Chinese clinical oncology
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Chinese clinical oncology · Apr 2017
ReviewImmune checkpoint inhibitors in lung cancer: current status and future directions.
Recently, the immune checkpoint inhibitors that target programmed death 1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) have made a breakthrough in treating advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with the efficacy of approximately 20%; among which, nivolumab has acquired treatment indications in lung squamous cell carcinoma. The inhibitors targeting cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) are also undergoing clinical trials. ⋯ However, many problems wait to be solved, such as searching for ideal biomarkers, constituting the best criteria for curative effect evaluation, exploring different combination treatment models, and clearly understanding the mechanisms of primary or secondary drug resistance. Along with these problems to be successfully solved, the immune checkpoint inhibitors will have more broad applications in lung cancer therapy.
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Malignant melanoma (MM) is the primary cause of skin cancer related death and the incidence is increasing in the past years. Advanced MM still has a poor prognosis, but in recent years, the development of immunotherapy has changed its poor prognosis. Immune checkpoints show the revolutionary treatment of metastatic melanoma. ⋯ In this review, recently immunotherapy clinical trial results are presented. The combination of immunotherapy provides new options for the treatment of MM patients. However, further studies are necessary to answer such question as optimal treatment, combination of immunotherapies, crowd selection and risk balance in patients with melanoma.
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Chinese clinical oncology · Dec 2016
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyTransdermal granisetron for the prevention of nausea and vomiting following moderately or highly emetogenic chemotherapy in Chinese patients: a randomized, double-blind, phase III study.
The granisetron transdermal delivery system (GTDS) has been demonstrated effectiveness in the control of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) in previous studies. This is the first phase III study to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of GTDS in patients receiving moderately emetogenic chemotherapy (MEC) or highly emetogenic chemotherapy (HEC) in China. ⋯ GTDS provided effective and well-tolerated control of CINV in Chinese patients, especially to non-cisplatin-contained regimen.
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Although the science is able to proof that a drug works for the BRCA mutation in breast cancer, prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer (and maybe in other BRCA-mutated cancers) we stick to the registration path of doing phase 1, 2 and 3 trials based on organs. With the knowledge of today and the practice of personalized medicine we are able to give the drug olaparib much faster and save lives or at least extend lives with a good quality of life. This can be done differently if patients are involved in the process of determining the research, designing the trials and organizing the trials. If done properly we help patients in the first place and all the stakeholders will benefit as well.
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Biliary tract cancers represent an uncommon, heterogenous malignant group of tumors that include gallbladder cancers (GBC) and cholangiocarcinomas that are frequently detected in the locally advanced or metastatic setting. The randomized phase III ABC-02 trial established the combination regimen of cisplatin plus gemcitabine as standard of care therapy. Nevertheless, despite prior and subsequent attempts utilizing a variety of treatment strategies clinical outcomes for these cancers remains disappointing, necessitating the innate call for improvements in treatment approaches. ⋯ Limitations of chemotherapy have been exposed and future trials must have a logical design with incorporation of biomarkers that can aid prognosis or predict benefit to therapy. Advances in genomic sequencing can allow identification of potential actionable targets that can be exploited therapeutically which is already underway with the targeting of FGFR2 fusions and IDH1/2 mutations in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (IHCC). With these approaches there is potential to gain improvements in outcomes for patients affected by these adverse group of cancers.