Host: Reshma L. Mahtani, DO

Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) protein overexpression and/or gene amplification is found in up to 20% of breast cancers, whereas 50% have low HER2 expression levels. The natural history of HER2-positive (HER2+) disease has been profoundly transformed by HER2-targeted agents and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). With the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a novel HER2-directed ADC, trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd), in both HER2+ and HER2-low metastatic breast cancer (MBC), potential treatment options have expanded for these patients.

For practicing community clinicians, this evolution of HER2-directed therapy and targeting the full spectrum of HER2 expression threatens to add additional complexity in treatment selection and sequencing across lines of therapy. The increasing array of HER2-directed approaches challenges clinicians to stay abreast of clinical data and understand how to implement this evidence in daily practice. This session will assist clinicians in determining how these novel agents fit into treatment paradigms. This educational activity will address the implications of HER2-expression patterns on treatment selection and planning, explore the effective use of evolving therapeutic strategies, and review the latest clinical data on efficacy and safety as well as evidence-based guideline recommendations.

Host: Anthony Mato, MD, MSCE
Guest: Toby A. Eyre, MD, MBChB
Guest: Talha Munir, PhD

The validation of targeted agent classes, driven by the emergence of BTK inhibitors as a highly effective therapeutic tool, has transformed the medical management of CLL/SLL and led to similar advances for other B-cell malignancies. Although this transformation has substantially improved outcomes, challenges remain and are centered on the problem of devising truly individualized sequential care in the relapsed/refractory disease setting, where outcomes to date have not improved as dramatically as those for newly diagnosed/treatment-naïve disease. Therapeutic intolerance and challenges involving adverse event management, BTK inhibitor resistance, and double-refractory status contribute to therapy interruption or discontinuation and abrogate clinical benefits associated with continued BTK inhibitor therapy, leading to subsequent care that is suboptimal due to a dearth of effective treatment options.

The educational activity, featuring an expert panel discussion comprised of 1 US and 2 international faculty thought leaders, will provide an evaluation of the most recent clinical data and expert insights on the current and emerging evidence supporting the clinical utility of BTK inhibitors in relapsed/refractory CLL/SLL.

Host: Fortunato Ciardiello, MD, PhD
Guest: Erika Martinelli, MD, PhD

Are you familiar with rechallenge strategies with anti-EGFR therapies to treat metastatic colorectal cancer? Listen as Drs. Fortunato Ciardiello and Erika Martinelli discuss patients most suitable for rechallenge with anti-EGFR therapies for metastatic colorectal cancer while outlining key clinical data.

Host: Andrea Cercek, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Host: John H. Strickler, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Host: Andrea Cercek, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Host: Andrea Cercek, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Host: John H. Strickler, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Host: John H. Strickler, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Guest: John H. Strickler, MD
Guest: Andrea Cercek, MD

This program explores treatment options for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). To make informed decisions when treating patients with HER2-positive status, clinicians must understand using HER2 as a testing target and know the latest treatment options available. This activity raises clinician awareness of the impact of testing for HER2 status in patients with mCRC and of identifying patients with CRC who would benefit from HER2-directed therapies.

Host: Charles Turck, PharmD, BCPS, BCCCP
Guest: Emily Carroll, JD, MSW

The No Surprises Act aims to protect consumers from surprise medical bills. But how exactly does it go about doing that, and what’s the current status of its implementation? Joining Dr. Charles Turck to share progress and challenges associated with the No Surprises Act is Ms. Emily Carroll, a senior legislative attorney for the American Medical Association's Advocacy Resource Center.

Host: Jacob Sands, MD
Guest: Lori Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO

With only 3% of practicing oncologists identifying as Black, and less than 5% identifying as Latinx, how can we ensure these patient populations are equally represented in medical practice? Dr. Jacob Sands meets with ASCO’s current President, Dr. Lori Pierce, a Professor of Radiation Oncology and Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs at the University of Michigan, to discuss ASCO’s plan to increase quality in cancer care and research.

