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Late toxicities from radiation therapy are frequent in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma and can hamper survival. These late toxicities should decrease with modern radiation therapy but results are not mature and so the importance of this decrease is still unknown. Hence, all studies in Hodgkin lymphoma must report long-term outcome.
Clinical trials have consistently demonstrated the superior sensitivity of human papillomavirus (HPV) testing compared with cytology (Pap) testing for identifying women at risk of cervical cancer. Rijkaart et al. have now shown that adding HPV testing to routine cervical cancer screening can further reduce the risk of cervical cancer compared to Pap testing alone.
The BOLERO-2 and CLEOPATRA trials evaluated everolimus for estrogen receptor-positive and pertuzumab for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. Both agents enhanced the efficacy of standard therapy, were relatively well tolerated and should be approved for therapeutic use. These data confirm that targeting both major driver and escape pathways improves treatment outcomes.
Despite advances in treating multiple myeloma with the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib and the immunomodulatory drugs thalidomide and lenalidomide, most patients eventually relapse. In this Review, the authors discuss how next-generation inhibitors and immunotherapy agents have been developed based on an improved understanding of the biology of the disease, and highlight the challenges associated with these therapeutic approaches.
DNA repair as a therapeutic target has received considerable attention in the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this Review, Postel-Vinay et al. discuss how optimizing treatment of NSCLC according to DNA-repair biomarkers, such as ERCC1, BRCA1 or RRM1, may aid clinical decision making and improve the outcome of patients with NSCLC.
Patients with cancer who also have hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection have a significant morbidity and mortality. HBV reactivation is a serious but preventable complication of immunosuppressive therapy. The authors discuss the epidemiology, pathogenesis, risk factors, and clinical and laboratory manifestations associated with the reactivation of HBV and HCV during immunosuppressive therapy, and discuss strategies for the prevention and treatment of viral reactivation.
Should dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI be used in the assessment of drug-development of antivascular agents? In this Review, O'connor et al. discuss whether data from DCE-MRI are reliable and reproducible biomarkers of drug efficacy, and whether they assist in dose selection and drug scheduling in the design of early clinical trials.
The increasing reliance on hazard ratios for the assessment of clinical trial data prompted this Perspectives article, designed to outline the uses and misuses of this popular statistical value. The authors use real trial data and synthetic examples to explain how the hazard ratio is derived and why the numerical value of a survival measure should also be published alongside it.
