Noted

Presidential Science Advisor and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Eric Lander, PhD, resigned from his Cabinet-level position after a Politico article reported that he created a toxic workplace and bullied and mistreated staff.

Researchers reported that patients with cervical cancer who received the PD-1 inhibitor cemiplimab (Libtayo) survived significantly longer than those who received investigator's choice of single-agent chemotherapy for recurrent disease following initial treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy (N Engl J Med 2022;386:544–55). But just before the study was published, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi announced the withdrawal of their application for the drug's approval as a second-line treatment for the disease because they couldn't agree with the FDA on postmarketing studies.

In patients with early triple-negative breast cancer, neoadjuvant pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab, resulted in significantly longer event-free survival than neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone (N Engl J Med 2022;386:556–67). After a median follow-up of 39.1 months, the estimated event-free survival at 36 months was 84.5% compared with 76.8%, respectively.

By a 14–1 vote, the FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee recommended against approving the PD-1 inhibitor sintilimab (Eli Lilly/Innovent) to treat non–small cell lung cancer based on the findings of the ORIENT-11 study. Study participants were all from China and not reflective of the heterogenous population in the United States, FDA officials said.

A study conducted at Moores Cancer Center at University of California San Diego Health found that significant increases in the severity of breast cancer exist due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, 63.9% of breast cancers diagnosed there were classified as stage I compared with 51.3% in 2020; stage IV disease was diagnosed in 1.9% and 6.2%, respectively (JAMA Netw Open 2022;5:e2148581).

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