What is new in the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) cancer? Read our gastrointestinal cancer blog and learn more about the latest advancements in the treatment of colorectal (CRC), gastric, pancreatic, hepatocellular (liver), oesophageal, and biliary (cholangio) carcinoma.
Women account for a disproportionate percentage of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in sub-Saharan Africa, comprising 59% of 18 million new adult HIV infections in 2017.
Kidney transplants are the best treatment for end-stage renal disease (ESRD), with better survival outcomes than haemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis. However, in Hong Kong as well as much of the rest of the world, there is an increasing gap between the number of patients requiring a transplant and the number of organs available.
Seasonal influenza is common between January to March, and July to August in Hong Kong. Baloxavir marboxil is the first influenza antiviral with a novel mechanism of action to be approved in almost two decades, and was registered for use in Hong Kong in February 2019.
Know all the United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA) approved immune-checkpoint inhibitors. Members of MediPaper can download the free PPT slides summarising the U.S. FDA approved immune-checkpoint inhibitors and other U.S. FDA approved immunotherapies.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for 80% of all liver cancers, and 55% of all HCC cases worldwide are reported from China. In Hong Kong, liver cancer is the fourth most common cancer and the third most common cause of cancer death.
RAS is the most frequently mutated gene family in cancers, with KRAS mutations being involved as a driver in three of the most lethal cancers – lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and pancreatic cancer. Incidence of KRAS mutations vary between ethnicity with Caucasians having a higher incidence than African-Americans or Asians. In non-small lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common KRAS mutation is G12C. In Asia, G12C mutations in particular account for 14.5% of KRAS mutations in the Chinese population. KRAS G12C was identified in 4.3% of lung cancer samples and 2.5% of colorectal cancer samples.
The development of new targeted therapies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in recent years has changed the standard of care for the later stages of NSCLC in specific population groups.
Precision therapies were first approved for cancer in 1998, when trastuzumab was approved for HER2+ breast cancer, opening the door for other targeted therapies such as imatinib for Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myelogenous leukaemia.
Infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) can lead to chronic hepatitis C infection (CHC) and liver complications such as fibrosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), cirrhosis, and end-stage liver disease.
The incidence of anal cancer has been increasing over the past decade, but currently still constitutes 0.5% of all cancer diagnoses in the United States. When the cancer has metastasised, prognosis remains poor, with relative 5-year survival rates of approximately 30%. The current standard of care for metastatic anal cancer is cisplatin-based chemotherapy combined with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). However, no randomised clinical trial investigating the optimal chemotherapy regimen for this disease has been conducted. The InterAAct trial was launched to investigate cisplatin plus FU against carboplatin plus paclitaxel in advanced anal cancers, and full results were recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
This year, ASCO 2020 was held as a virtual conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a summary of key trials presented at ASCO, focusing primarily on breast cancer, liver cancer, and lung cancer.
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On 10 May 2019, the FDA approved single agent ramucirumab (Cyramza®, Eli Lilly) for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients previously treated with sorafenib and who have an alpha-fetoproteintein (AFP) of ≥ 400 ng/mL.
Combining programmed death 1 ligand (PD-L1) inhibitor atezolizumab with MEK-inhibitor cobimetinib in patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) does not improve the overall survival (OS) when compared to regorafenib, as was reported by the investigators of the IMblaze370 (NCT02788279) trial in the Lancet Oncology.
On 22 February 2019, the FDA approved the fixed combination tablets of the nucleoside metabolic inhibitor trifluridine plus the thymidine phosphorylase inhibitor tipiracil (Lonsurf®, Taiho Pharmaceutical) for the treatment of adult metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma patients pretreated with two or more prior lines of chemotherapy including a fluoropyrimidine, a platinum, and either a taxane or irinotecan plus (when appropriate) HER2/neu-targeted therapy.
On 18 January 2019, the FDA approved the Herceptin®-biosimilar Ontruzant® (trastuzumab-dttb, Samsung BioEpsis), a HER2/neu receptor antagonist, for patients with HER2-overexpressing (HER2+) breast cancer in the adjuvant and metastatic setting, and in metastatic HER2+ gastric cancer patients. Ontruzant® was approved as biosimilar, not as an interchangeable product.
On 14 January 2019, the FDA approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx®, Exelixis) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients previously treated with sorafenib.
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On 9 November 2018, the FDA granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda®, Merck) for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) previously treated with sorafenib.
Whereas this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting (ASCO 2018) boasted two Phase III studies and four Phase II studies with notable results in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the trend did not continue to the European Society for Medical Oncology Conference (ESMO 2018), held in Münich, Germany between October 19-23, 2018. The focus for this years ESMO was mostly on biliary-tract cancers (BTC). Welcome to the hepatobiliary track of ESMO 2018.
SUZHOU, China, Oct. 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — The combination therapy of novel programmed death 1 (PD-1) antibody IBI308 (sintilimab, Innovent Biologics) with biosimilar bevacizumab antibody IBI305 (Innovent Biologics) has received the investigational new drug (IND) application for clinical development approval by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA, formerly known as CFDA) in China.
Immunotherapy with either nivolumab (Opdivo®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) alone or the combination nivolumab plus ipilimumab (Yervoy®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) in patients with chemotherapy-refractory esophagogastric cancer leads to durable responses and encouraging long-term overall survival with a manageable safety profile, concluded the investigators of the CheckMate 032 study.
On August 16, 2018 the FDA approved lenvatinib (Lenvima®, Eisai) for the first-line treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients not amenable for curative surgery.
Metastatic gastric cancer (mGC) patients with microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive tumours, or those with a positive (≥1%) combined positive score (CPS) respond best to pembrolizumab PD-1 immunotherapy.
On July 10th, the FDA granted accelerated approval to ipilimumab (Yervoy©, Bristol-Myers Squibb) for use in combination with nivolumab (Opdivo©) for the treatment of adult and paediatric patients ≥12 years of age with microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) that has progressed following treatment with a fluoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan.
On June 27th, the FDA approved Array Biomarpharma’s combination encorafenib (BRAFTOVI®) plus binimetinib (and MEKTOVI®) for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma harbouring a BRAF V600E or V600K mutation detected by an FDA-approved test.
This year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting includes two Phase III studies in the second-line treatment of the disease. Moreover, data with several immune-checkpoint inhibitors were presented, including the KEYNOTE-224 with pembrolizumab. Welcome to the summary of the ASCO 2018 HCC track.
November turns purple for pancreatic cancer awareness. Focus is on one of the most difficult-to-treat tumours with the final objective: to double the survival of pancreatic cancer by 2020. What is your risk to develop pancreatic cancer? And how likely are you to get cured of the disease?
On September 22, 2017, the FDA granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (KEYTRUDA, Merck) for use in patients with locally advanced or metastatic, gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) adenocarcinoma positive for PD-L1 as determined by an FDA-approved companion diagnostic (CDx) and progressing after ≥2 prior systemic therapies, including a fluoropyrimidine- and platinum-containing regimen, and, when appropriate, HER2-targeted therapy.
On September 22, 2017, the Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to nivolumab (OPDIVO, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.) for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in patients who have been previously treated with sorafenib. Approval was based on a 154-patient subgroup of CHECKMATE-040 (NCT 01658878), a multicenter, open-label trial conducted in patients with HCC and […]
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A phase II proof-of-concept (POC) study investigating the safety and tolerability of immune modulator IMM-101 plus gemcitabine vs. single agent gemcitabine in advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) showed significant improved progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in metastatic patients receiving the combination treatment.
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