TOP - August 2019, Vol 12, No 3

The August issue of The Oncology Pharmacist (TOP) features a presentation from the 2019 Hematology/­Oncology Pharmacy Association Annual Conference that explores the timely topic of precision medicine and its potential role in guiding treatment decisions that can improve the lives of patients with cancer.

The FDA has announced the launch of an oncology-specific pilot program for physicians and patients who need access to investigational therapies.

Expanded data from an early phase 1/2 clinical trial showed that treatment with repotrectinib, an investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) with potent selectivity against tumors with ROS1 rearrangement, induced a response in 9 of 11 patients with TKI-naïve, ROS1-fusion–positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Results from a new clinical trial suggest that limited access to care is the main contributing factor to the disparities in outcomes that exist between African American patients and white patients with cancer.

Formed 10 years ago with the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has been tasked with developing new payment and delivery models designed to improve the efficiency of specialty care.

High-grade gliomas harboring the histone 3 (H3) K27M mutation are lethal brain tumors associated with a poor prognosis.

Approximately one-fourth of children, adolescents, and young adults with advanced cancer were eligible for a targeted therapy after genotyping their tumors in the screening protocol of the Pediatric Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (MATCH) clinical trial.

Reduced-dose chemotherapy is as effective as full-dose chemotherapy in frail elderly patients with advanced gastroesophageal cancer, according to results of the phase 3 GO2 clinical trial presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

Enzalutamide (Xtandi) and apalutamide (Erleada) had strong showings in 2 separate, randomized phase 3 clinical trials demonstrating that these drugs delay disease progression when added to background androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) in ­patients with metastatic, hormone-­sensitive prostate cancer.

Maintenance therapy with the targeted drug olaparib (Lynparza) after first-line platinum-based chemotherapy prolonged progression-­free survival (PFS) in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer and a germ­line BRCA mutation, according to results of the phase 3 POLO clinical trial presented at the plenary session at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.