
ASCO Education
ASCO Education: By the Book features engaging discussions between editors and authors from the ASCO Educational Book. Hear nuanced views on topics featured in Education Sessions at ASCO meetings and deep dives on the approaches shaping modern oncology that have care teams talking.
Latest episodes

Jul 31, 2019 • 15min
ASCO Guidelines: Role of Treatment Deintensification in the Management of p16+ Oropharyngeal Cancer PCO
TRANSCRIPT An interview with Dr. David Adelstein of the Cleveland Clinic on the ASCO PCO which provides statements on the role of treatment deintensification in the management of p16+ oropharyngeal cancer. Read the full PCO at www.asco.org/head-neck-cancer-guidelines The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care, and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Hello and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines Podcast series. My name is Shannon McKernin. And today I'm interviewing Dr. David Adelstein from the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. Lead author on "Role of Treatment Deintensification in the Management of p16 Positive Oropharyngeal Cancer: ASCO Provisional Clinical Opinion." Thank you for being here today, Dr. Adelstein. Thank you, Shannon. Before we get started, I'd like to first note the contributions of my panel co-chair, Drew Ridge, and those of all of the other panel members. And I'd like to extend a special thank you to ASCO for their support in allowing us to put this together and specifically Nofisat Ismaila who did a tremendous amount of work in allowing us to complete this provisional clinical opinion. First, can you give us an overview of the clinical issue for this PCO? Sure. So this really came out of the implications of human papillomavirus mediated oropharynx cancer. I think as most of the listeners know, over the last several decades we've recognized the fact that oropharynx cancer has a second ideology, that not all of it is caused by tobacco use, but that the human papillomavirus is now the major ideologic factor in North American and northern Europe. The importance of this is that the human papillomavirus-induced oropharynx cancer is a different disease. It has a number of different characteristics from the kinds of head and neck cancer we've seen in the past. It's a disease that tends to occur in younger patients, patients who are otherwise generally more healthy. It is unassociated with smoking, although it can occur in smokers. But it's much more frequent in nonsmokers. And I think most importantly, it's a disease that has a dramatically better prognosis than the tobacco related disease. Now over the last several decades, our ability to treat advanced head and neck cancer has improved significantly, because we've begun to incorporate non-operative treatments-- chemotherapy and radiation-- and have been more aggressive in our utilization of chemotherapy and radiation with significantly greater success than we had in the past. The problem with this kind of treatment is that it is quite rigorous. And there's a good deal of acute and, more importantly, late toxicity that patients experience from these kinds of approaches. Now as we became more familiar with the importance of HPV associated oropharynx cancer, we realized that there are subgroups of these patients who have cure rates that are in excess of 90%. And the question arose whether the kinds of rigorous chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatments that we were utilizing were really necessary. Was it necessary to cause this much acute and late toxicity in patients who in vast majority of cases were going to be cured of the disease. And it's important, because these are younger patients. And the late toxicities are going to have a major impact on their quality of life for a number of years. What came about was the notion of treatment deintensification, the idea that perhaps it would be possible to deintensify the kinds of treatments we were giving in select patients. It's a very compelling hypothesis for medical oncologists and radiation oncologists. But there are a number of problems as we try to test this hypothesis. The first problem is how do we identify the good risk patients? There are patients with HPV-positive disease who do not do so well-- the heavy smokers and patients with very advanced tumors. And we need to be careful if we're going to be talking about giving less treatment that we don't give less treatment to the patients who have a worse prognosis. We pick the best prognosis patients. There have been a number of what we call risk stratification schemes that have been developed looking at trying to identify the very good prognosis patients-- those patients who are HPV positive who don't smoke and who have relatively limited disease extent. There's not universal agreement on how best to define these patients. All we know is that they do exist, that you can look at patients with these characteristics and see very good outcomes. One of the issues that has come up is how do we utilize the American Joint Committee staging system-- AJCC the 8th edition. One of the things that AJCC 8 did which is new is that it defined a separate staging system for patients with HPV-positive oropharynx cancer, a system which is entirely different than the staging system that we've used for head and neck cancers for many years. This was based on the recognition that the prognosis of patients with HPV-positive disease is so good so that many patients who we would previously have considered to have stage 4 disease are now classified as having stage 1 tumors, because their prognosis is so good. And that can be confusing, because the typical thought process for an oncologist is that a patient with stage 1 disease should be treated with single modality therapy. The reason that the HPV-positive patients have such a good prognosis, however, is that many of them have been treated with combined modality therapies. And to make the assumption that because now they're classified as stage 1 is incorrect. It is they shouldn't be treated with less intensive treatments and can be confusing. AJCC 8th edition is a prognostic robust staging system, but it really doesn't help us