Optimizing Care for Patients With Adverse Events From Immunotherapeutics.

Immune-related adverse events (irAEs) are a common occurrence in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Fortunately, the majority of irAEs are mild and easily managed with steroids. As the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors and other immune therapies continues to increase across indications, so too will the need for managing irAEs.

Oligometastatic Disease and Local Therapies: A Medical Oncology Perspective.

Numerous studies in a variety of solid tumor malignancies have demonstrated prolonged progression-free and overall survival with the addition of definitive local therapies to systemic therapies in patients with a limited number of metastases. A subset of patients with oligometastases (1-5 metastases) may experience long-term disease remission or cure after local therapies such as surgery or stereotactic body radiation therapy to metastatic sites. This article reviews the literature in oligometastatic disease and considers a theoretical rationale for a curative approach in a subset of oligometastatic solid tumor patients.

Single-Agent Therapies After Standard Combination Regimens.

Increasingly prolonged survival in metastatic colorectal cancer has paralleled the approval of new agents alone and in combination. Most recently, several new agents have sought approval in the heavily pretreated setting, after treatment with standard chemotherapies, alone and in combination, and with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor receptor and anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (for patients with RAS wild-type tumors). These agents have included the multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), regorafenib, and the novel antimetabolite combination, TAS-102.

Expectations in the care of lung cancer.

One of the main challenges oncologists face in the care of patients with lung cancer is the decision to incorporate new clinical trial data into routine clinical practice. Beyond the question of statistical significance, which is a more objective metric, are the results meaningful and applicable to a broader population? Furthermore, in an era of value care, do the results justify a potential increase in costs? This article discusses the main points that clinicians consider in their decision-making process and illustrates the arguments with real-life examples.

Blockade of the B7-H1/PD-1 pathway as a basis for combination anticancer therapy.

Signaling through programmed death 1 (PD-1) expressed by activated T lymphocytes inhibits their function and is a major mechanism for suppressing antitumor T cell responses in the tumor microenvironment. Recent clinical trials show that blockade of the B7-H1(programmed death ligand 1 [PD-L1])/PD-1 pathway with anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1 is active in several malignancies and produces durable responses in a subset of patients. Clinical response to these agents may be limited by other mechanisms of T-lymphocyte suppression in the tumor microenvironment, or absence of a significant tumor-specific T cell response in the tumor.

A clinician's guide to hereditary colon cancer.

Approximately 10% of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer are at risk for a hereditary form of the disease. At-risk patients can be offered genetic counseling and testing to determine whether they carry a detectable mutation for such a syndrome. If so, this information provides the clinician with valuable data about the patient's risk for other cancers, and what further surveillance and risk reduction options should be incorporated into the management plan.