Oncology News Central Peer-Spectives

From a “game-changer” in triple-negative disease to broader paradigm shifts and practice changes, the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting was pivotal for breast cancer care, says Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, chief of the Division of Breast Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Tolaney broke down some of the top data at ASCO 2025 with Robert A. Figlin, MD, the in...

Results from the phase 3 ATOMIC trial are practice changing for colorectal cancer care and raise broader questions about immunotherapy use in patients with mismatch repair deficiencies across tumor types. Frank A. Sinicrope, MD, a professor of oncology and medicine at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, presented the findings at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. He discu...

“An increasingly unrealistic set of performance expectations” is putting a strain on oncologist faculty members, says Clifford Hudis, MD, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). He discussed the mounting challenges for academic cancer physicians and how ASCO is working to address them with Robert A. Figlin, MD, the interim director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer in Los Angeles and Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematolog...

“For the first 15 years of my career, we had nothing new” in bladder cancer care, said Jonathan E. Rosenberg, MD, chief of the genitourinary oncology service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Now, “the pace of change has been dizzying,” he told Robert A. Figlin, MD, the interim director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer in Los Angeles and Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematology-Oncology. Speaking at the 2025 Amer...

Findings from the SERENA-6 trial, which examined switching therapies in patients with breast cancer ahead of disease progression, made headlines during the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. However, big questions remain. “I don’t know for sure if the approach is practice changing yet. I think the approach is practice confounding,” said Stephanie Graff, MD, director of breast oncology at Brown University Hea...

From digitizing its guidelines to potential embedding them in EMRs, the National Comprehensive Cancer  Network (NCCN) is working to “make the workflow easier and better” for oncologists, Crystal S. Denlinger, MD, FACP, CEO of the NCCN, told Robert A. Figlin, MD, the interim director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer in  Los Angeles and Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematology-Oncology, at this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (...

“Is it time to do something big and different? That’s always a good question to ask,” said W. Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, MMHC, the immediate former director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the current CEO of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center–James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. At the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, Dr. Rathmell spoke with Robert A. Figlin, MD...

A late-breaking abstract presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting (LBA3) showed that rusfertide significantly increased hematocrit control and improved symptoms for patients with polycythemia vera, a chronic leukemia. “We thought if we could use our understanding of iron regulation, then we could change the game a little bit,” said Andrew Kuykendall, MD, assistant member in the Department of Malign...

When it comes to building support for cancer research in the current environment, “the message that we have had in our field is a good one. But we may need to craft a better message,” says Robert A. Winn, MD, director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center in Richmond. Dr. Winn lays out a strategy designed to show the American public the benefits in oncology already yielded from pr...

The addition of perioperative durvalumab in gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer improved event-free survival, according to findings from the MATTERHORN study. “This trial will be an important milestone,” said Yelena Y. Janjigian, MD, chief of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, who presented the findings at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual M...

Data from the SERENA-6 trial, presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, have the potential to dramatically change advanced estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer care, says William J Gradishar, MD, the Betsy Bramsen Professor of Breast Oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The study showed benefit in switching therapies based on circulating tum...

Editor’s Note: This interview was recorded shortly before the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

Big questions associated with ESR1 mutations in patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer may soon have answers. New data are “going to take the whole breast oncology field from one place and put it in a different place. It’s going to be an inflection point in our history of treating breast cancer,” ...

The approach to ESR1 and PIK3CA mutations in patients with hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer continues to evolve. What role does circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) play in treatment decisions? How should oncologists best approach patients with PIK3CA mutations who subsequently develop ESR1 mutations? VK Gadi, MD, PhD, professor and director of medical oncology and deputy director of the University of Illinois Cancer Cen...

The last few years have seen “a remarkable change in both our approach and management of EGFR lung cancer,” says Shirish M. Gadgeel, MD, division head for hematology/oncology and associate director of Patient Experience and Clinical Care at the Henry Ford Cancer Institute in Detroit. He discusses key considerations for managing EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer with Robert A. Figlin, MD, the interim director and Steven Spielb...

When it comes to tackling fertility issues associated with cancer, “oncology clinicians are often reluctant to talk about this because it is really not our wheelhouse,” says Alison Wakoff Loren, MD, MSCE, chief of the Division of Hematology Oncology, director of Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation, and the C. Willard Robinson Professor of Hematology-Oncology at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. Dr. Loren and colleagues recently upda...

“Second-line [estrogen receptor (ER)]-positive breast cancer has just become very complicated,” says Erika P. Hamilton, MD, the director of breast cancer and gynecologic cancer research at Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville. She discusses the role of ESR1 mutations in selecting appropriate treatments and combination regimens for patients with ER-positive breast cancer who have disease progression with Robert A. Figlin, MD...

Burnout among oncologists is a serious concern, and artificial intelligence (AI) represents a potential solution, says Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, a practicing oncologist and breast cancer specialist in Austin, Texas, who also serves as the chair of the AI task force for the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Technological advances are poised to improve cancer care while reducing the documentation burden for oncologists, she tell...

The standard approach of “7 + 3” chemotherapy in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) treatment has been in place for 50 years. But that may soon change, says Maximilian Stahl, MD, a member of the Adult Leukemia Group at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and a member of the faculty at Harvard University. “My prediction is that in 10 years, you will not see much 7 + 3 anymore. Maybe not even 10 years, maybe five years,” he tells Ro...

Oncologist burnout and career dissatisfaction are a “huge problem,” says Robin T. Zon, MD, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Dr. Zon sits down with Robert A. Figlin, MD, the Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematology-Oncology at the Cedars-Sinai Cancer Center in Los Angeles, to discuss revelations from a recent ASCO report. “ASCO recognizes that if, in fact, we are going to accomplish our mission, we h...