in defining treatment. First problem is how best to define patients who are appropriate for deintensification. Second problem is, what do you do to deintensify? What constitutes meaningful deintensification? Well, over the last 10 or 20 years there have been some significant advances in our standard treatments for all head and neck cancers that weren't developed the idea of deintensification. We now have tremendous experience using transoral surgical techniques, which are generally minimally morbid, much less morbid than the former open techniques that previously were used, which allows consideration of surgery for many of these patients where we wouldn't have considered it before. Similarly, intensity modulated radiation therapy has been widely adopted, and d clearly an approach using radiation, which is far less difficult, far less toxic than the former 2D or 3D radiation planning techniques that used to be used. But if we talk about intensification, what kinds of things can we do to deintensify our treatments? Well, one thought is to reduce the radiation dose. Then the question is, how much reduction is reasonable? And how much reduction is going to actually impact on this toxicity? And are our toxicity measuring tools adequate to even detect the difference in reduction of a radiation dose? Many of our toxicity tools are very crude. Perhaps we should be using some of the patient-reported outcome quality of life instruments that are available. Other thoughts are, perhaps one can reduce the size of the radiation therapy field. Can we reduce the dose of the chemotherapy? Can we eliminate chemotherapy? Can we even use less intensive chemotherapy? Generally, the other treatments for this disease have employed high doses of cisplatin, which is a toxic agent. And then there the question has been asked as to whether we can reincorporate minimally morbid transoral surgical techniques in an effort to better pathologically stage patients and define more appropriate adjuvant treatment. Perhaps not all patients need adjuvant radiation or chemotherapy and radiation. All of these approaches are interesting. They're exciting. They're being tested. But all of the experiences is preliminary. And that really brings us to the third and the biggest problem in any deintensification approach. And that's the need to be certain that if we deintensify our therapy, we're not going to compromise outcomes. It would not be acceptable to give less treatment or less intensive treatment if our survival were compromised. And we have to be certain that we don't do this. So what has evolved over the past decade is a whole number of treatment approaches that have some very enthusiastic early results. But these are generally single arm phase 2 reports where there is no comparison to conventional treatment. And they become difficult to interpret, because the results in general are very good. I think what really raised a red flag for us and that really caused us to take notice was the results of the RTOG 1016 trial that we reported last year. And at the same time, the European de-escalate trial, both of which had a similar design. These were studies that were designed in an effort to see if treatment deintensification would be possible by randomly comparing the standard treatment radiation and cisplatin with what was felt to be a less intensive approach-- radiation and concurrent cetuximab. And cetuximab is an accepted agent in the United States for treating head and neck cancer. The assumption here is that the survival would be equivalent when these two arms were compared, but that the toxicity would be improved by giving the less intensive systemic agent-- the cetuximab. The surprise when the study was analyzed was that that assumption was incorrect, that the radiation and cetuximab arm-- the deintensified arm-- actually proved inferior in terms of survival. And this was in both trials-- both the RTOG trial and the trial from Europe. And that was a big note of caution, because it was somewhat unexpected. I think we learned from that kind of a study, from a good randomized-- a large randomized trial-- that even though the outcomes may appear to be good, we need to be very careful about deintensifying our treatment until we're sure that the survival is equivalent. So although it's tempting for the clinician to see these very exciting reports about administering less treatment with the idea of producing less toxicity, the guideline advisory committee for ASCO really thought it was important that we get the message out that this kind of approach is not a treatment standard. This remains an investigational approach, and that the treatment standards for this disease really haven't changed. So what are the provisional clinical opinions that were made by the expert panel? They made several statements. The first was to acknowledge that the idea of treatment deintensification is a very compelling hypothesis, and it does require careful and appropriate testing. The second was that even though we are now better at identifying good prognosis patients, and we've seen some very promising early results, and even though we're now reclassifying patients with previously advanced stage HPV-positive disease as stage 1 or stage 2 tumors, the treatment recommendations for this disease have not changed. And they're based on the results achieved using AJCC 6 and 7. Standard of non-operated management to patients who are eligible to receive cisplatin remains high concurrent radiation and high dose cisplatin given every three weeks. If patients undergoing a surgical resection, then adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation with radiation and high dose cisplatin every three weeks is recommended in those patients with high risk factors of positive surgical margins or external tumor extension. And most importantly, deintensification, though it's a compelling hypothesis, is something that should only be undertaken on a clinical trial. Why is this guidance so important? And how will it affect practice? Well, I think the important thing about this guideline is that it shouldn't affect practice. The practice shouldn't change. The standards of care are not altered. And that for the