touchREVIEWS in Oncology & Haematology – Volume 17, Issue 2 – 2021

Welcome to the winter edition of touchREVIEWS in Oncology & Haematology. Despite the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer care, 2021 has seen important advances in many areas of oncology, which is reflected in our diverse range of articles. We begin with one of our popular expert interviews, in which Axel Merseburger discusses the […]

Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide.1 However, the emergence of novel hormonal therapies and the increasing availability of sensitive next-generation imaging techniques, such as gallium-88 prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted positron emission tomography (PET), has transformed the management of advanced prostate cancer. Numerous agents, including abiraterone, enzalutamide, apalutamide, darolutamide, docetaxel, cabazitaxel, […]

RELATIVITY-047 reported on the initial efficacy and safety of relatlimab (RELA), an antibody to lymphocyte-activating gene 3 (LAG-3), in combination with nivolumab (NIVO), an antibody to programmed cell death 1 (PD-1).1 These positive findings add to the existing evidence for the efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy – either alone or in combination with ipilimumab (IPI), an antibody […]

Cumulatively, TNBC accounts for 35–40% of breast cancer deaths in the United States, despite only comprising 10–15% of total breast cancer cases diagnosed.1 Even before the use of anti-estrogen therapies became widespread, hormone receptor-positive breast cancer (HR+BC) provided a far more favourable risk of recurrence and overall prognosis compared with TNBC.2,3 Once metastatic, TNBC historically carries […]

Cervical cancer (CC) is the fourth most common female malignancy, with 640,127 new cases and 341,831 deaths in 2020 worldwide. Despite the introduction of screening programmes and vaccination campaigns, CC still represents one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in women.1 The appropriate treatment strategy is determined according to the stage of disease at […]

Current treatment landscape in Canada Waldenström’s macroglobulinaemia (WM) is a rare haematological disorder with an incidence of about three cases per million, leading to approximately 150 new cases per year in Canada.1,2 WM is characterized by a clonal lymphoplasmacytic infiltration of the bone marrow and the presence of an IgM monoclonal protein.3,4 Symptomatic disease can arise from […]

Immunoglobulin light chain (AL) amyloidosis is the most common type of systemic amyloidosis, a spectrum of diseases induced by misfolded proteins that generate insoluble amyloid fibrils and deposits in various organs. The precursor protein in AL amyloidosis is a toxic, free light chain (FLC) secreted by an indolent plasma cell or B-cell clone in the […]

Paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH) is a rare, chronic haematological illness. The condition presents on a background of bone marrow failure, and affected individuals can experience an array of symptoms due to chronic haemolysis, as well as episodes of acute haemolysis and thrombotic events.1 Diagnostic delays in PNH are common as not all patients experience classical symptoms, […]

The antitumor activity of immune checkpoint inhibotors in various solid and haematologic malignancies has substantially increased immunotherapy implications for cancer. Once only a niche treatment for selected cancers (renal cancer and melanoma), now cancer immunotherapy has become an important option for many patients, even moving into the first-line systemic treatment setting for melanoma, non-small cell […]

The addition of rituximab to chemotherapy provides an overall survival benefit in aggressive lymphomas,1 whereas for indolent lymphoma subtypes this addition has resulted in improvements in progression-free survival.2 For more than two decades, immunotherapy with monoclonal ‘naked’ antibodies targeting CD20 remained the primary representative of this therapeutic modality,3 with a small number of patients receiving anti-CD20 radioimmunotherapy.4 A […]

Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common haematological malignancy, affecting an estimated 450,600 patients worldwide, with an estimated 34,920 new diagnoses and 12,410 patient deaths in the USA in 2021.1,2 Although established curative therapies for MM have not yet been defined, we have observed an incremental increase in survival, with a doubling of 5-year survival […]

The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 248,530 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2021.1 For the nearly 90% of patients diagnosed with locoregional prostate cancer, the goal of treatment by surgical intervention or radiation is cure. In some cases, active surveillance is appropriate. For locoregional prostate cancers, these […]

Allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HSCT) remains a potential curative therapeutic option for patients with refractory/relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) in whom an autologous peripheral blood stem-cell transplantation (PBSCT) has failed. This is explained by the additional benefit of a graft-versus-lymphoma (GVL) effect. Unfortunately, HLA-identical donors are not available for all patients. In such cases, haplo-identical […]