High-risk localized and locally advanced prostate cancer patients treated with apalutamide — a next generation neoadjuvant androgen-receptor pathway inhibitor (ARPI) — plus hormone therapy before and after prostate cancer surgery resulted in more major pathologic responses and reduced the risk of metastasis or death, meeting both primary endpoints, in an international phase 3 clinical trial led by principal investigator Mary-Ellen Taplin, MD, medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Adam Kibel, MD, chair of the Department of Urology at Mass General Brigham.  

About The Study: Regional participation in a population-based multicancer early detection (MCED) screening trial was associated with a modest increase in diagnostic delay rates for patients referred for suspected head and neck, lung, and upper gastrointestinal cancers. This increase is unlikely to have materially affected interpretation of the MCED screening trial primary findings. Future trials of population-based screening interventions likely to affect demand for limited health care resources should consider monitoring for system-level spillover effects. 

Adeno‑associated virus (AAV) vectors offer safety and durable expression but lack tumor specificity. This hypothesis proposes an NSCLC‑directed, hypoxia‑responsive AAV platform that integrates MGS4 peptide‑guided capsid targeting with dual hypoxia‑responsive element (HRE)‑gated promoters driving Q‑CXCL9‑Fc (chemokine) and miR‑30‑based shRNA against mesothelin (MSLN). The design aims to restrict entry to NSCLC lesions, confine transgene expression to hypoxic, BIRC5‑active tumor regions, and synergistically enhance antitumor immunity while suppressing invasion. This multimodal, hypoxia‑responsive AAV represents a precision oncology strategy that combines environmental sensing, tumor‑specific transcription, and peptide‑defined tropism within a single vector.

An analysis of the study data, with prolonged follow-up, demonstrated that there was a sustained numerical benefit in overall survival for patients who received pembrolizumab with chemotherapy even when a large proportion of the initial placebo treated patients received post-protocol immunotherapy.

Experts from NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute–designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, present their latest clinical findings and research at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, held May 29 to June 2 in Chicago.