Host: Jennifer Caudle, DO
Guest: Todd Askew

What’s being done to address the range of issues like the PPE shortage, lack of testing, and financial shortfalls encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic? Here to share his team’s advocacy efforts to help tackle these and other challenges is Todd Askew, the American Medical Association's Senior Vice President of Advocacy.

Guest: Mary Beth Pfeiffer

With cases being reported in every state and across 80 countries, Lyme disease has become one of the fastest growing vector-borne illnesses in the world. But have you ever wondered how this global health threat came to be? That’s what journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer investigates in her book, Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, and with the ReachMD team.

Host: John Russell, MD
Guest: Meredith Wadman, BM, BCh, M.S.

Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses.

In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using human tissue samples sent from Sweden, produced a line of cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a massive German measles epidemic, the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella was introduced. This vaccine has since protected more than 150 million people in the United States, and its development method has also led to other vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles, and adenovirus.

Host Dr. John Russell chats with Meredith Wadman, author of The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease, about the story of both the science of this urgent race and the political and ethical controversies that nearly ended it prematurely.

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD
Guest: Robert McNally, MD

From the Villanova Health Summit's Speaker Event, host Dr. Matt Birnholz speaks with guest Dr. Robert McNally, President, and CEO of GeoVax, Inc. They discuss the challenges that biotech companies face when bringing vaccines through clinical trials, and the long-term project being conducted by his colleagues to deliver an HIV vaccine to market.

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD

Several new screening tests have been developed to help doctors find colorectal cancer early when it's most treatable and can reduce the burden of this disease and the death toll nationwide.

Host Dr. Matt Birnholz chats with Dr. John Kisiel, gastroenterologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, about new screening guidelines for detecting colorectal cancer.

Host: John Russell, MD
Guest: David Fajgenbaum, MD

Castleman disease, a rare idiopathic multicentric disorder, is diagnosed in approximately 5000 people in the United States each year. When one 3rd year medical student suddenly found himself facing this diagnosis personally, at a time when knowledge about the disease was minimal, he helped create a broad-based initiative to address this knowledge gap.

Host Dr. John Russell talks with Dr. David Fajgenbaum, a Research Assistant Professor of Medicine in Translational Medicine/Human Genetics and Associate Director of Patient Impact for the Penn Orphan Disease Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also co-founder of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network, a global initiative dedicated to accelerating research and treatment for Castleman disease and improving survival for all patients.

A protein homeostasis signature in healthy brains recapitulates tissue vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease

Rosie Freer, Pietro Sormanni, Giulia Vecchi, Prajwal Ciryam, Christopher M. Dobson, and Michele Vendruscolo

Science Advances 10 Aug 2016: Vol. 2, no. 8, e1600947 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600947

Abstract: In Alzheimer’s disease, aggregates of Aβ and tau in amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles spread progressively across brain tissues following a characteristic pattern, implying a tissue-specific vulnerability to the disease. We report a transcriptional analysis of healthy brains and identify an expression signature that predicts—at ages well before the typical onset—the tissue-specific progression of the disease. We obtain this result by finding a quantitative correlation between the histopathological staging of the disease and the expression patterns of the proteins that coaggregate in amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, together with those of the protein homeostasis components that regulate Aβ and tau. Because this expression signature is evident in healthy brains, our analysis provides an explanatory link between a tissue-specific environmental risk of protein aggregation and a corresponding vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease.

Laboratory safety may sound straightforward, but in reality it is supported by complex and ever-changing science. Safety standards and practices evolve as scientists learn more about the materials they handle regularly.

In this session of Public Health Grand Rounds from the CDC, presenters will discuss how standards of laboratory safety have improved over the years, what we’ve learned from past incidents, and how establishing safety protocols and training systems can lead to an overall culture of workplace safety, resulting in continued public trust in our science and recommendations.

For more details on this Grand Rounds session and its participants, click here.