ASCO 21 - Recommended Abstracts in Kidney Cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Figlin

These recommended abstracts have been selected by Robert A. Figlin, MD, Editor-in- Chief. The chosen abstracts provided here highlight some of the most important trends in ongoing trials and reflect the foremost research and strategies from latest clinical trials that impact the current standard of care in renal cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Brinda Balasubramanian ◽  
Simran Venkatraman ◽  
Kyaw Zwar Myint ◽  
Tavan Janvilisri ◽  
Kanokpan Wongprasert ◽  
...  

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), a group of malignancies that originate from the biliary tract, is associated with a high mortality rate and a concerning increase in worldwide incidence. In Thailand, where the incidence of CCA is the highest, the socioeconomic burden is severe. Yet, treatment options are limited, with surgical resection being the only form of treatment with curative intent. The current standard-of-care remains adjuvant and palliative chemotherapy which is ineffective in most patients. The overall survival rate is dismal, even after surgical resection and the tumor heterogeneity further complicates treatment. Together, this makes CCA a significant burden in Southeast Asia. For effective management of CCA, treatment must be tailored to each patient, individually, for which an assortment of targeted therapies must be available. Despite the increasing numbers of clinical studies in CCA, targeted therapy drugs rarely get approved for clinical use. In this review, we discuss the shortcomings of the conventional clinical trial process and propose the implementation of a novel concept, co-clinical trials to expedite drug development for CCA patients. In co-clinical trials, the preclinical studies and clinical trials are conducted simultaneously, thus enabling real-time data integration to accurately stratify and customize treatment for patients, individually. Hence, co-clinical trials are expected to improve the outcomes of clinical trials and consequently, encourage the approval of targeted therapy drugs. The increased availability of targeted therapy drugs for treatment is expected to facilitate the application of precision medicine in CCA.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Agata Blasiak ◽  
Jeffrey Khong ◽  
Theodore Kee

The clinical team attending to a patient upon a diagnosis is faced with two main questions: what treatment, and at what dose? Clinical trials’ results provide the basis for guidance and support for official protocols that clinicians use to base their decisions upon. However, individuals rarely demonstrate the reported response from relevant clinical trials, often the average from a group representing a population or subpopulation. The decision complexity increases with combination treatments where drugs administered together can interact with each other, which is often the case. Additionally, the individual’s response to the treatment varies over time with the changes in his or her condition, whether via the indication or physiology. In practice, the drug and the dose selection depend greatly on the medical protocol of the healthcare provider and the medical team’s experience. As such, the results are inherently varied and often suboptimal. Big data approaches have emerged as an excellent decision-making support tool, but their application is limited by multiple challenges, the main one being the availability of sufficiently big datasets with good quality, representative information. An alternative approach—phenotypic personalized medicine (PPM)—finds an appropriate drug combination (quadratic phenotypic optimization platform [QPOP]) and an appropriate dosing strategy over time (CURATE.AI) based on small data collected exclusively from the treated individual. PPM-based approaches have demonstrated superior results over the current standard of care. The side effects are limited while the desired output is maximized, which directly translates into improving the length and quality of individuals’ lives.


Nutrients ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Yang ◽  
Umair Akbar ◽  
Chandra Mohan

Over recent decades, many clinical trials on curcumin supplementation have been conducted on various autoimmune diseases including osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, and ulcerative colitis patients. This review attempts to summarize the highlights from these clinical trials. The efficacy of curcumin either alone or in conjunction with existing treatment was evaluated. Sixteen clinical trials have been conducted in osteoarthritis, 14 of which yielded significant improvements in multiple disease parameters. Eight trials have been conducted in type 2 diabetes, all yielding significant improvement in clinical or laboratory outcomes. Three trials were in ulcerative colitis, two of which yielded significant improvement in at least one clinical outcome. Additionally, two clinical trials on rheumatoid arthritis, one clinical trial on lupus nephritis, and two clinical trials on multiple sclerosis resulted in inconclusive results. Longer duration, larger cohort size, and multiple dosage arm trials are warranted to establish the long term benefits of curcumin supplementation. Multiple mechanisms of action of curcumin on these diseases have been researched, including the modulation of the eicosanoid pathway towards a more anti-inflammatory pathway, and the modulation of serum lipid levels towards a favorable profile. Overall, curcumin supplementation emerges as an effective therapeutic agent with minimal-to-no side effects, which can be added in conjunction to current standard of care.


