www.Cancer.gov News Releases

A novel approach to immunotherapy developed by NCI researchers has led to the complete regression of breast cancer in a patient who was unresponsive to all other treatments. The findings were published in Nature Medicine.

The NCI-MATCH precision medicine clinical trial has reached a milestone with the release of results from several study treatment arms. Findings from three arms were released at the 2018 ASCO annual meeting, adding to findings from one arm released in 2017.

Findings from the TAILORx clinical trial show chemotherapy does not benefit most women with early breast cancer. The new data, released at the 2018 ASCO annual meeting, will help inform treatment decisions for many women with early-stage breast cancer.

An NCI study in mice that found a connection between gut bacteria and antitumor immune responses in the liver has implications for understanding mechanisms that lead to liver cancer and for potential treatments. The study was published in Science.

The 2018 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer finds overall cancer death rates continue to decline and cancer incidence dropped in men and remained stable in women. A companion study reports on recent changes in prostate cancer trends.

In a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, NCI researchers identified genetic subtypes of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common type of lymphoma, that could help explain why some patients with the disease respond to treatment and others don’t.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), supported by NIH’s NHGRI and NCI, concludes with an in-depth genomic analysis of 33 cancer types called the PanCancer Atlas. Findings are being published as a collection of 27 papers across multiple Cell journals.

Interim results from a clinical trial for patients with desmoid tumors or aggressive fibromatosis (DT/DF) show that the drug sorafenib tosylate (Nexavar) extended progression-free survival compared with a placebo.

Dr. Douglas R. Lowy and Dr. John T. Schiller of the National Cancer Institute will receive the 2018 Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research for the development of HPV vaccines.

Norman E. “Ned” Sharpless, M.D., becomes the 15th director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He comes to NCI from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, where he was director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.