Mary Caffrey

Featuring abstracts from the Association of Community Cancer Centers, US Oncology, City of Hope, and Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute.

Zanubrutinib is a second-generation Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor that has fewer off-target effects and less cardiotoxicity than ibrutinib, a first-generation BTK inhibitor.

There has not been a change in the standard of care in this type of cancer in a decade, according to an expert from ASCO.

Merck had previously received accelerated approval for pembrolizumab for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC); an FDA panel left the approval in place while waiting on results from KEYNOTE-394.

Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, and Natalie Dickson, MD, discuss their new roles as chief medical officer (CMO) and chief strategy officer (CSO), respectively, at Tennessee Oncology.

Kenneth Cohen, MD, FACP, executive director of clinical research at UnitedHealth Group Research and Development and senior national medical director at OptumCare, explains why low-value care still exists and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the issue.

Can daratumumab be taken safely as a maintenance therapy? Will quadruplet therapy become more common in the treatment of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (NDMM)?

For patients with multiple myeloma (MM) who are not eligible for transplant, should novel treatments be used right away? Or should clinicians save the best potential therapies for relapses, which are inevitable with this disease?

Studies have shown that administering trilaciclib prior to chemotherapy can reduce myelosuppression and improve health-related quality of life. Jerome Goldschmidt, MD, said future studies will look at how it interacts with immunotherapy.

Steven Pergam, MD, MPH, director of infection prevention at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and infectious disease physician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, describes the shifts in COVID-19 recommendations for patients with cancer and those receiving CAR T-cell therapy.

Steven Pergam, MD, MPH, director of infection prevention at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and infectious disease physician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses the National Comprehensive Cancer Network's (NCCN) preference for mRNA vaccines and how they work differently.

Kenneth Cohen, MD, FACP, executive director of clinical research at UnitedHealth Group Research and Development and senior national medical director at OptumCare, describes the main challenges to identifying, measuring, and reducing use of low-value care and the granular data needed to solve these challenges.

Steven Pergam, MD, MPH, director of infection prevention at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and infectious disease physician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, explains the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) update on COVID-19 vaccines and prevention.

The update recommends that patients who receive CAR T-cell therapy wait 3 months before getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Articles on advances in immuno-oncology and non-small cell lung cancer were popular with readers in the past year.

Adriaan Voors, MD, professor of cardiology and director of the Heart Failure Clinic, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, explains why patients provided sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in hospitals may be unable to continue the medication after discharge.

Coverage from the 2021 COA Payer Exchange Summit.

Coverage from the 2021 COA Payer Exchange Summit.

Physicians said it is in payers’ interest to use artificial intelligence to address social determinants of health, to cover tests, and to gather data. Doing so could let them stratify who needs certain screenings and diagnostic procedures and who doesn’t, which could lead to less consumption of health care.

Vertical integration of payers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) took flight with the mergers of Aetna and CVS Health and of Cigna and ExpressScripts. Panelists at Patient-Centered Oncology Care® said the shift has filtered down to affect access at the practice level.

Duncan Allen, MHA, introduced the audience to the OneR clinical research initiative, and Jeffrey Patton, MD, discussed how the hospital transparency law has bolstered the case for the value of community oncology.

Today’s challenge, according to Microsoft's Iksha Herr, MS, is learning how to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to process the waves of health care data and to drive insights that lead to better care delivery.

Bruce A. Feinberg, DO, of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions, leads a panel discussion on how far randomized clinical trials have come, how they could be better, and how using real-world evidence could make research more representative of the population.

During the discussion of disparities in cancer care, one panelist explained that the National Institutes of Health definition of precision medicine is broader than most people realize.

Adriaan Voors, MD, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, discusses how and why sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors act so quickly for patients with heart failure.

Five years ago, investigators in Iceland sought to evaluate what would happen if screening for MGUS were widely available—and whether it would improve overall survival.

Subcutaneous (sub-Q) administration of isatuximab plus pomalidomide may provide survival advantages for patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma, making it another treatment option for this patient group.

Results presented at the 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Meeting showed that using polatuzumab vedotin instead of vincristine in R-CHOP improved progression-free survival in patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Two-third of those who receive a chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) diagnosis are age 65 or older, so the ease with which drugs are covered in Medicare has an outsized role in patient access to care.