Conversation with The Cancer Letter

Patients who come to the American University of Beirut Medical Center and the Children's Cancer Center of Lebanon now have the same chances of cure, thanks to systematic program building over the years, said Raya Saab, acting director of the Children's Cancer Institute, and director of the Pediatric Cancer Research Program at the American University of Beirut Medical Center.

St. Jude Global will spend $100 million to improve care for kids with cancer and catastrophic blood disorders in low to middle-income countries, including those in the midst of conflicts, said Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, executive vice president, chair of the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, and director of St. Jude Global at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

There are a lot of gynecologists who are not gynecologic oncologists who live in rural areas, who don’t have access to oncologists, or who just have big egos, who will operate on patients with known premalignant disease or early stage cancer—regardless of the fact that they know that it is cancer.

We hope that our study increases the awareness and discussion of occult cancer risk in the thousands of women undergoing hysterectomy and myomectomy annually. Morcellation of a specimen allows for the dissemination of cancer, having an informed conversation with patients preoperatively is essential to this process.

I think you’d have to overcome all those problems before you could say that women with fibroids ought to have a biopsy before they’re morcellated. Which, as I say, sounds like a good idea. I think the better idea is don’t morcellate the damn thing. That would solve the problem.

You want to pay attention to everybody, but who are the ones that you really want to pay attention to? And I think what the study’s telling you, older women, women who are obese—you need to really pay attention to.

I think that it probably represents a failure in our health care system. It just points out an opportunity, from a quality improvement standpoint, to make sure that everybody who is going to have a hysterectomy has the appropriate assessment for the risk of cancer preoperatively.

Bristol-Myers Squibb's three-year collaboration with Flatiron Health will focus on leveraging real-world data to improve the pharmaceutical company's regulatory submissions, demonstrate the economic value of BMS's cancer portfolio, and to study the predictive value of biomarkers.