Citations

SummaryThe Children's Oncology Group AHOD0831 study used a positron emission tomography (PET) response‐adapted approach in high‐risk Hodgkin lymphoma, whereby slow early responders (SERs) received more intensive therapy than rapid early responders (RERs). We explored if baseline PET‐based characteristics would improve risk stratification. Of 166 patients enrolled in the COG AHOD0831 study, 94 (57%) had baseline PET scans evaluable for quantitative analysis. For these patients, total body metabolic tumour volume (MTV), total lesion glycolysis (TLG), maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) and peak SUV (SUVpeak) were obtained. MTV/TLG thresholds were an SUV of 2.5 (MTV2.5/TLG2.5) and 40% of the tumour SUVmax (MTV40%/TLG40%). TLG2.5 was associated with event‐free survival (EFS) in the complete cohort (p = 0.04) and in RERs (p = 0.01), but not in SERs (p = 0.8). The Youden index cut‐off for TLG2.5 was 1841. Four‐year EFS was 92% for RER/TLG2.5 up to 1841, 60% for RER/TLG2.5 greater than 1841, 74% for SER/TLG2.5 up to 1841 and 79% for SER/TLG2.5 greater than 1841. Second EFS for RER/TLG2.5 up to 1841 was 100%. Thus, RERs with a low baseline TLG2.5 experienced excellent EFS with less intensive therapy, whereas RERs with a high baseline TLG2.5 experienced poor EFS. These findings suggest that patients with a high upfront tumour burden may benefit from intensified therapy, even if they achieve a RER.

Abstract BACKGROUND: Approximately 50% of newly diagnosed breast cancers are stage 1, with the majority being ER/PR-positive, HER2-negative. Genomic assays such as Oncotype DX® have identified pts with reduced distant metastasis and without benefit from chemotherapy, freeing patients from excess toxicity. Also, these genomic assays are prognostic of local-regional recurrence (LRR). The de-escalation of therapy is of interest to pts, providers, and payers. Low risk, as identified by Oncotype and Mammaprint®, is associated with low LRR after BCS and breast radiotherapy (RT). METHODS: We hypothesize that BCS alone is non-inferior to BCS plus RT for ipsilateral breast recurrence (IBR) and breast preservation in women intending appropriate endocrine therapy (ET) for stage 1 (ER and/or PR positive, HER2-negative, with an Oncotype DX Recurrence Score [RS] of ≤18) breast cancer. Stratification is by age (< 60; ≥60), tumor size (≤1 cm; >1-2cm), and RS (< 11; 11-18). Pts are randomized post-BCS to Arm 1 with breast RT using standard methods (hypo- or conventional-fractionated whole breast RT with or without boost, APBI) plus 5 years of ET (tamoxifen or AI) or Arm 2 with 5 years of ET (tamoxifen or AI) alone. The specific regimen of ET in both arms is at the treating physician’s discretion. Eligible pts are stage 1: pT1 (2 cm), pN0, age ≥50 to < 70 years, s/p BCS with negative margins (no ink on tumor), s/p axillary nodal staging (SNB or ALND), ER and/or PR positive (ASCO/CAP), HER2-negative (ASCO/CAP), and have an Oncotype DX RS of ≤18 (diagnostic core biopsy or resected specimen). Primary endpoint is IBR. Secondary endpoints are breast conservation rate, invasive in-breast recurrence, recurrence-free interval, distant disease-free survival, overall survival, patient-reported breast pain, patient-reported worry about recurrence, and adherence to ET. We assume a clinically acceptable difference in IBR of 4% at 10 years to judge omission of RT as non-inferior (10-year event-free survival for RT group is 95.6% versus 91.6% for the omission-of-RT group). The study is designed to be able to detect non-inferiority with 80% power and a one-sided α=0.025, and assuming that there would be a ramp-up in accrual in the first two years of the study (leveling off in Years 3-5), 1,670 (835 per arm) patients are required to be randomized. Conservative loss to follow-up is 1% per year. Some of the T1a pts screened will have Oncotype DX scores >18, making them ineligible for the study. In the accrual process, pts will be required to register (1,714 patients) to ensure that our final randomized cohort is 1,670 pts. Accrual as of 6-30-2022 is 169 screened and 147 randomized. Contact information: Protocol: CTSU member website: https://www.ctsu.org. NRG Oncology Pgh Clinical Coordinating Dpt: 1-800-477-7227 or ccdPGH@NRGOncology.org. Support: U10CA180868, -180822, UG1CA189867. NCT04852887. Citation Format: Julia White, Reena S. Cecchini, Eleanor E. Harris, Eleftherios (Terry) Mamounas, Daniel Stover, Patricia A. Ganz, Reshma Jagsi, Carmen Bergom, Valérie Théberge, Mahmoud B. El-Tamer, Richard Zellars, Dean A. Shumway, Guang-Pei Chen, Stewart J. Anderson, Thomas B. Julian, Norman Wolmark, Wendy Rea. A phase III trial evaluating De-escalation of Breast Radiation (DEBRA) following breast-conserving surgery (BCS) of stage 1, HR+, HER2-, RS ≤18 breast cancer: NRG-BR007 [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr OT1-12-01.

