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NEWS IN BRIEF PEOPLE Charles L. Sawyers, MD, chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was inaugurated as president of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in April at the organization’s 104th annual meeting in Washington, DC. He will serve a 1-year term, succeeding Frank McCormick, PhD. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Sawyers is a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous accolades for his research, including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. Harold Moses, MD, received the AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research, honoring the lasting impact of his research and demonstrated commitment to progress against cancer, at the organization’s annual meeting. The Hortense B. Ingram Professor of Molecular Oncology and director emeritus of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, TN, Moses and his team discovered that transforming growth factor-β is an inhibitor of normal cell growth. Also at the AACR meeting, Robert C. Young, MD, president of RCY Medicine in Philadelphia, PA, received the AACR Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research. Young and his team generated the first ovarian cancer cell lines, standardized the staging and grading of ovarian tumors, established prognostic factors for patients with ovarian cancer, and developed a national strategy for cooperative group clinical trials testing novel treatment strategies. 366 | CANCER DISCOVERYAPRIL 2013 FDA Approves Kadcyla for Breast Cancer The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla; Genentech) for the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer on February 22. Called T-DM1 during clinical trials, the new therapy is intended for patients who have previously been treated with the anti-HER2 therapy trastuzumab (Herceptin; Roche/ Genentech) and a taxane. “It’s far better than the previous standard therapy in this setting because it leads to improved survival in these patients with less toxicity,” says Eric Winer, MD, director of the breast oncology center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, who has treated about 40 patients with the drug as part of clinical trials. The drug was approved based on findings from the EMILIA study, which randomly assigned 991 patients to receive ado-trastuzumab emtansine or lapatinib (Tykerb; GlaxoSmithKline) and capecitabine (Xeloda; Roche/ Genentech). Patients treated with ado-trastuzumab emtansine had a median progression-free survival duration of 9.6 months compared with 6.4 months in those treated with lapatinib and capecitabine. In addition, median overall survival was nearly 6 months longer in the ado-trastuzumab emtansine group compared with the lapatinibplus-capecitabine group. The first ADC approved to treat solid tumors, ado-trastuzumab emtansine selectively binds to HER2-overexpressing tumor cells. Its components include the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab, the cytotoxic agent DM1, and a linker that holds them together. Once inside the cell, the molecule breaks apart, interfering with the cell’s ability to grow and divide. About 20% of breast cancer patients have HER2positive tumors. Ado-trastuzumab emtansine “takes advantage of the tumor’s dependence on HER2 as well as successfully targeting the delivery of chemotherapy to HER2-positive cells,” explains Kimberly Blackwell, MD, the EMILIA trial’s principal investigator and a professor of medicine at Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, NC. “This is an exciting new way to treat cancer.” In addition to its method of action, Winer says ado-trastuzumab emtansine is notable because it causes relatively few side effects. “It’s one of the besttolerated anticancer drugs I’ve ever given,” he comments. The most commonly reported side effects of ado-trastuzumab emtansine in clinical studies were nausea, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, thrombocytopenia, increased levels of liver enzymes, headache, and constipation. Ado-trastuzumab emtansine, which is also under study as a first-line therapy for breast cancer, became available for clinical use in March. Marketing applications have been submitted to other regulatory agencies around the world, including the European Medicines Agency. ■ Roswell Park Plans National Services Today, institutions that want to provide cancer genomics typically must figure out for themselves how to collect and store samples, select gene targets, and use genetic analyses in treatment. So far, that has generally meant that only the biggest centers provide routine genetic analyses for their cancer patients, and often only in limited ways. Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, hopes to change that. The institute has partnered with its Buffalo neighbor, Computer Task Group, or CTG, which provides electronic medical records technology, to help community hospitals and physician practices around the country collect, manage, integrate, and analyze patient genetic information. “These are challenges that every hospital in every area is addressing in the era of personalized medicine,” says Candace Johnson, PhD, Roswell Park’s deputy director. The institute’s Center for Personalized Medicine (CPM) is just getting started, she says, but plans eventually to provide new biomarkers, therapies, and diagnostic tools. www.aacrjournals.org Downloaded from cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org on May 6, 2017. © 2013 American Association for Cancer Research. People Cancer Discovery 2013;3:366. Updated version E-mail alerts Reprints and Subscriptions Permissions Access the most recent version of this article at: http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/3/4/366.1 Sign up to receive free email-alerts related to this article or journal. To order reprints of this article or to subscribe to the journal, contact the AACR Publications Department at [email protected]. To request permission to re-use all or part of this article, contact the AACR Publications Department at [email protected]. Downloaded from cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org on May 6, 2017. © 2013 American Association for Cancer Research.