clinician, this remains something that is exciting, something that should encourage enrollment on a clinical trial, but that we haven't changed treatment standards. And finally, how will this guidance affect patients? So from a patient's point of view, I think there is continued reason for optimism. A patient with the diagnosis of an HPV-positive oropharynx cancer is a patient with a very good prognosis. Patients are increasingly sophisticated. They read about the potential for treatment deintensification, and recognize that this is not something which is an accepted standard. But it should encourage their participation in clinical trials if [INAUDIBLE] is offered. I think ultimately it's a remarkable thing when oncologists can consider the possibility of reducing treatment intensity because the treatment results have been so good. Great. Thank you for your overview of this PCO. And thank you for your time today, Dr. Adelstein. And thank you, Shannon. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into the ASCO Guidelines Podcast series. To read the full PCO, go to www.asco.org/head-neck-cancer-guidelines. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please rate and review the podcast and refer the show to a colleague.

Jul 24, 2019 • 13min
ASCO Guidelines: Duration of Oxaliplatin-Containing Adjuvant Therapy for Stage III Colon Cancer Guideline
TRANSCRIPT The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Hello, and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines Podcast series. My name is Shannon McKernin. And today, I'm interviewing Dr. Nancy Baxter from St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, senior author on "Duration of Oxaliplatin-Containing Adjuvant Therapy for Stage III Colon Cancer: ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline." Thank you for being here today, Dr. Baxter. Thanks very much, Shannon, for speaking with me. I'm happy to share our work developing this guideline. So first, can you give us a general overview of what this guideline covers and the studies which provide the evidence? Absolutely. So use of adjuvant therapy for patients with stage III colon cancer is common, and it's effective. We know that these patients are at substantial risk of recurrence of their disease and that adjuvant therapy can reduce that risk. But we also know that comes with a cost. The most effective adjuvant therapy is FOLFOX or oxaliplatin-containing chemotherapy regimens. And we know that a really substantial number of people will end up with neurotoxicity, with peripheral sensory neurotoxicity, that can be long lasting and certainly affects their quality of life. So the whole question was whether the duration of oxaliplatin-containing chemotherapeutic regimens could be shortened when they're used for adjuvant therapy, so if we could give three months instead of six months. Because we know that if we give three months of therapy, the risk of neurotoxicity is much lower. So if we had the same effectiveness with the shorter duration, then we could spare patients the negative consequences of the agent given for a longer period of time. So in developing these guidelines, we looked at the results of international group of trials, the six trials from the IDEA collaboration. So these were six randomized trials in various jurisdictions that tried to look at this question, so three months of an oxaliplatin-based chemotherapeutic regimen for adjuvant therapy for stage III cancer versus six months duration of therapy. And so there was a planned analysis to bring all of these data together to develop the evidence base to make this recommendation. So our guideline and our systematic review basically identified this is the key piece of literature to base our recommendations and guidelines on. That's essentially the main study, so the meta-analysis of these six randomized controlled trials that formed the basis of the IDEA collaboration. So the IDEA collaboration studies-- there were six individual randomized trials that formed part of the IDEA collaboration. And they were conducted in Italy, Greece, Japan, North America, through CALGB/SWOG, the UK, Denmark, Spain, Australia, Sweden, and New Zealand, as well as France. So data came from, really, around the world. The median age of people in the studies was 64 years of age. And these people had a really good performance status, so almost all of these patients had an ECOG performance status of 0 or 1. So they were healthy patients that were in the study. And so some patients received CAPOX, and some received FOLFOX. That wasn't part of the randomization scheme. Other than the CALGB/SWOG study, this was up to the discretion of the investigator or patient. In the SWOG/CALGB study, only FOLFOX was given. And the authors planned a prespecified subgroup analysis to look at differences between CAPOX and FOLFOX. There was also a prespecified analysis to look at differences based on stage. What they found when they looked at the results was that, overall, the difference between groups in terms of the three months versus six months was that the hazard ratio between these two was 1.07, meaning a small difference between the groups in terms of recurrence or death between three months and six months overall. But because the prespecified confidence interval, noninferiority interval, for the difference in outcome was 1.12, the 95% confidence interval for the hazard ratio was above this. So it was 1.15, indicating that this prespecified noninferiority margin was exceeded. And so the study did not prove noninferiority of the three-month regimen. So we're left with an inconclusive result. So that's why our guidelines don't have a strong recommendation for the three months, because we can't rule out a small but potentially important difference between the two groups in terms of recurrence or death. Now, interestingly, when they looked at the prespecified subgroup analysis, which was looking at CAPOX versus FOLFOX, a difference was found. So they actually found that for FOLFOX chemotherapy, three months of therapy was inferior to six months of therapy, while for CAPOX, actually, three months and six months were the same. So it met the criteria of noninferiority. So these