Practice-changing cancer research

Groundbreaking studies from ASCO 2025.

Get full access to Reuters.com for just $1/week. Subscribe now. Health Rounds Health Rounds By Nancy Lapid, Health Science Editor Hello Health Rounds readers! Welcome to the first of our special ASCO editions of Health Rounds featuring potentially practice- and procedure-changing studies to be reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology scientific meeting, which gets underway on Friday in Chicago. Keep up with additional news from the conference with hashtag #ASCO25 on social media. In breaking news, see these stories from our Reuters journalists: NASA astronauts emerge from recovery after long Starliner mission; states sue over Trump cuts to research funding, STEM diversity efforts; residents fear for safety after deadly blast at China chemical plant; US appeals court rejects challenge to federal marijuana ban; and retired French surgeon gets maximum 20-year sentence for raping young patients. Industry Updates Wegovy maker Novo faces fee demand after losing copycat drug lawsuit Merck, Daiichi pull US application for 'guided missile' therapy for lung cancer Stealth Bio to cut jobs after FDA rejects therapy for rare disorder Omada Health targets valuation of over $1 billion in US IPO US FDA approves Alcon's new dry-eye drug Kaiser Permanente says it is facing intermittent network disruptions Agilent beats quarterly estimates on instrument demand Implant maker Exactech may conclude bankruptcy without TPG settlement   US cancels more than $700 million funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine REUTERS/Brian Snyder Moderna was awarded more than $700 million by the Biden administration to develop vaccines for bird flu and other types of pandemic influenza, but the Trump administration has canceled the contracts. Study Rounds Amgen drug prevents chemo-related platelet loss   Amgen's Nplate, which treats low blood platelet counts caused by an autoimmune condition, was highly effective at preventing a similar common and serious complication of powerful chemotherapy cancer drugs, researchers reported in advance of ASCO 2025. The 165 patients in the pivotal trial had either colorectal, gastroesophageal, or pancreatic cancer. They were all receiving toxic cancer drugs that caused them to have chemotherapy-induced thrombocytopenia – an abnormally low blood platelet count - after only a single session. A low platelet level "puts patients with cancer at a high risk of severe or potentially fatal internal bleeding," said study leader Dr. Hanny Al-Samkari of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It also "impacts the ability to treat patients with the indicated chemotherapy given as it should be, at full dose and on time," he added. Trial participants received either a weekly subcutaneous injection of Nplate, known chemically as romiplostim, or a placebo. Nplate acts by stimulating the bone marrow to increase platelet production. Of those in the Nplate group, 84% did not need any reductions of their subsequent chemotherapy doses due to a low platelet count, the researchers found. That was true for only 36% of patients in the placebo group. After taking individual risk factors into account, patients receiving Nplate were more than 10 times more likely than patients in the placebo group to continue their cancer treatments without a dose reduction. "Reduced chemotherapy intensity has been clearly shown to worsen survival of patients... reducing the likelihood of cure in curable patients and shortening the lives of incurable patients," Al-Samkari said. There are no FDA-approved drugs to treat chemotherapy-induced platelet loss, he noted. "These results are therefore potentially practice‑changing for a common serious condition encountered routinely in clinical practice worldwide that prevents delivery of on-time, full-dose anti-cancer therapy," Al-Samkari said. Top Health News on Reuters.com Stealth Bio to cut jobs after FDA rejects therapy for rare disorder Brazil declared free of foot-and-mouth disease without vaccination Omada Health targets valuation of over $1 billion in US IPO AI improves patient selection for HER2 cancer drugs Artificial intelligence can improve a doctor's accuracy at identifying breast cancer patients who could benefit from treatment with drugs that target the HER2 protein on cancer cells, researchers found in a study that will be presented at the ASCO meeting. These drugs, including AstraZeneca's Enhertu, are beneficial even when patients' levels of the protein are extremely low. However, low or ultra-low levels can be hard to detect, leaving some patients misclassified as HER2-negative. About 50% to 60% of breast cancer patients likely fall into the low-HER2 category, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Willingness to use Enhertu to treat breast cancer has far outpaced the ability to determine with certainty which patients might benefit, experts have said. Funded by AstraZeneca, researchers worked with MindPeak to develop a training program to help pathologists assess HER2 levels in breast cancer. They recruited 105 pathologists from 10 countries to take the course and to analyze tumor samples from 20 patients, both with and without AI assistance. The pathologists' accuracy at determining HER2 clinical categories - null, ultra-low, low, or positive - improved from 66.7% without AI to 88.5% with AI. Misclassification of HER2-ultralow cases as HER2-negative occurred in 29.5% of readings without AI but decreased to 4.0% with AI assistance. "Our study provides the first multinational evidence that artificial intelligence can help enhance accuracy" in determining HER2 clinical categories, potentially closing critical diagnostic gaps and enabling more patients to have access to new therapies, said Dr. Marina De Brot of the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who led the study. "Until recently, most of these patients would have not been offered these options," she said. Extra pre-treatment may improve esophageal cancer surgery outcomes A cancer immunotherapy drug from China's BeiGene used in inoperable esophageal cancer may also change the way some operable esophagus tumors are treated, a mid-stage trial suggests. When patients with newly diagnosed esophageal cancer that has begun to grow beyond its original location have completed their standard pre-operative chemotherapy, a second course of treatment that includes BeiGene's Tevimbra given before surgery can significantly improve their outcomes, researchers reported in advance of ASCO 2025. Researchers recruited 87 such patients whose tumors were no longer seen on imaging exams after chemotherapy with paclitaxel and carboplatin, plus radiation. Ordinarily, the next step in their care would be surgery to remove part or all of the esophagus, at which point pathologists would examine the excised tissue to see if any cancer cells remained. Cancer cells lingering after surgery contribute to the more than 50% recurrence rate in these patients, the researchers said. Half the patients in the study received two additional treatments with chemotherapy and Tevimbra, while the rest went directly to surgery. When pathologists examined the tissues removed during surgery, 40.7% of Tevimbra-treated patients were free of any lingering cancer cells, compared with 18.1% of the control group. After accounting for individual risk factors, patients in the Tevimbra group were nearly three times more likely to have what is known as a pathological complete response. One year later, 95.6% of patients in the Tevimbra group were alive without their disease worsening, known as progression-free survival, compared with 77.3% of patients who didn't receive the extra treatment before surgery. That difference was not statistically significant, however. "This pioneering study demonstrates that sequential chemo-immunotherapy... significantly improves pathological complete response rates by more than two-fold and shows promising progression-free survival trends with manageable toxicity," the researchers said. They called for larger late-stage trials to confirm the results that could "redefine the standard-of-care." This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot; additional reporting by Shawana Alleyne-Morris. Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletters or other Reuters news content. Advertise in this newsletter or on Reuters' website Reuters Health Rounds is sent twice a week. Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also sign up here. Want to stop receiving this email? Unsubscribe here. To manage which newsletters you're signed up for, click here. This email includes limited tracking for Reuters to understand whether you've engaged with its contents. For more information on how we process your personal information and your rights, please see our Privacy Statement. Terms & Conditions © 2025 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. 3 Times Square, New York, NY 10036