For how we live.
In PRABITAS, 970 patients with refractory metastatic colorectal cancer were randomised to a 14-day or 28-day schedule. Median survival was 11.3 versus 10.3 months, and severe neutropenia fell from 39% to 13%.
I-SPY2.2 tested trastuzumab-deruxtecan plus rilvegostomig before surgery in high-risk HER2-negative breast cancer. In immune-positive tumours 54% had a complete response, and most of them avoided anthracyclines.
In 120 older adults with acute myeloid leukaemia, adding midostaurin to two-drug therapy did not raise remission rates overall (72% vs 68%), but a small FLT3-mutated subgroup lived longer.
The FDA approved Tecentriq on 8 October, with chemotherapy, for Stage III mismatch repair deficient colon cancer after resection. In ATOMIC, adding it cut disease-free survival events, hazard ratio 0.50.
In 221 male childhood-cancer survivors, FSH levels during puberty tracked adult testicular function. Radiotherapy damage persisted into adulthood, while alkylating-chemotherapy effects often recovered.
In the phase 3 UKALL14 trial, one cycle of the T-cell drug nelarabine after induction was well tolerated but left event-free survival essentially unchanged in adults aged 25 to 65.
The academic MATRix/IELSG43 trial found autologous transplant lifted 3-year progression-free survival to 78% from 51%, but at the cost of more toxicity and more treatment-related deaths.
SOLARIS, a publicly funded phase 3 trial, tested vitamin D3 added to chemotherapy after a promising phase 2 signal. Progression-free survival was 11.8 versus 10.3 months — not a significant difference.
In 709 children with high-risk B-cell ALL, swapping two chemotherapy cycles for the T-cell-engaging antibody lifted four-year event-free survival to 83% from 70% and sharply cut serious infections.
In a phase 3 trial, tambotatug pelitecan extended median survival to 13.3 months versus 9.4 on standard chemotherapy — but the trial was open-label and run entirely in China.
In the 172-patient PARADIGM trial, azacitidine plus venetoclax more than doubled median event-free survival versus induction chemotherapy — but it was a phase 2 study not powered for overall survival.
SleepCARE randomised 219 Australian women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer to CBT-I, bright light therapy, both, or sleep hygiene. Only CBT-I moved insomnia — and nothing moved fatigue.
Five-year follow-up of a Chinese randomised trial shows paclitaxel–cisplatin–capecitabine before chemoradiotherapy lifted failure-free survival from 63% to 78% in high-risk disease — at the cost of more toxicity.
In KEYNOTE-B15/EV-304, perioperative enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab lifted two-year event-free survival to 79.4% from 66.2% against standard cisplatin-based chemotherapy in patients fit for it.
In the phase 3 DRAGON-01 trial, delivering paclitaxel directly into the abdominal cavity on top of standard chemotherapy raised median survival to 19.4 months from 13.9 in gastric cancer with peritoneal spread.
In a Chinese phase 2–3 trial, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, lenvatinib and a PD-1 antibody before liver surgery lifted median event-free survival to 18.0 months from 8.7. The survival signal was not yet conclusive.
A three-year update of RATIONALE-309 found tislelizumab plus chemotherapy lengthened median progression-free survival to 9.6 months from 7.4. The overall-survival gain was not statistically significant on its own.