are kind of two different conclusions based on which type of chemotherapy was used. This was surprising to the investigators and was not expected. And certainly, it was not consistent with the randomized trials that we have comparing these regimens. So we therefore did not make any conclusions in our recommendations about CAPOX versus FOLFOX. But this is certainly something that requires further investigation in the future. In terms of stage, we did not find that there was an interaction between T stage or end stage when you looked at the differences between the three and the six month. And that was the prespecified analysis. But in non-prespecified analysis, which was the higher risk versus lower risk categories, you did find this difference where the patients with high-risk disease had inferior disease-free survival with three months versus six months of therapy, while those at low risk of disease, it seemed quite safe to give three months versus six months. So that's a long story. But essentially, because the high risk versus low risk analysis was not prespecified, there's a limitation to how strong our recommendations can be to have three months of therapy. However, given that the hazard ratio associated with three months versus six months of therapy for this lower risk group was only 1.01, indicating they were the same, and the risk of neuropathy was substantially higher with six months, this has led to us making recommendations that the three months of therapy is adequate for patients with low-risk disease after discussion with patients about the possible pros and cons. And what are the key recommendations of this guideline? Well, so the recommendations of this guideline do depend on the pathology, so how high risk the patient is. So based on the evidence from the IDEA collaboration, the researchers found that patients who had a high risk of recurrence-- so had T4 disease or heavily node-positive disease, N2 disease-- the six-month duration of therapy was better than the three-month duration of therapy. These studies and the meta-analysis were designed as noninferiority meta-analyses. But it was clear from the results that the three-month duration was inferior when compared to three months for these high-risk patients. So that seems clear, although we know that those patients will also be at more risk of neuropathy. And so that needs to be discussed with patients, as well. So for the second group, which are patients who are at lower risk of recurrence, what we found was there was less of a clear benefit of six months of therapy. The recommendation was that patients who are in this low-risk category-- so T1, T2, or T3 cancers that are N1, so not heavily node-positive-- clinicians can offer three months versus six months of therapy after having a discussion with their patients about the pros and cons of that. So the clinicians can go ahead and offer that to patients and still be within the common guidelines based on evidence for treatment of stage III colon cancer. So because there's some uncertainty after analysis of the IDEA collaboration, one of the really important recommendations that we make is about this shared decision-making approach. So the third recommendation that we make is that oncologists should discuss these factors with their patients who have stage III resected colon cancer and that the duration of therapy needs to take into account the tumor characteristics-- the surgical resection, the number of lymph nodes examined, the comorbidities, the patient functional status, all of these various things-- and there needs to be a discussion of the potential for benefit and the risk of harm based on the duration of therapy. And oncologists definitely discuss these things with their patients. And this just emphasizes how this is yet another component of the discussion that needs to be included, particularly when speaking with low-risk patients who are at substantial risk of harm from neuropathy and are unlikely to benefit greatly by extending chemotherapy to six months. So why is this guideline so important? And how will it change practice? Well, I think, until now, the standard recommendation has been six months of FOLFOX or six months of oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy. And again, there are many patients who have quality of life-affecting neuropathy because of this. So for a substantial proportion of patients who present to us with stage III cancer-- so those that are low risk-- I think this provides some options to them. So they can opt for a shorter duration of chemotherapy with a lower risk of toxicity. This saves time. This saves cost to the patient and to the system and potentially improves their quality of life without a great impact on outcome in terms of disease recurrence. So that's a substantial number, a substantial proportion of our patients, who can be treated in this way. So I think that this is a real benefit. Again, oncologists need to have a conversation with their patients about the pros and cons. But this is an option for their patients, whereas from an evidence-based perspective, it wasn't before the publication of the IDEA collaboration. Finally, how will these guideline recommendations affect patients? So for patients who have heavily node-positive disease-- so high-risk patients with T4 or N2 disease-- it's not going to affect care. So the expectation would be those patients would be treated with six months of therapy, similar to previous recommendations. So this will be for people who are at lower risk of disease recurrence, so patients with T1 to 3 tumors that are N1 positive, so not heavily node positive. So these patients will have the opportunity to opt for a shorter duration of therapy. So that's a major benefit to patients. Again, it's important that there's a discussion and that patients understand the pros and cons. But this is now an option for them, which is excellent. Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into the ASCO Guidelines Podcast series. To read the full guideline, please go to www.asco.org/gastrointestinal-cancer-guidelines. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please rate and review the podcast and refer the show to a colleague.

