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Leonard G. Gomella, MD, FACS, hailed precision medicine's transformative influence on prostate cancer in a presentation during the New York GU[TM] 17th Annual Interdisciplinary Prostate Cancer Congress[R] and Other Genitourinary [...]

Treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta) induced high rates of durable responses in patients with indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), according to extended follow-up results of the ZUMA-5 trial that were [...]

Selinexor (Xpovio) demonstrated a clinical benefit in patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) across age groups, according to results of a post hoc analysis of the SADAL trial [...]

Treatment with GP2 immunotherapy and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) led to a 100% disease-free survival (DFS) rate for patients with HER2 3+ disease who received adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin), according to [...]

Combination therapy with nivolumab (Opdivo) and cabozantinib (Cabometyx) significantly improved progression-free and overall survival compared with sunitinib (Sutent) as frontline treatment for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according [...]

The article reports on the approval of oral therapy fruquintinib by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat adults with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) who were previously treated with fluoropyrimidine-, oxaliplatin-, and iriinotecan-based chemotherapy. Topics discussed include basis of the approval, reasons that patients with metastatic disease are often fragile and fatigue, and improvement made by fruquintinib on progression-free survival (PFS).

Triplet excitons created in poly-2,7-(9,9-dihexyl)fluorene (pF) chains with end trap groups in solution are efficiently transported to and captured by the end groups. The triplets explore the entire lengths of the chains, even for ∼100 nm long chains, enabling determination of the completeness of end-capping. The results show that the chains are continuous: they may contain transient barriers or traps, such as those from fluctuations of dihedral angles, but they are free of major defects that stop motion of the triplets. Quantitative determinations are aided by the addition of a strong electron donor, TMPD, which removes absorption bands of the end-trapped triplets. For chains having at least one end trap, triplet capture is quantitative on the 1 μs time scale imposed by the use of the donor. Fractions of chains having no end traps were 0.15 for pF samples with anthraquinone (AQ) end traps and 0.063 with naphthylimide (NI) end traps. These determinations agreed with measurements by NMR for short (<40 polymer repeat units (PRU)) chains, where NMR determinations are accurate. The results find no evidence for traps or barriers to the transport of triplets, and places limits on the possible presence of defects as impenetrable barriers to less than one per 300 PRU. The present results present a paradigm different from the current consensus, derived from observations of singlet excitons, that conjugated chains are divided into “segments,” perhaps by some kind of defects. For the present pF chains, the segmentation either does not apply to triplet excitons or is transient so that the defects are healed or surmounted in times much shorter than 1 μs. Triplets on chains without end trap groups transfer to chains with end traps on a slower time scale. Rate constants for these bimolecular triplet transfer reactions were found to increase with the length of the accepting chain, as did rate constants for triplet transfer to the chains from small molecules like biphenyl. A second set of polyfluorenes with 2-butyloctyl side chains was found to have a much lower completeness of end-capping.

The article reports on the claim by Melanoma Institute of Australia's (MIA) Georgina Long that the next steps with melanoma immunotherapy will focus on patient stratification, therapy personalization, and refinement of localized regimens. In her presentation at the virtual 17th International Congress of the Society for Melanoma Research as of December 2020, Long said that there are already benchmarks for standard melanoma treatments.