For how we live.
In NICHE-2, two doses of nivolumab plus one of ipilimumab before surgery for mismatch-repair-deficient colon cancer produced 100% disease-free survival at three years and 100% overall survival at five.
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 the industry-funded evERA trial, giredestrant plus everolimus delayed progression of ER-positive breast cancer — but the clearest benefit was in ESR1-mutated tumours, and the endpoint was a surrogate, not survival.
Eli Lilly's oral Inluriyo gained an FDA efficacy supplement on 18 September. In the phase 3 EMBER-3 trial, adding abemaciclib lifted median progression-free survival to 9.4 months from 5.5.
The publicly funded E4512 trial found two years of crizotinib after surgery did not prolong disease-free survival against observation, with a hazard ratio of 1.08 and no safety upside.
In a 15-patient phase 1 trial, TX103 cells delivered directly into the brain were tolerated and median survival reached 19.1 months — but this is early, single-arm evidence with no control group.
A blood test after surgery can detect tumour DNA too faint to see on a scan. In one trial it let colon-cancer patients safely skip chemotherapy — but the evidence is still narrow.
Galleri-type tests can flag a cancer signal from a tube of blood and often guess its origin. But they miss most early-stage cancers, and no trial has yet shown they help people live longer.
The radioligand cut the risk of radiographic progression or death by 28% when added to standard therapy in a phase 3 trial — a real but incremental gain, bought with more side-effects.
In the phase 3 TORCH trial, following transarterial chemoembolisation with thermal ablation more than doubled median progression-free survival, to 17.7 months from 7.3, in unresectable liver-confined cancer.
The targeted combination more than tripled progression-free survival versus placebo in iodine-refractory disease — but overall survival is not yet significant and the trial was mostly Asian.
In the phase 3 BRUIN CLL-322 trial, adding pirtobrutinib to a fixed course of venetoclax and rituximab raised 24-month progression-free survival to 87% from 72% in previously treated disease.
In the phase 3 LIBRETTO-432 trial, adjuvant selpercatinib raised two-year event-free survival to 92% from 61% in resected stage II-IIIA RET fusion-positive lung cancer. The trial was small and survival is unproven.
Of 1,363 evaluable patients matched to drugs by tumor genetics, 7% became exceptional responders. Activity across all 37 drugs was modest, and severe side effects hit over a quarter.
In the phase 3 ATOMIC trial, atezolizumab on top of standard FOLFOX chemotherapy raised three-year disease-free survival to 86.3% from 76.2% after surgery for stage III dMMR colon cancer.
A 13-year-old observational hypothesis finally got its randomised test. In ALASCCA, 160 mg of daily aspirin cut three-year recurrence from 14.1% to 7.7% in biomarker-selected patients.