Two DCTD staff members have been appointed to serve as acting associate directors following the retirements of Dr. Michaele Christian and Dr. Daniel Sullivan earlier this summer. Dr. Jeffrey S. Abrams is fulfilling the role of acting associate director for the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, and Dr. James L. Tatum has been selected as acting associate director for the Cancer Imaging Program.
Final results from a Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) trial show that irinotecan should not be added to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and leucovorin in the adjuvant treatment of stage III colon cancer. In the CALGB 89803 trial, led by Dr. Leonard B. Saltz and colleagues at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, no survival benefit was seen in the adjuvant setting. These results appear in the August 10 Journal of Clinical Oncology. More…
The recent release of the final report of the Translational Research Working Group (TRWG) and its approval by the National Cancer Advisory Board, marks an important milestone for NCI. After 2 years of work, we're hopeful that TRWG's recommendations, along with activities already taking place as a result of recommendations made 2 years ago by the Clinical Trials Working Group (CTWG), will lead to more rapid progress in translating important research findings into new, effective interventions. More…
Two DCTD associate directors, heading up key program areas, retire at the end of June. Dr. Michaele Christian, associate director of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP), who has led a major program in early drug development, leaves NCI after more than 20 years of service. As he concludes 10 years at the Institute, Dr. Daniel Sullivan, associate director of the Cancer Imaging Program (CIP), moves to the Radiological Society of North America to become a senior science advisor. More…
A new compound, called ABT-888, has passed the first stage of clinical examination using a new model for drug development that promises to shorten -- by up to six to 12 months -- the timeline for taking anticancer drugs from the laboratory to the clinic, according to a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. This result (abstract #3518) was presented June 3, 2007, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago, Ill. More…
On Sunday, June 3, researchers from the Children's Oncology Group presented results at the ASCO annual meeting from a multinational study showing that a treatment regimen more patient-friendly than the current standard can achieve comparable survival rates among infants and children with intermediate risk neuroblastoma. More…
Long-term follow-up results from a Gynecologic Oncology Group clinical trial that compared cisplatin-based chemotherapy with hydroxyurea in addition to radiation therapy for locally or regionally advanced cervical cancer, published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed that cisplatin-based chemotherapy significantly improved both progression-free and overall survival compared with hydroxyurea alone. The percentage of women experiencing late side effects did not significantly differ between the treatment groups. More…
Jerry M. Collins, Ph.D., associate director, Developmental Therapeutics Program, DCTD, will present the Thirteenth Annual William D. Kaplan Lecture at Harvard Medical School on April 24, 2007.
Preoperative systemic chemotherapy has become firmly established as part of the standard of care for locally advanced invasive breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer. There is also considerable interest in the community in using preoperative therapy — also known as neoadjuvant therapy — in a wider population of women with earlier stages of breast cancer. More …
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of women who were diagnosed with cancer in one breast detected over 90 percent of cancers in the other breast that were missed by mammography and clinical breast exam at initial diagnosis, according to a new study. Given the established rates of mammography and clinical breast exams for detecting cancer in the opposite, or contralateral breast, adding an MRI scan to the diagnostic evaluation effectively doubled the number of cancers immediately found in these women. More…
Cancer clinical research is changing, and a large part of the transformation is being spearheaded by the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD), an extramural component of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) with the responsibility of overseeing much of NCI’s infrastructure for clinical trials and drug development. This summary of DCTD accomplishments is made possible by the many talented and dedicated staff members in programs throughout the division.
"Preoperative Therapy in Invasive Breast Cancer: Reviewing the State of the Science and Exploring New Research Directions" will seek to determine the state of the science on this topic because preoperative therapy is increasingly being administered to women with breast cancer. Controversies exist, however, regarding optimal approaches.
The NCI-sponsored Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) announced that it has closed a phase III prostate cancer treatment clinical trial because the new treatment under investigation was associated with a rare but dangerous side effect.
A phase III cancer clinical trial showed that adult patients with previously untreated acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) who had standard chemotherapy to induce remission of their disease, and then received the chemotherapy drug arsenic trioxide to maintain remission, had a significantly better event-free survival (more patients free of leukemia) and better overall survival than those who received only standard chemotherapy.
A detailed review of 42 cancer studies that used microarray technology to identify gene-expression profiles that can predict such things as therapeutic response or survival revealed common flaws in the studies' statistical analyses, according to Drs. Alain Dupuy, from the Hospital Saint-Louis in Paris, and Richard M. Simon, chief of DCTD's Biometric Research Branch.
The results of a phase III study performed by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group show that when the monoclonal antibody bevacizumab is added to a paclitaxel-carboplatin chemotherapy regimen for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), their overall survival, progression-free survival, and response rates significantly increase. These benefits, however, are tempered by an increased risk of treatment-related death.