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Are you leveraging the assets of your oncology pharmacists in delivery of immunotherapy for cancer? Oncology pharmacists multidisciplinary team members who help bridge the gap between science and real-world medical practice. Sarah Hudson-DiSalle, PharmD, RPh, describes how your IO program can make the best use of the oncology pharmacist's diverse skillset.

When diagnosed with cancer, the typical patient responds with trepidation, anxiety, and fear. This experience engenders a bewildering set of questions, including the cause, treatment options, prognosis, appropriate sources of care, and affordability. Of paramount importance is ready access to expert resources with the requisite knowledge and skill. Telemedicine is a modality of care that addresses …

Patients with complex medical needs, such as those with active autoimmune conditions, hepatitis B or C, and those receiving corticosteroids at baseline, may now receive these agents in the community. This raises important questions regarding safety, monitoring, and the likelihood of an anticancer response in these patients.

The human gastrointestinal tract is inhabited by a diverse population of bacteria that play a crucial role in maintaining homeostasis both within the gut and within the body. How much do we know about the gut microbiome as it relates to cancer treatment?

The promises of Big Data are intuitively appealing: (virtually) unlimited data that will enable us to answer (virtually) any questions that we may have. Unfortunately, by and of themselves, Big Data are rather useless. They require Deep Analytics: inquiring people equipped with engines of analysis to explore, discover, and invent.

In the current oncology clinical trials landscape, many barriers remain to clinical trial enrollment that affect both the oncologist and the patient. Among these are trial locations, strict eligibility requirements, insufficient resources to support appropriate clinical trial education and screening, as well as patient and provider attitudes about trials.

Pseudoprogression has emerged as a distinct radiologic response pattern best defined as radiologic tumor progression from baseline that is not confirmed as progression on subsequent radiologic assessment.

Hyperprogressive disease (HPD) has recently been reported as a novel pattern of aggressive tumor growth following exposure to immune checkpoint blockade drugs such as anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 antibodies.

Determining the best personalized treatment for a patient will require input from a team of physicians, ideally with access to a patient’s information over time and across multiple modalities. Collecting data in a consistent, secure, and scalable manner with the ability to share across disciplines will be vital to furthering personalized medicine.

The paradigm-changing advancements accompanying immunotherapy for cancer continue to require innovation in care delivery. Telehealth is a natural innovation partner for immuno-oncology when applied to patient-reported outcomes, provider education, and clinical trial enrollment.

As with other high-cost treatments, integration of immunotherapies into practice requires a thorough understanding of payer policies and requirements for reimbursement. Sarah Hudson-DiSalle, PharmD, RPh, shares key steps for successful reimbursement for cancer immunotherapies.

As a genitourinary medical oncologist specializing in immunotherapy for kidney and bladder cancers, I am continually striving for more ways to connect with and learn from my patients. The emerging availability of immuno-oncology (IO) drugs for the conditions I treat, as well as many other cancer types, has generated tremendous excitement amongst patients and oncologists, but there still is so much …

A forthright conversation between the treating clinician, patient and family members on the importance of self-reporting adverse events must take place prior to consideration of combination immunotherapy.

Immune-related adverse events (irAEs) are a complex category of symptoms driven by anti-cancer immunotherapy treatments. The use of IO has burgeoned since the approval of ipilimumab in 2011 through multiple approvals of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 drugs and most recently CAR-T therapies, and so too has the number of recognized irAEs.

Survivorship care planning requires communication, care coordination, and education. Since immune-related adverse events are still being discovered, these discussions are even more imperative.

Research nurse Joannne Riemer, RN, BSN, started her position at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution in 2010. Within six months, she was working with checkpoint inhibitors. From her vantage point in clinical trials research, she discusses the many changes in IO clinical trials patient selection over the last eight years.

ACCC Immuno-Oncology Institute Executive Committee Chair Lee Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, highlights his top picks for compelling, potentially practice-changing immunotherapy abstracts presented during the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. Dr. Schwartzberg is Chief, Division of Hematology Oncology; Professor of Medicine, University of Tennessee; and Executive Director, West …

The Association of Community Cancer Centers recently spoke with Robyn Stacy-Humphries, MD, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2011, about her experience of treatment with CAR T-cell therapy in a clinical trial at the James Cancer Hospital at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

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To learn more about a unique approach to combining oncology and subspecialist expertise toward the goal of effective irAE management, the ACCC Institute for Clinical Immuno-Oncology spoke with medical oncologist Ryan Weight, DO, MS from the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center (SKCC) of the Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.