Iyengar and colleagues performed a secondary analysis of a cohort of postmenopausal women with a normal body mass index (BMI) enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative study. Results showed that women with normal BMI could have increased levels of whole body and truncal body fat. Relatively high levels of body fat were associated with increased breast cancer risk. Pimentel et al provide an Editorial.
Editorial
In a randomized clinical trial, Bex and colleagues assessed whether sunitinib therapy before cytoreductive nephrectomy (CN) improves outcomes in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. No difference in progression-free survival was observed in patients who had immediate CN followed by sunitinib therapy or 3 cycles of sunitinib followed by CN. Patients who complete medical treatment without disease progression may be most sensitive to sunitinib. Lara and Evans provide the Invited Commentary.
Invited Commentary
Aggarwal and colleagues performed a prospective cohort study of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to determine whether plasma-based genotyping was associated with improved mutation detection. Of 323 patients, 94 (29.1%) had plasma testing only and 229 had concurrent plasma and tissue next-generation sequencing or were unable to complete tissue testing. Targetable mutations were detected for 47 patients (20.5%) who underwent plasma testing alone, whereas plasma testing and tissue sequencing detected targetable mutations in 82 (35.8%). Plasma-based genotyping may increase the rate of detection of clinically actionable mutations in patients with NSCLC. Gyawali and West provide an Editorial.
Editorial
In the phase 2 CONDOR randomized clinical trial, Siu and colleagues assessed the safety of durvalumab therapy with or without tremelimumab in patients with head and neck squamous cell cancer and low or negative programmed death ligand 1 tumor cell expression. Durvalumab and durvalumab with tremelimumab had modest clinical benefit with a manageable toxicity profile. The results underscore the need for more effective treatment for patients with no PD-L1 tumor expression.
Tichelli and colleagues performed a cohort study to examine outcomes of European patients with second solid cancers (SSCs) after hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). Of 4065 patients with a second solid cancer after HSCT, 1777 (43.7%) died, of which 1256 (74.8%) were from SSCs, 344 (20.5%) from primary disease, and 79 (4.7%) from other causes. The standardized mortality ratio was higher, compared with de novo solid cancers, for melanoma, prostate, breast, kidney, bladder, colorectal, and endometrial cancers but not for the other cancers. The results indicate a need for scheduled cancer screening for survivors of a primary malignancy.