Precision Cancer Medicine: Dynamic Learning of Cancer Biology in a Clinically Meaningful Context.

Purpose: Precision medicine is revolutionizing healthcare practices, most notably in oncology. With cancer being the second leading cause of death in the USA, it is important to integrate precision oncology content in undergraduate medical education.

Methods: In 2015, we launched a Integrated Science Course (ISC) for post-clerkship medical students at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM).

A patient education intervention improved rates of successful video visits during rapid implementation of telehealth.

Introduction: The need to rapidly implement telehealth at large scale during the COVID-19 pandemic led to many patients using telehealth for the first time. We assessed the effect of structured pre-visit preparatory telephone calls on success of telehealth visits and examined risk factors for unsuccessful visits.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was carried out of 45,803 adult patients scheduled for a total of 64,447 telehealth appointments between March and July 2020 at an academic medical center.

Demographic Factors Associated With Successful Telehealth Visits in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients.

Background: This study evaluated synchronous audiovisual telehealth and audio-only visits for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to determine frequency of successful telehealth visits and determine what factors increase the likelihood of completion.

Methods: Data were collected from March to July 2020 in a tertiary care adult IBD clinic that was transitioned to a fully telehealth model. A protocol for telehealth was implemented.

Prognostic Clinical and Radiographic Biomarkers for BRAF-Targeted Therapy in Advanced Melanoma.

Agents blocking BRAF and MEK produce robust responses in patients with BRAF -mutated melanoma; however, more accurate clinical biomarkers are needed to predict prognosis. To explore this question, we retrospectively studied 158 patients with BRAF-mutated melanoma treated with BRAF with or without MEK inhibitors. We found that the number of distinct tumor sites upon initiation of targeted therapy was associated with decreased progression-free survival but had no effect on overall survival.

Demographic Factors Associated with Toxicity in Patients Treated with Anti-Programmed Cell Death-1 Therapy.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are now routinely used in multiple cancers but may induce autoimmune-like side effects known as immune-related adverse events (irAE). Although classical autoimmune diseases have well-known risk factors, including age, gender, and seasonality, the clinical factors that lead to irAEs are not well-defined. To explore these questions, we assessed 455 patients with advanced melanoma treated with ICI at our center and a large pharmacovigilance database (VigiBase).