ONCOLOGY & HEMATOLOGY – REVIEW VOLUME 12 ISSUE 2 – FALL 2016

Welcome to the fall edition of Oncology & Hematology Review, which features a broad range of articles covering topics of relevance to oncologists and hematologists, as well as the wider medical community. Included in this edition is an article by Al Dallal on sickle cell trait (SCT). While not a disease in itself, SCT is […]

Janus kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription inhibition A major breakthrough in understanding the molecular drivers of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) came in 2005, with the discovery of the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) V617F driver mutation.1 Mutated JAK activates a number of downstream pathways implicated in the proliferation and survival of malignant cells, including the signal […]

Treatment paradigms in multiple myeloma are undergoing rapid transformation. Deep remissions are possible in a large number of patients with new effective therapies with or without autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT), and this improvement is seen among all categories including newly diagnosed, relapsed refractory, elderly, as well as high-risk patients. Despite an increasingly improving proportion […]

Metastatic melanoma (mM) and metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) are potentially lethal cancers with overall poor prognosis. High dose interleukin-2 (HD IL-2; Proleukin®, Prometheus Laboratories Inc, San Diego, California) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1992 for the treatment of mRCC and in 1998 for the treatment of mM. Approval […]

Each June, at the oral sessions of the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, the ASCO Program Committee’s top ranked abstracts are presented and subjected to expert commentary. These sessions frequently signal the latest directions along which research is evolving and may set new practice standards. At the 2016 meeting, researchers spoke to […]

Interleukin 2 (IL-2, Proleukin® Prometheus Laboratories Inc., San Diego, US.) is a recombinant protein that plays an essential role in the development and function of a spectrum of T cells, including regulatory T cells, a naturally occurring population of CD4+ T cells that are vital to the control of inflammatory responses.1 Consequently, IL-2 has numerous […]

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined by a lack of expression of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR), and a lack of overexpression or amplification of human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) on tumor cells. TNBC accounts for approximately 15–20% of all breast cancers diagnosed in the United States.1 It is more common […]

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a common and serious inherited hematological disorders in humans. Globally, the disorder affects approximately 300,000 live births per year,1 and thus it is among the most important epidemiological genetic disorders in the world. SCD occurs as a result of substitution of valine for glutamic acid at the sixth amino acid […]

Fungal laryngitis is an uncommon condition. The exact incidence is not well defined as very few cases have been reported in the literature. Candida is the most common pathogen involved, with Aspergillus species coming in second.1–3 Other rare causes of fungal laryngitis such as cryptococcosis, blastomycosis, and histoplasmosis have also been reported.4,5 This case report […]

In the field of detection and imaging, multiparametric-prostate magnetic resonance images (MP-MRI) were re-interpreted with the Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PIRADS) V.2 and correlated with the eventual histo-pathological finding(s) in 68 patients undergoing either transrectal ultrasound (TRUS)-guided biopsy or radical prostatectomy after the MP-MRI. The findings of this study suggest that a PIRADS […]

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are small anticancer molecules targeting protooncogenic tyrosine kinase signalling pathways.1 TKIs are now therapies used routinely in the treatment of many solid tumours such as gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST), renal cell carcinoma (RCC), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), medullary thyroid cancer, breast cancer and non-small-cell lung carcinoma (Table 1). As opposed to cytotoxic […]