government affairs at City of Hope and chief clinical adviser of AccessHope in Duarte, California, spoke on how the California Cancer Care Equity Act will allow oncologists to escalate the care of patients with advanced cancers toward established centers that can better meet their needs, as well as implications from the decision to exclude genomic testing coverage in the bill.

Joseph Alvarnas, MD, vice president of government affairs at City of Hope and chief clinical adviser of AccessHope in Duarte, California, discusses the recently passed Cancer Care Equity Act in California that provides access to clinical trials and advanced care for Medi-Cal beneficiaries.

The new law will expand access for Medi-Cal patients who receive a complex cancer diagnosis and represents a critical first step in fulfilling the promise of the California Cancer Patients Bill of Rights, a resolution adopted by the legislature in 2021.

A featured presentation at the Irvine, California, meeting of the Institute for Value-Based Medicine discussed how a patient with long-term HIV was cured through a transplant.

Coverage from the Irvine, California, meeting of the Institute for Value-Based Medicine, chaired by Joseph Alvarnas, MD, vice president for government affairs at City of Hope and chief clinical advisor, AccessHope.

HIV antiretroviral therapy has changed and improved dramatically since it first became available, said Jana K. Dickter, MD, associate clinical professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, City of Hope.

Leaders from City of Hope National Medical Center discussed how the cancer research and treatment center addressed challenges with attracting and retaining oncology pharmacists through a restructuring during the ACCC 39th National Oncology Conference.

Leana Cabrera Chien, MSN, RN, GCNS-BC, GNP-BC, is a geriatric nurse practitioner at City of Hope, working in its Aging Wellness Clinic.

City of Hope has announced that a patient living with HIV, who received a stem cell transplant from an unrelated donor to treat acute myelogenous leukemia, has been in remission from both diseases since 2019.

Joel W. Neal, MD, PhD, associate professor, Division of Oncology, Stanford Cancer Institute, is lead investigator on the COSMIC-021 trial, which is investigating cabozantinib plus atezolizumab vs cabozantinib alone in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) as a possible second-line treatment beyond chemotherapy.

Results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting showed a 21.4-month advantage for autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) over a common triplet therapy in progression-free survival (PFS) but no advantage in overall survival (OS).

Yuman Fong, MD, received the 2022 Flance-Karl Award from the American Surgical Association (ASA), and Leslie Bernstein, PhD, received the Margaret L. Kripke Legend Award for Promotion of Women in Cancer Medicine and Cancer Science.

From the editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology.

The fight to improve cancer care includes aspects of both equity and quality. Over the past decade, health insurance coverage has been expanded to millions of previously uninsured Americans, but there is evidence that not every patient has the same access or the same quality of care.

Joseph Alvarnas, MD, vice president of government affairs at City of Hope and chief clinical adviser of AccessHope in Duarte, California, spoke March 4 at the closing session of the Association for Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) Annual Meeting & Cancer Business Summit in Washington, DC.

Many oncologists oppose white bagging because they prefer to be able to adjust doses during a visit based on lab reports taken that day.

A session on industry reconfiguration covered differed business models for oncology, including payer acquisition of networks and collaboration with academic centers and primary care.

The president’s aim is a 50% reduction in age-adjusted cancer deaths by 2047. This goal seems audacious, but it is likely achievable.

AccessHope is a program that allows patients and community oncologists to tap into the expertise of City of Hope, often through electronic sharing of records so the patient does not have to travel.

In preclinical studies, HDAC inhibitors have been shown to have immunomodulatory effects— including enhancing antigen presentation, recruiting T cells into tumors, and promoting T-cell function—when combined with PD-1 inhibitors.

Physicians said it is in payers’ interest to use artificial intelligence to address social determinants of health, to cover tests, and to gather data. Doing so could let them stratify who needs certain screenings and diagnostic procedures and who doesn’t, which could lead to less consumption of health care.

The discussion, "Remote Patient Monitoring: Case Studies From the Front Lines,” explored real-world experiences with technology that has taken on greater heft as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect health care delivery.

Joseph Alvarnas, MD, a co-chair of Patient-Centered Oncology Care® (PCOC), discussed the unique nature of PCOC and what it offers for providers, payers, policy leaders, and technology experts who take part. Alvarnas is vice president, Government Affairs; senior medical director, employer strategy, and clinical professor, Department of Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope.