Scientific community and society articles within Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology

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  • Comment |

    The FDA approval of perioperative pembrolizumab, an approach that combines neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy with this agent, for patients with early stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) contradicts its own stated standard for combination therapies. Given the large population of patients with early stage NSCLC and the high costs of pembrolizumab, whether the adjuvant component provides incremental benefit is an important question.

    • Garth W. Strohbehn
    •  & Bishal Gyawali

  • Comment |

    Telemedicine represents the practical embodiment of patient-centred oncology care, a concept that has become increasingly popular in the past few years. Yet despite the demonstrated benefits of telemedicine, its longitudinal adoption remains limited. Herein we discuss some of the potential challenges that telemedicine faces, as we underutilize this approach relative to its anticipated value.

    • Howard Jack West
    • , Erin Bange
    •  & Fumiko Chino

  • Comment |

    Transgender patients are a marginalized group for whom current standards of oncology have yet to be optimized. In this Comment, we highlight opportunities for transgender-inclusive and transgender-specific practices across the cancer care continuum and identify evidence gaps that will need to be filled to attain optimal care for transgender populations.

    • Elle Lett
    • , Joannie M. Ivory
    •  & Mya L. Roberson

  • Comment |

    Around 100 new cancer drugs, defined as new molecular entities, were approved in China between 2005 and 2021. More than half of these new cancer drugs do not constitute innovations in mechanism of action or therapy and do not have documented meaningful clinical benefit. Approaches are needed to promote meaningful innovation for patients with cancer.

    • Yichen Zhang
    • , Anita K. Wagner
    •  & Xiaodong Guan

  • Review Article |

    The incidence of early-onset forms of many cancers (defined as cancers diagnosed in individuals <50 years of age) has increased in a number of countries over the past several decades. The underlying reasons for this apparent increase probably include greater use of screening programmes, but also changing patterns in early-life exposures. In this Review, the authors describe the emerging global increase in the incidence of early-onset cancers and suggest changes that might address this situation.

    • Tomotaka Ugai
    • , Naoko Sasamoto
    •  & Shuji Ogino

  • News & Views |

    To achieve health equity, we advocate for the overrepresentation of particular racial and ethnic minority groups so that analyses of group-specific treatment effects can be optimally powered. A paradigm shift is needed across multiple stakeholders, as well as in the engagement of community programmes, the role of investigators from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds and clinical trial regulations.

    • Scarlett Lin Gomez
    •  & Chiaojung Jillian Tsai

  • Review Article |

    In the past few years, advances in omics technologies have led to a better understanding of the heterogeneity of triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) and their microenvironment, supporting a view of this breast cancer subtype as an ecosystem that encompasses the intrinsic and extrinsic features of cancer cells. The authors of this Review describe the current and upcoming therapeutic landscape of TNBC and discuss how an integrated view of the TNBC ecosystem can provide improved opportunities for tailoring treatment.

    • Giampaolo Bianchini
    • , Carmine De Angelis
    •  & Luca Gianni

  • Comment |

    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted health care worldwide. Patients with cancer seem to be particularly susceptible to morbidities and mortality from this novel disease. No COVID-19-specific therapy currently seems to offer a survival benefit to this unique patient population. Furthermore, the global effects on routine cancer care will likely be felt for decades to come.

    • Leora Horn
    •  & Marina Garassino

  • Perspective |

    Historically, academic surgeons, so-called surgeon scientists, have been at the forefront of cancer research. However, the role of the surgeon scientist is changing, and concerns have been raised about declines in the number of surgeons performing basic science research alongside clinical activity. Herein, the multifactorial drivers of these changes are discussed and strategies to increase surgical engagement in oncology research are described.

    • Robert. P. Jones
    • , Chandrakanth Are
    •  & Graeme J. Poston

  • Comment |

    Multidisciplinary team meetings have several flaws; herein, we propose approaches for cancer centres to transform these limitations into improvements in the quality control of oncological care and into research opportunities.

    • N. Gopalakrishna Iyer
    •  & Melvin L. K. Chua

  • Opinion |

    A multidisciplinary approach is essential for the optimization of patient care in oncology, especially in the current landscape, in which standard-of-care approaches to cancer treatment are evolving towards highly targeted treatments, precise image guidance and personalized cancer therapy. Herein, the authors discuss current career development pathways for oncologists, suggesting strategies to improve clinical training and research, with specific emphasis on the involvement of trainees in multidisciplinary teams.

