In fall 2023—more than five years after Peter Wolf first noticed a gurgling sound in his chest—doctors finally offered him a diagnosis: radiation-induced heart disease. The strange sounds and shortness of breath he experienced were a direct result of treatment he received in his teens for nodular sclerosis Hodgkin lymphoma.
Wolf’s efforts to get a diagnosis are described in the summer issue of Cancer Today, a magazine and online resource for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers published by the American Association for Cancer Research. His story helps illustrate cancer treatment’s effects on the heart, as well as health care professionals’ efforts to prevent and treat heart problems in cancer survivors like Wolf.
Cancer Today’s summer issue also explores how research is changing treatment paradigms to improve patient outcomes, including how immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) could help extend remissions in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). When to administer ICIs alongside surgery for early-stage NSCLC—whether before, after, or both before and after surgery—remains an open question. “Unfortunately, right now, we don’t know which is better [overall],” Lei Deng, MD, a thoracic medical oncologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, told Cancer Today. “Sometimes it comes down to the patient’s preference.”
Another article delves into the recent approval of tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy to treat advanced melanoma. This is the first adoptive cell therapy, which uses cells from a person’s own immune system, approved for a solid-tumor cancer. A patient and an oncologist who were part of the clinical trial that led to this approval talk about the benefits and side effects of this treatment.
Meanwhile, the issue’s survivor profile highlights Brian Jones, who applies the lessons he learned during prostate cancer treatment to help other men with the disease. He especially focuses his efforts on Black men, who are more likely to develop prostate cancer and have a higher risk of death from the disease compared with white men.
The new issue also helps translate recent studies for patients, including new research on the use of both an antibody-drug conjugate and an ICI for advanced bladder cancer. Readers can also find lifestyle advice, including an expert’s suggestions for preventing nail damage during treatment, how a kitchen pantry staple may help improve gut health in colorectal cancer survivors, and nine things to consider about getting a pet for support during treatment. Plus, William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore and Cancer Today’s editor-in-chief, writes about how weight-loss drugs could be used to reduce cancer risk.
View all of the content from the summer issue on Cancer Today’s website or read the digital edition.
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