2015 ◽  
Vol 08 (01) ◽  
pp. 1530005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl J. Fisher ◽  
Lothar Lilge

Invasive grade III and IV malignant gliomas remain difficult to treat with a typical survival time post-diagnosis hovering around 16 months with only minor extension thereof seen in the past decade, whereas some improvements have been obtained towards five-year survival rates for which completeness of resection is a prerequisite. Optical techniques such as fluorescence guided resection (FGR) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) are promising adjuvant techniques to increase the tumor volume reduction fraction. PDT has been used in combination with surgical resection or alternatively as standalone treatment strategy with some success in extending the median survival time of patients compared to surgery alone and the current standard of care. This document reviews the outcome of past clinical trials and highlights the general shift in PDT therapeutic approaches. It also looks at the current approaches for interstitial PDT and research options into increasing PDT's glioma treatment efficacy through exploiting both physical and biological-based approaches to maximize PDT selectivity and therapeutic index, particularly in brain adjacent to tumor (BAT). Potential reasons for failing to demonstrate a significant survival advantage in prior PDT clinical trials will become evident in light of the improved understanding of glioma biology and PDT dosimetry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhavan Sharma ◽  
Feng Zhao

AbstractSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected nearly 118 million people and caused ~2.6 million deaths worldwide by early 2021, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Although the majority of infected patients show mild-to-moderate symptoms, a small fraction of patients develops severe symptoms. Uncontrolled cytokine production and the lack of substantive adaptive immune response result in hypoxia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), or multiple organ failure in severe COVID-19 patients. Since the current standard of care treatment is insufficient to alleviate severe COVID-19 symptoms, many clinics have been prompted to perform clinical trials involving the infusion of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) due to their immunomodulatory and therapeutic properties. Several phases I/II clinical trials involving the infusion of allogenic MSCs have been performed last year. The focus of this review is to critically evaluate the safety and efficacy outcomes of the most recent, placebo-controlled phase I/II clinical studies that enrolled a larger number of patients, in order to provide a statistically relevant and comprehensive understanding of MSC’s therapeutic potential in severe COVID-19 patients. Clinical outcomes obtained from these studies clearly indicate that: (i) allogenic MSC infusion in COVID-19 patients with ARDS is safe and effective enough to decreases a set of inflammatory cytokines that may drive COVID-19 associated cytokine storm, and (ii) MSC infusion efficiently improves COVID-19 patient survival and reduces recovery time. These findings strongly support further investigation into MSC-infusion in larger clinical trials for COVID-19 patients with ARDS, who currently have a nearly 50% of mortality rate.


2017 ◽  
Vol 142 (22) ◽  
pp. 1676-1684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Holch ◽  
Christoph Westphalen ◽  
Wolfgang Hiddemann ◽  
Volker Heinemann ◽  
Andreas Jung ◽  
...  

AbstractRecent developments in genomics allow a more and more comprehensive genetic analysis of human malignancies, and have sparked hopes that this will contribute to the development of novel targeted, effective and well-tolerated therapies.While targeted therapies have improved the prognosis of many cancer patients with certain tumor types, “precision oncology” also brings along new challenges. Highly personalized treatment strategies require new strategies for clinical trials and translation into routine clinical practice. We review the current technical approaches for “universal genetic testing” in cancer, and potential pitfalls in the interpretation of such data. We then provide an overview of the available evidence supporting treatment strategies based on extended genetic analysis. Based on the available data, we conclude that “precision oncology” approaches that go beyond the current standard of care should be pursued within the framework of an interdisciplinary “molecular tumor board”, and preferably within clinical trials.


