Clinical

Oncologists may be able to use circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) to guide treatment decisions and predict which patients will have disease recurrence, according to 2 studies in JAMA Oncology.

To make headroom for expensive, potentially curative therapies in the pipeline, the healthcare needs to remove ineffective care from the system, said Susan Dentzer, visiting fellow at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.

As orphan drugs account for an increasing share of drugs approved, they are driving up the cost of drug launches and drug prices. In a new paper, America's Health Insurance Plans analyzes these rising costs and the use of orphan drugs and asserts that policy makers need to revisit the Orphan Drug Act.

Maria Trojano, MD, professor of neurology at the University of Bari, Italy, offered the opening lecture at ECTRIMS 2019, the 35th Annual Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, taking place in Stockholm, Sweden.

A poster featuring a post-hoc exploratory analysis of measures of thalamic volume from RADIANCE was presented September 11, 2019, at ECTRIMS 2019, the 35th Annual Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, taking place in Stockholm, Sweden.

Real-world outcomes are important because the populations included in clinical trials rarely reflect the populations actually being treated in the clinic, said Ajai Chari, MD, associate professor of medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Mount Sinai Hospital.

In 2 studies published in The Lancet Neurology, ozanimod was well tolerated and had a lower relapse rate in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis.

The field of treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS) has grown quickly in the last 30 years, but the next new class of therapies probably won’t come to market for at least another year and a half, said Daniel Kantor, MD, president of Kantor Neurology.

Using vorinostat with pembrolizumab can help improve the efficacy of the immunotherapy in non–small cell lung cancer.

An Expanded Treatment Protocol study that provided expanded access of the FDA-approved ruxolitinib, which treats polycythemia vera (PV) in patients who are intolerant or resistant to hydoxyurea, affirmed the safety and efficacy findings of the trials used for approval.

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance is a diagnosis of exclusion, but even once it has been identified, patients should not obsess over this precancerous condition, said Ajai Chari, MD, associate professor of medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Mount Sinai Hospital.

Patients with multiple myeloma (MM) who had disease progression on multiple therapies may benefit from treatment with the oral therapies selinexor and dexamethasone.

New and effective antibiotics are rarely prescribed in carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infections, which are a family of the most drug-resistant bacteria.