Medical Oncology
Physician insights on cancer treatment protocols, immunotherapy, targeted therapies, and clinical trial updates.
Recent Discussions
Would you consider restarting IMID therapy in a patient with recent stroke while on IMID?
This is a very good question, and practice likely differs across institutions as data is limited. The discussion below refers primarily to the immunomodulatory (IMID) agents lenalidomide and pomalidomide.As you are aware, IMID therapy is known to be associated with an increased risk for venous throm...
When would you offer post-operative concurrent chemoradiation in anaplastic thyroid cancer?
The management of ATC has evolved considerably over recent years with the most significant being a dichotomy of management based on Braf mutation. We typically offer postoperative XRT, including in patients with either a limited or stable DM disease. However, in a multidisciplinary setting, there so...
How do you approach ADT in patients with high-risk prostate cancer who have risk factors for VTE, such as Factor V Leiden?
My default recommendation for patients with localized, high-risk prostate cancer is to recommend the use of long-term ADT. This intervention seems to offer a relatively large, clinically significant OS benefit for patients in the modern era receiving dose-escalated ADT. This benefit has been observe...
How do you approach ADT in patients with high-risk prostate cancer who have risk factors for VTE, such as Factor V Leiden?
My default recommendation for patients with localized, high-risk prostate cancer is to recommend the use of long-term ADT. This intervention seems to offer a relatively large, clinically significant OS benefit for patients in the modern era receiving dose-escalated ADT. This benefit has been observe...
Would you use consolidation immunotherapy after chemoradiation for patients with stage III NSCLC and EGFR amplification?
The short answer is yes, as long as there is no concurrent oncogenic EGFR mutation. During the early days of EGFR-TKI development over 20 years ago, there were different predictive biomarkers proposed and studied. Pitted against each other were biomarkers using more established pathology methods (EG...
In what situations would you treat a rectal mass as cancer despite negative biopsies?
It is not uncommon to see a patient with rectal mass highly suspicious for malignancy by endoscopic evaluation but has a negative biopsy. Usually, this is due to superficial biopsy specimens. In our clinic, we usually get repeated endoscopic evaluation with biopsy as our first step. However, a small...
What are your top takeaways in Breast Cancer from ESMO 2025?
ASCENT-03: At ASCO, the results of ASCENT-04 already showed an improvement of PFS (11.2 months vs. 7.8 months) in first-line setting for PD-L1 positive advanced triple negative breast cancer patients treated with sacituzumab plus pembrolizumab compared to chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab. The ASCEN...
What factors should be considered when deciding between datopotamab deruxtecan and sacituzumab govitecan for a patient with metastatic breast cancer?
When choosing between Dato-DXd and SG, I consider payload differences, toxicity profiles, and prior therapies. Dato-DXd delivers DXd (an exatecan derivative), while SG delivers SN-38 (active irinotecan metabolite). SG demonstrated an OS benefit in TROPiCS-02 (JCO 2023), whereas Dato-DXd showed a PFS...
How do you reconcile the differing outcomes of the MATTERHORN and KEYNOTE-585 trials when determining systemic treatment approach for gastric/GEJ adenocarcinoma?
As it turns out, the outcomes are much more similar than dissimilar. While we all know MATTERHORN was a clearly positive study, KEYNOTE-585 was essentially also a positive study, obscured by a negative overall interpretation and undermined by its complicated statistical design.Specifically, 804 pati...
What is the current role for genetic profile testing (e.g. DecisionDx-SCC) in the treatment paradigm for cutaneous malignancies?
This is a very cool test that has a lot of potential to help us make decisions in practice (full disclosure, I advise Castle and get research support from them, but am not directly compensated by them). The data published thus far shows that it is prognostic to predict nodal or distant mets. However...