Addressing Racial Disparities in Health Care
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Identifying Ovarian Cancer Patients for PARP Inhibitors
How to determine which ovarian cancer patients will benefit most from PARP inhibitors such as olaparib (brand name: Lynparza) is still a big question in oncology. “If you're going to use a selective strategy to identify patients for PARP inhibitors, there are different approaches, different pathways,” says Dr. Stephanie Wethington, gynecologic oncologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Learn MoreEvaluating Risks versus Benefits of PARP Inhibitors for Ovarian Cancer Patients
Prescribing any medication or course of treatment involves weighing the risks versus the benefits to the patient, but balancing this equation is particularly crucial with cancer drugs which carry significant side effects and toxicity. As the data on treating ovarian cancer with PARP inhibitors becomes more promising and their use becomes more widespread, oncologists are looking for information on patient tolerance.
Learn MoreWhich Ovarian Cancer Patients Should Get PARP Inhibitor Maintenance Therapy?
PARP inhibitors are becoming an increasingly important part of the care for ovarian cancer. Professional medical societies have started to weigh in on how these drugs should be incorporated into clinical care, but providers still have many unanswered questions about their use.
Learn MoreProgression-Free Survival With Olaparib (Lynparza) in SOLO-1 Study “Dramatic and Impressive”
Over the last few years, we have been more strategically targeting ovarian cancer treatment based on a patient’s BRCA or homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) status. “We’ve seen a complete transformation in how we think about ovarian cancer,” says Dr. Stephanie Wethington, gynecologic oncologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Learn MoreIndividualizing Treatment for Asymptomatic Oligometastatic Bladder Cancer
Chemotherapy is the generally recognized frontline treatment for metastatic bladder cancer. But for patients who are in the transitional oligometastatic state between localized and metastatic cancer and are asymptomatic, what comes next can be somewhat unclear.
Learn MoreWill Bladder Preservation Become More Common in the Future?
“For localized bladder cancer patients who have muscle invasive disease, a lot of departments across the country really do favor surgery,” Dr. Jeannie Hoffman-Censits, medical oncologist and bladder cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins, tells SurvivorNet Connect. Radiation has long been an option for selected patients who don’t have multi-focal disease, “who don’t have certain high-risk features."
Learn MoreImmunotherapy is a ‘Powerful Tool’ for Treating Urothelial Cancer
Platinum-based chemotherapy remains the standard of care for the treatment of patients with metastatic urothelial cancer in the frontline setting. However, for patients who are not candidates for chemotherapy or who have PD-L1 positive tumors, immunotherapy may be considered for frontline use.
Learn MorePredicting Which Lung Cancer Patients Will Benefit From Immunotherapy
Immune checkpoint inhibitors like pembrolizumab have been a major advancement in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but they need to be prescribed strategically to have the greatest benefit. That requires looking at the immune landscape of the cancer using PD-L1 immunohistochemistry, and specifically the Tumor Proportion Score (TPS).
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