Jul 17, 2019 • 10min
ASCO Guidelines: Management of Cancer-associated Anemia with Erythropoiesis-Stimulating Agents Guideline
TRANSCRIPT The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Hello and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines Podcast Series. My name is Shannon McKernin, and today I'm interviewing Dr. Alejandro Lazo-Langner from Western University in London, Ontario, senior author on Management of Cancer-Associated Anemia with Erythropoeiesis-stimulating Agents, ASCO/ASH Clinical Practice Guidelines Update. Thank you for being here today, Dr. Lazo-Langner. Thank you very much for the invitation to present the new guidelines. So this guideline has been updated now three times since its original publication in 2002. So how has this guideline changed over time? Since initial publication in 2002, this guideline has undergone a number of different changes. If you look at the initial series of recommendations in the 2002 guideline, it was really limited and it was fairly upfront recommending the use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents in this setting. But during the last two updates in 2007 and 2010, that has changed significantly. And in the current guidelines, we have added some additional evidence that has been published in the last eight years. And now, in general, what we can tell is that the use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents is now more restrictive than in the original guideline and is basically recommended for only one or two situations. There has been some other updates in the last iteration of the guideline that I can certainly discuss in more detail later. But basically, in general, the guideline has now, in the last iterations, restricted the recommendations that were much more general during the first edition of this guideline, almost all of them based on available and emerging evidence regarding the onset of their side effects with these medications. And can you give us a general overview of what this new guideline update covers, especially that new evidence that's emerged? Yeah. So the new guideline has changed a few items. And indeed, we-- the committee did a little bit of an overhaul in the recommendations that are not in the same order as they were in the previous editions. We can say that there is a couple of important updates. The first one would be addressing the use of biosimilars, which were not available in the previous guidelines. And we have addressed that in the current edition. The biosimilars have not been extensively studied in cancer, but they have. And so far, the committee considered that they were equivalent in terms of effectiveness and safety to the originator agents, both epoetin and erythropoietin. And the second most important update on the guideline is the recommendation of the concurrent use of iron supplementation in patients who are receiving erythropoietin-stimulating agents. The previous versions of the guideline just recommended the use of iron supplementation in patients with documented iron deficiency. However, in the last eight years, there's been a number of studies that have suggested that the concurrent use of iron supplementation, irrespective of the baseline iron status, does increase the efficacy of the agents. Third point is that, although this is not new, there's been more emerging evidence supporting the notion that all of the erythropoietin-stimluating agents increase the risk of thromboembolism. And this has been very consistent across all studies, and in particular derive from Julia Bohlius's systematic review and meta-analysis that was published a few years ago. And she's the lead author on these guidelines now. This has been confirmed, and I think that at this point this is probably the main limiting factor on the use of these medications. And the final minor update was that regarding the use of erythropoietin in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome. This guideline now suggests baseline serum erythropoietin level cut-off that might actually increase the chances of the erythropoietin-stimluating agents of being effective. This has been updated from the previous guidelines based on recent research. And what are the key takeaways of this guideline update? Well, the key takeaways is that if a clinician is deciding to use erythropoietin-stimluating agents, in agreement with the previous guidelines, the first thing that you have to consider is that you should not use these agents in patients that are receiving chemotherapy with a curative intent. And it should be reserved to patients in whom the chemotherapy is being given with a palliative intent. It should be only used to decrease the use of red blood cell transfusions. And if a clinician is to make a decision as to whether to use these agents or not, they should consider concurrent use of iron supplementation. But basically, the other consideration that needs to be made is that because of the confirmed increase in the risk of thromboembolic complications, in the last eight years, there's been a myriad of new