Oncology

The Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice works to overcome race, class, cultural, religious, and gender barriers that Black women and young women face in the rural South, specifically the Mississippi Delta and the Black Belt regions of Alabama and Georgia.

Although histotripsy can successfully destroy tumors in the liver, longer-term data are still needed to see recurrence rates and overall survival, said Shaun P. McKenzie, MD, FACS, a surgical oncologist with Texas Oncology.

Eligibility issues, a need for better multidisciplinary collaboration, and a lack of incorporation in community practices are all barriers to the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery for patients with primary urethral cancer, said Rohan Garje, MD.

Susan Escudier, MD, FACP, discusses the impact of insurance coverage gaps, transportation barriers, and financial hardships on cancer care access and emphasizes the need for payers to better support patients at high risk.

Accurate calculation of prostate-specific antigen doubling time can be crucial for prostate cancer treatment decisions but is often missed by doctors, impacting patient care.

In the wake of novel bispecific and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies for various cancers, geography still plays a big role in patients' abilities to receive such treatments.

In part 3 of this conversation, Karen Winkfield, MD, PhD, executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, discusses why basic scientific research remains essential and how patient experiences contribute.

Black individuals had a 2-fold risk of cancer death related to prostate, myeloma, and stomach cancers compared with White individuals.

When added to chemotherapy, researchers found no significant difference in overall or progression-free survival between PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors.

Susan Escudier, MD, FACP, explains some of the ways Texas Oncology mitigates financial toxicity and improve clinical trial access for underserved patients.

The lead investigator for EV-302 said not long ago, survival of 12 to 14 months in this type of bladder cancer was considered an achievement; in this study, median overall survival was 34 months after treatment with enfortumab vedotin (EV) and pembrolizumab (pembro).

City of Hope's Salvador Jaime-Casas, MD, discusses a systematic review of recent trials examining objective response rate and adverse events of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) combinations in advanced urothelial cancer.

Enfortumab vedotin with or without pembrolizumab offers disease control benefits for patients with upper tract urothelial cancer, said Evangelia Vlachou, MD, of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Adding 6 months of neoadjuvant deprivation therapy (NADT) doesn’t seem to add any benefit for patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer treated with external-beam radiation therapy (EBRT), according to 15-year outcomes presented by Barry Goy, MD, of Kaiser Permanente.

Health systems are facing hurdles to implementing new and effective metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC) therapies into practice due to high costs and a lack of targeted initiatives to aid health care providers with integration.

Data on enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab for advanced bladder cancer, along with updates on antibody-drug conjugates, biomarkers, and other cancer treatments, will be highlighted at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (ASCO GU).

“To error is human, and also to error is in machine learning,” said Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, MPH.

These new data highlight the need for improved pain management among patients with cancer and survivors.

Terra Wonsettler, PharmD, MBA, vice president of pharmacy for Evolent, discusses the recent HHS OIG report that stemmed from the 2021 FDA approval of aducanumab (Aduhelm) and use of the accelerated approval pathway.

SEER data show that small cell lung cancer (SCLS) incidence has steadily declined due to reduced smoking rates, but survival outcomes have seen only minimal improvement, underscoring the need for more effective treatments.

Dementia was more prevalent in older patients with some cancer types, and comorbid dementia in this population was associated with unplanned or unnecessary hospitalization.

A single-center study suggests the surgery is safe and effective even when tumors are large or located in high-risk areas.

The companies announced the deal in a statement February 5, 2025, noting that the first patient had enrolled in a prospective clinical study using the test to monitor cancer recurrence across multiple solid tumor types.

Clayton Irvine, PharmD, MBA, MS, senior manager of oncology care at Mayo Clinic, emphasizes the need for health care providers to balance quality patient care with rising costs by openly discussing financial implications with patients and educating themselves on cost-effective treatments.