The frequency of serious adverse event reporting in oncology clinical trials decreased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, report US researchers.

Findings from the TARGET-TP trial support a risk-directed approach to thromboprophylaxis in ambulatory patients with gastrointestinal or lung cancer receiving systemic anticancer treatment.

“The safety and tolerability profile seen in this cohort […] was broadly consistent with previous reports from the KRYSTAL-1 trial,” say Marcelo Negrao (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA) and colleagues.

Strategies to improve flexibility in clinical trials may improve enrollment rates during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study presented at the IASLC 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer.

Matteo Lambertini comments on the early and advanced breast cancer trials that caught his attention at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, including the OlympiA, ECOG-ACRIN EA1131, GeparNUEVO, DAWNA-1, and sysucc-002 studies.

Recruitment to oncology clinical trials fell markedly during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the subsequent wave saw “only a modest” decrease, say US researchers.

Editorial board member Axel Merseburger discusses the clinical implications of key genitourinary cancer abstracts presented at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, including the KEYNOTE-564 and VISION trials, as well as brain metastases data from CheckMate 920 and updates on several enfortumab vedotin studies.

DOI [Teaser]  Key Points Ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel; CARTITUDE-1) and physician’s choice of treatment (post-trial data for three daratumumab clinical trials, POLLUX, CASTOR, and EQUULEUS) were indirectly compared given the absence of direct head-to-head trials.

A Japanese real-world study has found higher rates of pneumonitis with first-line pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy among patients with advanced nonsquamous non-small-cell lung cancer than previously reported in clinical trials.

Nazli Dizman shares her highlights of the renal cell carcinoma presentations at the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium prostate cancer track, including the SWOG 1500 and CLEAR trials.

Axel Merseburger discusses the key abstracts in the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium prostate cancer track, including TITAN, TheraP, and ACIS, and shares his thoughts on how these findings may inform clinical practice.

Shilpa Gupta and Petros Grivas share their thoughts on the key practicing-changing trials in metastatic urothelial cancer, including EV-301, EV-201, TITAN-TCC, and TROPiCS-04 (16:47).

Petros Grivas and Shilpa Gupta discuss the key abstracts in the nonmetastatic urothelial cancer setting, sharing their thoughts on how the data inform clinical practice (10:39).

However, the investigators point out in the clinical trial update published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that exploratory analyses suggest a difference in OS results by Fcγ receptor genotype.

Treatment effects were modelled using data from the Prostate Testing for Cancer and Treatment (ProtecT) trial.

Gary Lyman discusses the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on various aspects of oncology clinical trials, from accrual to analysis, and highlights the need for robust research on COVID-19 and cancer.

They report on cohort C of the trial, which enrolled 471 patients with stage IIIB or IV NSCLC and a bTMB of at least 10 mutations as detected by the bTMB clinical trial assay (Foundation Medicine, Inc, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA).

The COVID-19 outbreak is associated with a decrease in accrual to cancer clinical trials, indicate US data.

Patricia LoRusso provides an independent comment on the DESTINY-Breast04 trial showing the benefit of trastuzumab deruxtecan for people with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer, and discusses the challenges involved.