On May 8, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to selpercatinib (Retevmo™) for adult patients with metastatic, RET fusion–positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); adult and pediatric patients aged 12 or older with advanced or metastatic RET-mutant medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) who require systemic therapy; and adult and pediatric patients aged 12 or older with advanced or metastatic RET fusion–positive thyroid cancer who require systemic therapy and who are refractory to radioactive iodine (if radioactive iodine is appropriate).

Opioid misuse is prevalent among the U.S. population—so much so that President Trump declared it a public health emergency in 2017. At the same time, research shows that 20%–50% of patients with cancer and 80% of those with advanced-stage disease report experiencing moderate to severe pain. Balancing the dichotomies is difficult, but oncology nurses and other cancer care providers have a responsibility to provide comprehensive pain management for patients with cancer.

To address travel restrictions from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic while delivering important learning and resources ONS members rely on, during its March conference call the ONS Board of Directors made several decisions to host its meetings and content virtually throughout 2020.

Oncology Nursing Society member Betty Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN, director of the division of nursing research and education at City of Hope in Duarte, CA, was one of 14 recipients of an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) special award in April 2020. She received the Walther Cancer Foundation Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Endowed Award and Lecture for her work in palliative care.

Oncology nurses around the world are seeing the effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in their practices. At my facility in South Korea, nurses’ daily routines have changed and institution-wide shifts have affected patients with cancer, too. 

On May 6, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to capmatinib (Tabrecta™) for adult patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors have a mutation that leads to mesenchymal-epithelial transition exon 14 skipping, as detected by an FDA-approved test. It is the first drug approval for this specific patient population and the first targeted therapy for the indication.

Many factors can affect the way patients access their care. But one thing is certain: if patients don’t get the care they need, their chances for success decline. To address barriers to cancer care, the American College of Surgeons’ Commission on Cancer (CoC) outlined specific, measurable actions that institutions must take.

Get to know Martha (Marty) Polovich, PhD, RN, director-at-large on the ONS Board of Directors from 2019–2022. Marty is a part-time instructor in the Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

A new type of remodeled CAR T-cell treatment is just as effective as the original therapy but may result in fewer neurologic side effects, researchers reported in Nature Medicine.

The abscopal effect is a unique phenomenon in cancer treatment that occurs when radiation shrinks untreated tumors found elsewhere in the body in addition to the targeted tumor. The effect has a long history, dating back to the 1950s, but it doesn’t commonly occur in practice and the mechanisms are not fully understood. Research has shown that combining immunotherapy with radiation increases the rate at which the abscopal effect occurs.