The Cancer Letter won four 2018 Dateline Awards from the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists:
To the Editor:One of the biggest questions that early-stage breast cancer patients face is whether they will benefit from chemotherapy treatment. Two large scale randomized clinical trials that implement genomic testing have positively addressed this question.
I remember the day I met Margaret “Peg” Geisler, who has now been living with breast cancer for 40 years, and with metastatic disease for 36 of those years.
In its just-published guideline on screening for colorectal cancer, the American Cancer Society revised its 2008 CRC screening guidelines, recommending that screening begin at age 45 instead of 50.
Finasteride, a common hormone-blocking drug, reduces men's risk of getting prostate cancer without increasing their risk of dying from the disease, according to long-term follow-up data.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology May 16 released the nearly 5,800 abstracts that will be presented and published at its annual meeting next month.
As I read the latest offering from the US Preventive Services Task Force, this time another encyclical on prostate screening, I felt a recurrence of the extreme irritation left over from the last time they wasted my (and their) time. Borrowing from Molière's “The Imaginary Invalid”, I conceived an Imaginary Interview with an un-named representative of this band of bozo's that seem to have few boundaries, a high level of comfort in wasting taxpayer dollars and editorial space, and who seem set on providing useless homilies that, at best, provide no value. This is couched as a Paul Goldberg-style low-key interview… and so the play begins:
In response to a congressional letter and a new study on the prevalence of undiagnosed hidden uterine cancers, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering launching a review of whether gynecologists are sufficiently thorough in evaluating patients in the preoperative setting, according to insiders with knowledge of the agency's plans.
Fourteen years ago, I was recruited to the University of Miami to develop a program in cancer disparities.
Ibrutinib is a selective and irreversible inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) that entered phase 1 clinical trials in 2009 based on preclinical efficacy in models of B-cell malignancy and autoimmune disease.[1, 2] The initial phase 1 trial showed clear efficacy in a number of lymphoid malignancies at doses as low as 1.25 mg/kg/d. Furthermore, full receptor occupancy was demonstrated at 2.5 mg/kg/d. Despite these pharmacological and early clinical findings, development of ibrutinib continued at doses of 420 mg qd and 560 mg qd, levels 3-4 fold higher than suggested by the pharmacological data. In addition, the absorption of ibrutinib is enhanced by administration of food, which may explain why even the lowest dose showed efficacy in some patients.