    • Alison C. Tree
    • , Victoria Harding
    •  & Ricky A. Sharma

  • News & Views |

    A patient's right to obtain medication that will be ineffective against his/her terminal illness and will cause his/her death should also encompass the right of that patient to be prescribed medication that might be ineffective and might cause his/her death. Indeed, the 'right to die' should embody the 'right to try' experimental agents for the treatment of cancer.

    • Benjamin A. Cohen-Kurzrock
    • , Philip R. Cohen
    •  & Razelle Kurzrock

  • News & Views |

    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.

    • Larry Gorkin
    •  & Hagop Kantarjian

  • News & Views |

    A survey on the official prices of 31 cancer drugs across 18 countries, published by Vogler and colleagues, has revealed substantial differences in price for the same drug in different countries. Herein, we discuss inequalities in the access to cancer care and raise some challenging questions.

    • Richard Sullivan
    •  & Ajay Aggarwal

  • Timeline |

    Radiotherapy has been driven by constant technological advances since the discovery of X rays in 1895. This Timeline article covers the history of radiotherapy and focuses on the advances of major importance in the past two decades. These changes have provided clinical benefit for patients with cancer.

    • Juliette Thariat
    • , Jean-Michel Hannoun-Levi
    •  & Jean-Pierre Gérard

  • Viewpoint |

    Nature Reviews Clinical Oncologypresents a new form of article, a Viewpoint, which provides a forum for a number of researchers to discuss important ongoing issues in oncology. In this Viewpoint article, experts from the field of breast cancer screening discuss and offer insight into the controversy regarding the efficacy and optimal methods of screening.

    • Philippe Autier
    • , Laura J. Esserman
    •  & Nehmat Houssami

  • News & Views |

    The Affordable Care Act—the Obama administration's signature legislation designed to insure over 30 million currently uninsured Americans—was recently declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court. Although not perfect, the law contains provisions that will benefit patients with cancer, those at risk of cancer and those in remission.

    • Sandra Swain
    •  & Clifford Hudis

  • Opinion |

    Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) pose dilemmas in terms of the tension between the therapeutic obligations of the physician and the scientific obligations of the investigator. Clinical equipoise is often regarded as a solution to this problem. The authors critically evaluate clinical equipoise and highlight its flaws as an ethical requirement for RCTs and propose an alternative method of risk–benefit assessment.

    • Steven Joffe
    •  & Franklin G. Miller

  • News & Views |

    The Cancer Act that was signed by President Nixon in December 1971 had a mandate “to support research and the application of the results of research, to reduce the incidence, morbidity and mortality from cancer.” It has succeeded in many of these aims, as this personal account testifies.

    • Vincent T. DeVita Jr

  • News & Views |

    From 1989 to 2003, 709 phase III trials evaluating systemic cancer treatment were presented at ASCO meetings. Tam and collaborators have now reported that 9% of these trials were never published, and 13% were published after a 5-year delay. More than half of these studies would have had clinical impact if published promptly.

    • Daniel F. Hayes

  • News & Views |

    On 11 March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused unprecedented devastation in Japan. Over 20,000 people lost their lives or went missing and more than 100,000 people had to evacuate their homes. Many victims are patients with chronic diseases, including cancer, who face interrupted or discontinued therapy.

    • Chiyo K. Imamura
    •  & Naoto T. Ueno

  • News & Views |

    The importance of appropriate patient selection necessitates novel clinical trial design and biomarker-driven trials to allow delivery of the right drug to the right patient at the right time—personalized cancer medicine. The WIN Consortium promotes collaboration between critical stakeholders and offers diverse populations of cancer patients the opportunity to participate in clinical trials with new drugs and biologics that target their tumor.

    • John Mendelsohn
    • , Thomas Tursz
    •  & Vladimir Lazar

  • Review Article |

    Publication bias and hidden multiple hypotheses testing distort the assessment of the true value of biomarkers. The authors of this article propose that a registry should be created for biomarker studies initially focused on studies that use specimens from randomized trials, as a means to alleviate the limitations associated with both publication bias and multiple hypotheses testing.

    • Fabrice Andre
    • , Lisa M. McShane
    •  & Lajos Pusztai

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