Integrating Biosimilars Into Oncology Practice: Implications for the Advanced Practitioner.

Biosimilar agents are biologic products that have been shown to be "highly similar" to an already approved reference biologic product. Their integration into clinical practice has the potential to significantly decrease costs for patients, health-care systems, and insurance companies. Through legislation, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation (BCPI) Act in 2009.

Managing Drug Interactions in Cancer Therapy: A Guide for the Advanced Practitioner.

Mrs. P is a 30-year-old woman who presented to our bone marrow transplant program with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). She received a haploidentical allogeneic stem cell transplant with a conditioning regimen consisting of busulfan and cyclophosphamide.

Implementation of a pharmacy-managed program for the transition of chemotherapy to the outpatient setting.

Purpose: Implementation of a pharmacy-managed program for the transition of chemotherapy to the outpatient setting is described.

Summary: The University of Arizona Cancer Center and Banner-University Medical Center Tucson are affiliated not-for-profit academic medical centers in Tucson, Arizona, whose facilities include a hospital and ambulatory care clinics that maintain 3 outpatient infusion centers. The cancer center pharmacy currently employs 25 pharmacists, with 4 clinical pharmacists serving both the inpatient and outpatient treatment sites.

Hypercalcemia of Malignancy.

A 60-year-old man initially presented with pain in the right upper quadrant in October 2010. A computed tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen pelvis completed at that time showed a mass at the junction of the body and tail of the pancreas and multiple large liver lesions. A CT-guided liver biopsy revealed low-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma.

Management strategies in pancreatic cancer.

Purpose: Current first-line and adjuvant chemotherapeutic strategies for management of patients with pancreatic cancer are reviewed.

Summary: Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is the 10th most prevalent cancer and the fourth most common cause of cancer deaths in the United States. More than 80% of patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed with locally advanced or metastatic disease and are not candidates for surgery; these patients often require multimodal treatment.

High-dose chemotherapy with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for the treatment of primary central nervous system lymphoma.

Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) is a rare B-cell lymphoid neoplasm for which current regimens utilizing standard-dose chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy lead to high relapse rates and/or unacceptable neurologic sequelae. High-dose chemotherapy followed by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation may overcome limitations of current treatment schemas. A search was performed of all English-language literature (1968 to June 2009) within the MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane Library databases to identify relevant clinical trials using the terms stem cell transplantation, bone marrow transplantation, primary central nervous system lymphoma, and PCNSL.