Radiation-induced brain injury (RIBI) is a debilitating sequela after radiotherapy to treat head and neck cancer, and 20 to 30% of patients with RIBI fail to respond to or have contraindications to the first-line treatments of bevacizumab and corticosteroids. Here, we reported a Simon’s minmax two-stage, single-arm, phase 2 clinical trial (NCT03208413) to assess the efficacy of thalidomide in patients with RIBI who were unresponsive to or had contraindications to bevacizumab and corticosteroid therapies. The trial met its primary endpoint, with 27 of 58 patients enrolled showing ≥25% reduction in the volume of cerebral edema on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery–magnetic resonance imaging (FLAIR-MRI) after treatment (overall response rate, 46.6%; 95% CI, 33.3 to 60.1%). Twenty-five (43.1%) patients demonstrated a clinical improvement based on the Late Effects Normal Tissues–Subjective, Objective, Management, Analytic (LENT/SOMA) scale, and 36 (62.1%) experienced cognitive improvement based on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores. In a mouse model of RIBI, thalidomide restored the blood-brain barrier and cerebral perfusion, which were attributed to the functional rescue of pericytes secondary to elevation of platelet-derived growth factor receptor β (PDGFRβ) expression by thalidomide. Our data thus demonstrate the therapeutic potential of thalidomide for the treatment of radiation-induced cerebral vasculature impairment.

PurposeTo improve calibrationless parallel imaging using pre‐learned subspaces of coil sensitivity functions.Theory and MethodsA subspace‐based joint sensitivity estimation and image reconstruction method was developed for improved parallel imaging with no calibration data. Specifically, we proposed to use a probabilistic subspace model to capture prior information of the coil sensitivity functions from previous scans acquired using the same receiver system. Both the subspace basis and coefficient distributions were learned from a small set of training data. The learned subspace model was then incorporated into the regularized reconstruction formalism that includes a sparsity prior. The nonlinear optimization problem was solved using alternating minimization algorithm. Public fastMRI brain dataset was retrospectively undersampled by different schemes for performance evaluation of the proposed method.ResultsWith no calibration data, the proposed method consistently produced the most accurate coil sensitivity estimation and highest quality image reconstructions at all acceleration factors tested in comparison with state‐of‐the‐art methods including JSENSE, DeepSENSE, P‐LORAKS, and Sparse BLIP. Our results are comparable to or even better than those from SparseSENSE, which used calibration data for sensitivity estimation. The work also demonstrated that the probabilistic subspace model learned from T2w data can be generalized to aiding the reconstruction of FLAIR data acquired from the same receiver system.ConclusionA subspace‐based method named JSENSE‐Pro has been proposed for accelerated parallel imaging without the acquisition of companion calibration data. The method is expected to further enhance the practical utility of parallel imaging, especially in applications where calibration data acquisition is not desirable or limited.