Noted

During his State of the Union address, U.S. President Joe Biden iterated his commitment to “cut the cancer death rates at least by 50% in the next 25 years.” He referenced the effort by President George W. Bush to “transform the global fight” against human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome, saying, “It's been a huge success. He thought big. He thought large. He moved. I believe we can do the same thing with cancer.”

By an 8–5 vote, an FDA advisory panel said that two single-arm trials should be sufficient to show the risks and potential benefits of dostarlimab (Jemperli; GSK) for the treatment of patients with mismatch repair–deficient/microsatellite instability–high locally advanced rectal cancer. Because the PD-1 inhibitor elicited a 100% clinical complete response rate with no serious side effects in a single-arm trial, several panel members said researchers would have difficulty enrolling patients in a randomized trial (N Engl J Med 2022;386:2363–76).

The FDA approved the first oral selec­tive estrogen receptor (ER) degrader, elacestrant (Orserdu; Stemline Thera​peutics), for patients with ER-positive, HER2-negative, ESR1-mutated advanced or metastatic breast cancer after they've tried at least one endocrine therapy regimen.

The governing board of the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas doled out more than $90 million in grants to fund 40 new research ventures and prevention efforts across the state, such as studying and addressing disparities in cancer treatment, fighting cancer in children and teens, and recruiting top-notch researchers to state institutions.

Sixty-five percent of Americans are not up to date with screening for at least one type of cancer—breast, cervical, colorectal, oral, lung, prostate, skin, or testicular—according to a survey conducted by the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The most common reasons were not knowing they needed to be screened (39%), not having symptoms (37%), and inability to cover any associated costs (31%).

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