Delaying Pegfilgrastim After Chemotherapy Lowers Risk of Severe Bone Pain

Women with breast cancer who received pegfilgrastim 72 hours after finishing chemotherapy had fewer reports of severe bone pain than those who received the drug sooner. Pegfilgrastim is used to stimulate white blood cells after chemotherapy and reduce the risk of infection, but it often causes bone pain. The research, published March 24, 2026, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, divided 159 people with stage I to stage III breast cancer who received pegfilgrastim either one, two or three days after the final dose of chemotherapy. Of those who received pegfilgrastim 72 hours after chemotherapy, 22.6% reported severe bone pain, compared with 58.5% who received the pegfilgrastim at 24 hours and 66% who received it at 48 hours. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which publishes professional cancer treatment guidelines, recommends administering pegfilgrastim one to four days after chemotherapy, according to an article in Medscape. In the study, the extended time between administering chemotherapy and pegfilgrastim did not increase the incidence of neutropenia, a condition that occurs when white blood cell counts become low and can lead to infection and treatment delays. If doctors can adjust the timing of pegfilgrastim and reduce bone pain, it would be a “meaningful improvement in patient experience,” Douglas K. Marks, a breast medical oncologist at NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center in New York City, told Medscape. Still, Marks, who was not involved in the research, and study investigators stressed the need for larger clinical trials before changing practice.

Treatment Combination Doubles Progression-free Survival in Advanced Lung Cancer

A regimen of first-line chemotherapy and targeted therapy can extend progression-free survival in people with EGFR-mutated advanced non-small cell lung cancer that has a TP53 mutation, according to data from an ongoing study presented March 25 at the 2026 European Lung Cancer Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. Patients with EGFR-mutated lung cancer typically receive a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that targets the mutation directly, but those whose cancer also has a TP53 mutation typically have a poorer response to EGFR-targeted therapies. In the phase III trial, 292 people with previously untreated stage IV or recurrent EGFR-mutant lung cancer received the targeted therapy Tagrisso (osimertinib) alone or received Tagrisso and chemotherapy. After a median follow-up of more than two years, patients who received the combination lived without progression for 34 months compared with 15.6 months for those who received Tagrisso alone. However, 62.4% of people in the combination group experienced treatment-related adverse events that required medical attention, compared with 14.9% on Tagrisso alone. “These findings provide key evidence to support a molecular risk-guided individualized treatment strategy for EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer,” said Yupeng Yang, a physician from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, China, who presented the findings at the conference, and was quoted in an Oncology News Central article. Other phase III studies have shown that first-line chemotherapy and targeted therapy improves progression-free survival and overall survival in people whose cancer has these co-mutations, Yang noted, but additional treatments come with tradeoffs, including higher costs, more side effects and less convenience for patients.

Estradiol Patches Effectively Suppress Testosterone in Prostate Cancer

Estradiol patches appear to be as effective at controlling testosterone levels as a common type of hormone therapy used in men with prostate cancer. In the phase III study, published March 25, 2026, in the New England Journal of Medicine, 1,360 men with locally advanced prostate cancer received either daily estradiol patches or standard luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) agonists. In those who used estradiol patches, 87.1% of the men were alive without distant metastases after three years, compared with 85.9% in those who took LHRH agonists. In addition, both groups had similar overall survival. LHRH agonists are a type of drug used to suppress testosterone to reduce the chance of prostate cancer growing. In the study, men who used daily estradiol patches experienced fewer hot flashes than those who took LHRH agonists, but they were more likely to have enlarged breast tissue, a condition called gynecomastia. Previous studies showed that oral estrogen is also able to suppress testosterone, but those oral pills came with an increased risk of blood clots, according to MedPage Today. Estradiol patches reduce this risk since the medication is transdermal, delivered through the skin and into blood stream before going to the liver.

FDA Approves Treatment Combination for Platinum-resistant Ovarian Cancer

On March 25, 2026, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the glucocorticoid receptor antagonist Lifyorli (relacorilant) plus Abraxane (nab-paclitaxel) for adults with platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancers whose cancer has progressed on one to three lines of other systemic treatments, including Avastin (bevacizumab). The approval was based on results from a phase III clinical trial that divided 381 patients with platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer into two treatment groups. The median progression-free survival in the group that received both Abraxane and Lifyorli was 6.5 months compared with 5.5 months in the Abraxane alone group. The median survival was 16 months in the Lifyorli combination group compared with 11.9 months in Abraxane group. Read more about Lifyorli and Abraxane for ovarian cancer in Cancer Today coverage of the study from 2025.