San Francisco, CA—Breast cancer in women under age 40 years is often considered a more aggressive disease than in older women, and this often leads clinicians to recommend mastectomy over breast-conserving therapy (BCT), that is, lumpectomy or radiation. However, 2 studies presented at the 2011 Breast Cancer Symposium suggest that younger age in itself is not a reason for mastectomy.

Miami, FL—A regimen of high-dose radiation had no survival advantage over standard radiation with concurrent chemotherapy in patients with advanced unresectable non–smallcell lung cancer (NSCLC) that had spread to the lymph nodes, according to an interim analysis of a late-breaking study presented at the 2011 American Society for Radiation Oncology meeting.

The phase 3 RTOG 0617 trial showed that overall survival was 74% in the high-dose group versus 81% in the standard-dose arm, and median survival was 22 months versus 20 months, respectively.

believe that errors and near-misses of radiation treatment should be reported, but this does not always happen, according to a study of survey results from 4 academic radiation oncology practices that was presented at the 2011 American Society for Radiation Oncology meeting.

Azacitidine is the current standard of care for high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), but many patients experience treatment failure. No study has previously analyzed patient outcomes of those who fail azacitidine therapy. This new analysis combined data from 4 international clinical trials to describe patient outcomes after failing azacitidine treatment (Prébet T, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2011;29:3322-3327).

The second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) dasatinib and nilotinib produce optimal cytogenetic response after 3 months of treatment in themajority of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the chronic phase, a much faster rate than the 12 to 18 months for the peaked response reported with imatinib (Jabbour E, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2011;29:4260-4266).

In 2 simultaneous phase 2 trials, 167 patients with newly diagnosed chronic-phase CML were randomized to nilotinib (N = 81) or to dasatinib (N = 86).

The Breast International Group (BIG) 1-98 is a randomized, phase 3, double-blind clinical trial that includes 8010 postmenopausal women with early-stage hormone receptor–positive breast cancer. The current study reports the median 8.1-year follow-up outcomes of the BIG 1-98, reflecting the long-term risk for recurrence and death in this patient population (Regan MM, et al. Lancet Oncol. 2011; 12:1101-1108).

A phase 3 study comparing the efficacy and safety of rituximab alone and in combination with bortezomib in patients with relapsed grade 1 or 2 follicular lymphoma who were rituximab- naive or rituximab-sensitive showed extended PFS with the drug combination comparedwith rituximab alone (Coiffier B, et al. Lancet Oncol. 2011;12:773-784).

This is the first phase 3 clinical trial to compare the effectiveness of 2 second- generation antiangiogenic agents —axitinib and sorafenib—for meta - static renal-cell cancer, showing great promise for the investigational drug axitinib (Rini BI, et al. Lancet. 2011;378: 1931-1939).

San Antonio, TX—Mounting evidence from randomized controlled trials suggests that zoledronic acid added to hormonal therapy will have its optimal use as adjuvant therapy in postmenopausal women with either medically/ surgically induced menopause or age-related menopause. The results of 2 trials were presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Adear friend recently recanted to me some stories about her recent trip to Italy. One of her more memorable moments was bearing witness to a couple of young Gypsies slipping the wallets out of the pockets of some unsuspecting tourists. Within a nanosecond, cash and credit cards were gone. Thankfully, my friend saved the day by hurriedly calling attention to the heist, and theItalian polizia were quickly in pursuit.

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