February 2021: Oncology
February 15, 2021
This week, we’re looking at research on immunotherapy applications in kidney cancer, a potential prostate cancer test that could avoid unnecessary biopsies, and immunotherapy responses in various cancer treatments.
February 11, 2021 / UCSF
For all their importance as a breakthrough treatment, the cancer immunotherapies known as checkpoint inhibitors still only benefit a small minority of patients, perhaps 15 percent across different types of cancer. Moreover, doctors cannot accurately predict which of their patients will respond.
February 11, 2021 / University of Michigan
A urine test could have avoided one third of unnecessary prostate cancer biopsies while failing to detect only a small number of cancers, according to a validation study that included more than 1,500 patients.
February 13, 2021 / Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Patients with advanced kidney cancer, who received a targeted drug combined with a checkpoint-blocker immunotherapy agent had longer survival than patients treated with the standard targeted drug according to the results from a phase 3 clinical trial.
