Volume 13 Issue 5, May 2016

A study reveals that, from 2009–2014, a considerable percentage of public speakers at Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee meetings had disclosed or undisclosed financial associations with the drug company seeking product approval. Amid calls for increased public engagement in health care and health-care research, steps must be taken to minimize the conflicts of interests of those who claim to speak for patients and the public.

Apatinib significantly improves both the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival in patients with advanced-stage gastric cancer who are refractory to two or more lines of chemotherapy. In the context of previous phase III trials of angiogenesis inhibitors for this disease, we discuss the role of apatinib, and the advantages and limitations of VEGFR-2 blockade in the advanced disease setting.

Imatinib has revolutionized the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). In 2016, generic imatinib will be introduced into the US market. We analyse the potential impact of this new product on patient care and optimal CML therapy, and comment on the effect that distorted cancer drug pricing in the USA will have on treatment for patients with limited therapeutic options.

The aim of immunotherapy is to treat cancer by enabling the immune system to attack the tumour. In the past decade, remarkable results have been obtained in clinical trials with immunotherapy for patients with advanced-stage cancer. Two types of immunotherapy have been used in the majority of trials conducted in the past decade: immune cell-targeted antibody therapy and adoptive cellular therapy. Herein, the latest advances in both modalities are discussed, including settings for which testing combination strategies and 'armoured' CAR T cells are recommended.

Chromosome instability (CIN) is gaining increasing interest as a central process in cancer, and is indicated whenever tumour cells harbour an abnormal quantity of DNA, termed 'aneuploidy'. In this Review, the authors review the literature published since 2000 that support the hypothesis that aneuploidy is a predictor of a poor prognosis in patients with cancer, focusing on the evidence from studies of seven common epithelial cancer types that performed multivariate analyses. The implications of ploidy analysis with regard to our theoretical understanding of the role of CIN in carcinogenesis, as well as its prognostic use in the clinic, are discussed.

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a heterogeneous disease that is typically associated with a very poor prognosis; however, cytogenetic and molecular abnormalities that characterize different forms of AML have been used to better prognosticate patients and inform treatment strategies, which might enable better outcomes to be achieved. Moreover, in the era of next-generation sequencing and molecularly targeted therapy, genetic profiling of patients with AML could open new avenues of treatment. Herein, the authors discuss the evidence-base for integrating mutational data into treatment decisions for patients with AML, and propose novel therapeutic algorithms aimed at improving outcomes of this dismal disease by promoting clinical research.

Reporting of toxic adverse effects of anticancer treatments by clinicians generally results in the underreporting of these toxicities. Patient-reported outcomes, which fully reflect the experiences of patients receiving treatment, offer an alternative to reporting of toxicities by clinicians. In this Perspective, the authors describe the barriers and challenges to routine integration of patient-reported outcomes into clinical trials, and describe the PRO–CTCAE, which is designed to help circumvent some of these challenges.