Noted

Siemens Healthineers announced it will buy Varian Medical Systems for $16.4 billion to expand its oncology profile. Varian specializes in radiation therapy, producing hardware such as linear accelerators, radiosurgery devices, and proton therapy systems, as well as software centered on cancer care and analytics.

New cancer diagnoses declined significantly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to findings in JAMA Network Open (JAMA Netw Open 2020;3:e2017267). Researchers found that weekly diagnoses of breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal cancers combined dropped by 46.4% during the first 2 months of the pandemic; decreases ranged from 24.7% for pancreatic cancer to 51.8% for breast cancer.

The FDA released a final guidance on drug development for male breast cancer. The document recommends including men in breast cancer trials unless there is a scientific reason to exclude them (see www.fda.gov/media/130061/download). It also it offers suggestions for assessing agents in men when they were not included in trials, such as extrapolating based on preclinical research into a drug's mechanism of action, or utilizing small single-arm trials or real-world data.

The NCI and Cancer Research UK launched a Cancer Grand Challenges partnership to support multidisciplinary cancer research. Together, the institutions will select four research teams, each of which will receive approximately $25 million in funding over 5 years. The partnership builds on Cancer Research UK's existing Grand Challenge program; the NCI will contribute funding from its Provocative Questions initiative.

The European Society of Medical Oncology published recommendations on next-generation sequencing (NGS) in patients with metastatic cancers (Ann Oncol 2020 Aug 24 [Epub ahead of print]). The guidelines recommend NGS in patients with non–small cell lung cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, and cholangiocarcinoma. The document also suggests tumor mutational burden testing in patients with cervical, salivary, thyroid, and vulvar cancers, as well as neuroendocrine tumors.

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/CDNews.