2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (17) ◽  
pp. 2439-2442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward L. Korn ◽  
Boris Freidlin ◽  
Jeffrey S. Abrams

We review how overall survival (OS) comparisons should be interpreted with increasing availability of effective therapies that can be given subsequently to the treatment assigned in a randomized clinical trial (RCT). We examine in detail how effective subsequent therapies influence OS comparisons under varying conditions in RCTs. A subsequent therapy given after tumor progression (or relapse) in an RCT that works better in the standard arm than the experimental arm will lead to a smaller OS difference (possibly no difference) than one would see if the subsequent therapy was not available. Subsequent treatments that are equally effective in the treatment arms would not be expected to affect the absolute OS benefit of the experimental treatment but will make the relative improvement in OS smaller. In trials in which control arm patients cross over to the experimental treatment after their condition worsens, a smaller OS difference could be observed than one would see without cross-overs. In particular, use of cross-over designs in the first definitive evaluation of a new agent in a given disease compromises the ability to assess clinical benefit. In disease settings in which there is not an intermediate end point that directly measures clinical benefit, OS should be the primary end point of an RCT. The observed difference in OS should be considered the measure of clinical benefit to the patients, regardless of subsequent therapies, provided that the subsequent therapies used in both treatment arms follow the current standard of care.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Raquel Rodriguez ◽  
Saleha Rizwan ◽  
Khaled Alhamad ◽  
Gene Grant Finley

Abstract Background Pheochromocytomas are a subset of paragangliomas, which are a rare group of neural crest cell-derived tumors. Malignant cases of both pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas are even rarer, and currently there is no standard of care. This case report details the use of off-label immunotherapy and its efficacy in the management of the aforementioned tumor. Case presentation Herein is presented a case of a 60-year-old Caucasian female with a rare malignant pheochromocytoma. The tumor was determined to be unresectable because of involvement of surrounding organs. Radiation therapy was also not a viable option because of concerns over appreciable toxicity in relation to mass size. As there is no standard of care for malignant cases, the patient was started on chemotherapeutic agents but was soon shown to be intolerant to this treatment. As she was ineligible for several clinical trials, the patient was started on the off-label immunotherapeutic agents nivolumab and ipilimumab. Immunotherapy use resulted in decreased tumor size, improved quality of life, and reconsideration for radiation therapy. Conclusions The use of immunotherapy in pheochromocytoma in this patient clearly demonstrated substantial benefit, as she was able to be reconsidered for radiation therapy. Not only has the patient been tolerant of this treatment, but she has exhibited progression-free survival of over 20 months. As there is no current standard treatment for malignant pheochromocytomas, the success of its use in this patient lends support to the ongoing clinical trials regarding the use of immunotherapy in rare tumors, including pheochromocytomas.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 496-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaylee C. Peterson ◽  
Tim T. Y. Lau ◽  
Mary H. H. Ensom

Objective: The aim of this systematic review is to review all human trials assessing the efficacy and safety of ampicillin and ceftriaxone for enterococcal endocarditis and to discuss the clinical implications of the findings. Data Sources: MEDLINE (1946-), EMBASE (1974-), CENTRAL, Google Scholar, and the World Health Organization Clinical Trials Registry Platform were searched through January 2017 using the search terms ampicillin, penicillin, ceftriaxone, cephalosporin, enterococ*, and endocarditis. Unpublished studies were eligible for inclusion. Additional references were identified from literature citations. Study Selection and Data Extraction: Clinical trials in humans that reported on clinical efficacy or adverse outcomes with ceftriaxone and ampicillin therapy in patients with enterococcal endocarditis were included. Case reports, nonhuman, and non-English studies were excluded. Data Synthesis: Four observational clinical studies were identified. One examined the effects of ceftriaxone and ampicillin alone, and 3 compared the therapy to the current standard of care, ampicillin and gentamicin. The studies had small sample sizes and were not adequately designed or powered to establish noninferiority or equivalence to the current standard of care. Rates of clinical cure with ampicillin 2 g every 4 hours and ceftriaxone 2 g every 12 hours were similar to those of ampicillin and gentamicin. Ampicillin and ceftriaxone therapy was well tolerated with low rates of renal failure (0%-33%). Conclusion: The evidence to support the use of ampicillin and ceftriaxone for enterococcal endocarditis is not definitive. In the absence of compelling evidence, clinicians may consider ampicillin and ceftriaxone in patients with Enterococcus faecalis infection at high risk for nephrotoxicity or those with aminoglycoside-resistant pathogens.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document