treatments that may potential increase the risk of these complications, specifically and most importantly in patients with myeloma in whom the use of immunomodulators such as lenalidomide or thalidomide does increase the risk of thromboembolic events per se. And in those patients, if they were to be considered for treatment with erythropoietin-stimluating agents, that should be done in a very, very careful fashion. The risk of thrombosis is significantly high in these patients, and the concurrent use of erythropoietin-stimluating agents is probably not a very good idea. So if one were to summarize the guidelines, I would say that, one, consider very carefully whether your patient actually needs these agents, and if they do need the agents, whether they should be receiving them, specifically if they are only being given chemotherapy with palliative intent with a short time life expectancy. Some patients would be considered to be in palliative. However, in conditions such as myeloma, for instance, although they are not curable, the patients may go on living for many years. So that's probably not a very good idea to use these agents if they increase the risk of complications. And if one is going to be considering these, they should consider also the concurrent use of iron to improve the efficacy of these agents. And finally, how will these guideline recommendations affect patients? Well, the guideline recommendations won't have a particularly high impact on patients. The most important thing is that, if patients require ongoing transfusional support due to the palliative chemotherapy or the nature of the disease they have, the use of erythropoietin-stimluating agents might decrease the need for these transfusions at the cost of increasing the risk of complications. The new updated guidelines are probably going to result in-- if they are considered when a clinician is using these agents, they are probably going to result in lower complications for patients due to the more restrictive nature of the recommendations. And in general, the only other consideration would be that under special circumstances related to, for instance, access to transfusional support or other personal considerations from certain patients and groups, these guidelines might actually help to overcome those barriers for transfusional support. But those were the two major impact points that would be considered based on this updated guideline. Great. Thank you for your work on this important guideline and thank you for your time today, Dr. Lazo-Langner. Thank you for the invitation. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into the ASCO Guidelines Podcast Series. To read the full guideline, go to www.asco.org/supportive-care-guidelines. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please rate and review the podcast and refer the show to a colleague.

Jul 10, 2019 • 10min
Annual Meeting 2019 - EGFR Inhibitors

Jul 3, 2019 • 11min
Annual Meeting 2019 - Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Dr. James Harding (Memorial Sloan Kettering) is a board-certified medical oncologist specializes in caring for people with liver cancer, gallbladder cancer, and bile duct cancer, as well as other gastrointestinal cancers. In this week's episode, he discusses a new checkpoint inhibitor with monoclonal antibodies to programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1) for patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC). He presents a clinical case and to highlight several aspects of immunotherapy for liver cancer.

Jun 26, 2019 • 9min
Annual Meeting 2019 - PD1 Inhibitor Resistance in PDL1 Overexpressed Tumor

Jun 19, 2019 • 6min
Annual Meeting 2019 - Managing Burnout in Oncology
Dr. Amy Comander, a hematologist-oncologist specializing in breast cancer at Mass General Hospital, and Dr. Rachel Jimenez, Associate Program Director of Harvard Radiation Oncology Residency Program, have a personal discussion about burnout and practical ways to combat it.

Jun 5, 2019 • 12min
Annual Meeting 2019 - Beyond Anti-PD-1/PD-L1 Therapy in Urothelial Cancer
Dr. Karen Autio, a medical specializing in the treatment of prostate cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, discusses additional treatments beyond Anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy.

Jun 3, 2019 • 13min
Annual Meeting 2019 - Clinical Conundrums in the Management of Rectal Cancer
In this episode of ASCO eLearning Weekly Podcast Dr. Alessandro Fichera, Division Chief of Gastrointestinal Surgery at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses clinical choices in managing rectal cancer. When is surgery the correct choice? When can we put down the knife?

Jun 2, 2019 • 14min
Annual Meeting 2019 - Integrating Biomarkers and Targeted Therapy into Colorectal Cancer Management
Rona D. Yaeger, MD is a Medical Oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Department of Medicine, New York, NY. In this special Annual Meeting 2019 episode, she discusses recent biomarker and targeted therapy treatments for colorectal cancer management.