Articles
ORLANDO—High-dose melphalan followed by an autologous hematopoietic stem-cell transplant is standard initial therapy for multiple myeloma; however, the toxicity and efficacy of this treatment is variable. “The sources of this variability are not well understood,” said Dan T. Vogl, MD, of the Multiple Myeloma Program at the Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “We hypothesized that variation in melphalan pharmacokinetics would explain differences in outcomes after transplant.”
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ORLANDO—A novel prostate brachytherapy technique that avoids the central zone may sharply reduce periurethral prostate radiation (XBT) and significantly reduce posttreatment urinary obstruction/irritation. In addition, this approach may significantly reduce long-term urinary incontinence, according to a prospective study presented at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.
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SAN FRANCISCO—A novel small-caliber metal stent can provide a low-risk means of palliation for severe malignant dysphagia, according to investigators who have created these stents and are now testing them in trials. The results were presented at the 2011 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium by Stephen Kucera, MD, of H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, Florida, where he is an interventional endoscopy fellow.
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For gastric cancer patients with severe peritoneal metastases, 5-fluorouracil (FU)-based chemotherapy regimens provided only marginal improvement in time to treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS). In a retrospective analysis of 92 patients treated between 2001 and 2007, median TTF was 1.9 months, and median OS was 4.6 months. The researchers concluded that a combination of paclitaxel and 5-FU holds promise for this population, but that studies are needed to determine if sequential of combined therapy is better.
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved sunitinib malate (Sutent, Pfizer) as the first anti–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy to treat progressive, well-differentiated pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs) in patients with unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic disease.
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