Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2023

This editorial reflects on the vision and focus of The Oncologist, both historically and with a look toward the future.

This article provides a comprehensive summary of the safety and tolerability of the combination of endocrine therapy and palbociclib among patients included in the randomized phase II PARSIFAL study.

This study sought to describe concordance between germline and tumor testing among patients at the investigators' institution and queried whether results from one test type could be used to inform the other. The authors also investigated the potential of a computational modeling algorithm to predict germline status based on tumor-only comprehensive genomic profiling results alone.

Although survival has improved over the past several decades, esophageal and gastric cancers still have poor survival outcomes. This article reviews the risks and benefits of immunotherapy in different subgroups for treatment of esophageal and gastric cancers.

For resectable colon cancer with synchronous liver or lung metastasis, resection is recommended, along with pre/perioperative chemotherapy before or adjuvant chemotherapy after surgical resection of all lesions. This study compared survival outcome from both options retrospectively.

Evidence shows that patients with cancer are at a high risk of severe complications and poor outcomes from SARS-CoV-2 infection. The CARDS study assessed SARS-CoV-2 immunity in patients with gastrointestinal cancer receiving anti-cancer therapy.

Preserving health-related quality of life is an important goal during renal cell carcinoma treatment. This article reports health-related quality of life outcomes from a phase II trial (NCT03173560).

The efficacy and safety of novel immunotherapy-based combinations have been evaluated, but there is currently a paucity of evidence on the economic benefits and risks associated with these therapies. This information can be valuable to healthcare decision-makers and payers. This article compares descriptive analyses of all-cause and treatment-related grade 3/4 adverse events costs of nivolumab plus ipilimumab, nivolumab plus cabozantinib, pembrolizumab plus axitinib, and pembrolizumab plus lenvatinib as first-line treatments for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.

This review summarizes the literature on oncology patient education strategies specific to low- and middle-income countries to identify gaps in order to set priorities for future research.

This article reports the results of a study that explored the perspectives of women who underwent self-collected HPV testing, received a positive result with the request to attend follow-up, and did not present within 60 days. In-depth interviews were used to develop an analytical framework to examine the barriers, beliefs, social norms, and logistical factors that contributed to women’s access to and decision-making about treatment.

This article compares MRI to examination under anesthesia for the assessment of local disease spread in patients with early stage cervical cancer.

This article reports on the genomic landscape and prevalence of immunotherapy biomarkers, including tumor mutational burden, in a large cohort of patients with lymphoma. This is the second largest cohort of B-cell primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCL) cases to date and the largest to compare the molecular subtypes between PCL, secondary central nervous system lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

This report presents results from two phase I trials conducted to evaluate the tolerability, safety, and preliminary antitumor activity of SHR7390 monotherapy in patients with advanced solid tumors (SHR7390 monotherapy trial) or SHR7390 in combination with camrelizumab in patients with treatment-refractory advanced or metastatic CRC (SHR7390 combination trial).

This article summarizes the evidence regarding the risk of developing lung cancer in patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) and considerations for diagnosis and treatment in this patient population. Practical considerations for monitoring ILD progression during lung cancer treatment are also discussed.

Patients with glioblastoma with positive EGFR expression have an especially poor prognosis. This article presents the results of a study that evaluated the clinical efficacy and safety of nimotuzumab in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma with positive EGFR expression.

The efficacy of specific MET inhibitors is poorly studied. This article presents the case of a patient with chemotherapy-refractory metastatic cholangiocarcinoma harboring a CAPZA-2-MET fusion along with MET amplification who dramatically responded to capmatinib, a specific MET tyrosine kinase inhibitor.

A key aspect of early palliative care is honest prognostic communications, although such conversations can be difficult. This article describes perceptions of death for patients with advanced cancer receiving early palliative care and their caregivers.

This article reports results of a study on potential quality of life and function benefits from a walking intervention in women during active treatment for metastatic breast cancer.

This article reports the results of a trial that evaluated the efficacy and safety of nab-paclitaxel followed by dose-dense epirubicin/cyclophosphamide as neoadjuvant therapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer.

This article presents efficacy data in Cohort 1 of the monarchE study, a patient population that was enrolled based on high-risk clinicopathological features that can easily be identified during routine breast cancer evaluation, and highlights the evidence for the benefit of adding adjuvant abemaciclib to endocrine therapy for patients with node positive HR+, HER2- early breast cancer at a high risk of recurrence.

A cancer survivor describes the journey from healthy student through diagnosis and treatment for thyroid cancer and back again