Unintended weight loss and anorexia in patients with cancer is associated with decreased performance status, reduced response and tolerance to treatment, decreased survival, and reduced quality of life.

Derek is a 20-year-old patient with relapsed acute myeloid leukemia. He will be receiving a bone marrow transplant in the next six days. When discussing Derek’s home medications, he says to the nurse, “I smoke a lot of pot because it helps me feel better about all of this.” Upon further discussion, Derek reveals he started smoking marijuana to relieve nausea. What would you do?

The FDA approved two new immunomodulatory agents, sipuleucel-T and ipilimumab, in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Sipuleucel-T was approved to treat metastatic prostate cancer, and ipilimumab was approved for advanced or metastatic melanoma.

Since the concepts of inheritance, genetics, and medical genetics were introduced, researchers have found that many factors other than the presence or absence of a single gene predict disease.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology recently identified end-of-life chemotherapy as one of the top-five practices that could improve patients’ care and reduce costs, if stopped.

As chemotherapy administration has shifted from IV delivery in the infusion center to oral delivery at home, so has the burden for the five rights of medication administration.

Oral agents are changing oncology treatment, and along with it, who’s responsible for the safety of those treatments. “With oral agents, the onus is now primarily on patients and their caregivers,” says ONS member Kathy Leifeste. This is quite a shift from the nurse-administered IV chemotherapy and biotherapy we’ve grown accustomed to.

A new list of evidence-based recommendations from the American Society of Hematology helps patients and providers understand which hematology-related tests and treatments pose significant harm and cost if overused and therefore should be avoided.

For patients with hematologic malignancies and genetic immune disorders, HCT is a potentially curative treatment. However, because the therapy is so specialized, only select cancer centers with the appropriate expertise, resources, and experiences offer it.

Many promising studies presented at the 2013 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting involved new cancer drugs that empower the body’s defense system.