Evidence summaries
Landmark cancer trials, in plain language
Each week we summarise one important, peer-reviewed cancer trial — what it tested, what it found, and what it might mean for patients. No jargon, no hype. Just the evidence, explained clearly.
Cancer type
Trial type
The CHALLENGE trial
A structured exercise program after colon cancer treatment lowered the chance of the cancer coming back — and helped people live longer.
Read the summaryThe KEYNOTE-177 trial
For one specific type of advanced colon cancer, immunotherapy worked better than chemotherapy — and more than half the people who got it were alive five years later.
Read the summaryIDEA: is three months of chemo enough?
For most people with stage III colon cancer, three months of chemotherapy worked nearly as well as six — with far less lasting nerve damage.
Read the summaryThe NATALEE trial
For the most common kind of early breast cancer, adding a targeted pill to hormone therapy modestly lowered the chance of the cancer coming back.
Read the summaryThe KEYNOTE-189 trial
For the most common kind of advanced lung cancer, adding immunotherapy to chemotherapy helped people live longer and kept the cancer controlled longer.
Read the summaryEvidence review: immunotherapy before lung surgery
Pooling eight trials shows that adding immunotherapy to chemo before surgery improved outcomes and left far more people cancer-free at surgery.
Read the summaryThe PATINA trial
For hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, adding palbociclib to maintenance therapy extended the time before the cancer progressed by more than 15 months.
Read the summaryThe ASCENT-04 trial
For PD-L1-positive triple-negative breast cancer, replacing standard chemotherapy with an antibody-drug conjugate kept the cancer controlled longer and produced responses that lasted nearly twice as long.
Read the summaryThe ADAURA trial
For EGFR-mutated lung cancer removed by surgery, taking a targeted pill every day for three years dramatically reduced the chance of the cancer returning — including in the brain.
Read the summaryThe EV-303 trial
For muscle-invasive bladder cancer in people who cannot receive cisplatin, an antibody-drug conjugate plus immunotherapy around surgery dramatically improved survival compared to surgery alone.
Read the summaryCheckMate 238 at 9 years
This nine-year update confirms that for high-risk melanoma removed by surgery, one year of nivolumab kept the cancer away for longer than ipilimumab — and was better tolerated.
Read the summaryThe DESTINY-Breast05 trial
For high-risk HER2-positive breast cancer with cancer still present after pre-surgery treatment, a newer targeted drug roughly halved the chance of it coming back — but carries a serious lung risk to watch for.
Read the summaryDaraxonrasib for pancreatic cancer
An oral drug that switches off mutated RAS — the engine of most pancreatic cancers — shrank tumors and was linked to longer survival than second-line chemotherapy, in an early-phase study still awaiting confirmation.
Read the summaryThe KEYNOTE-522 trial
For early-stage triple-negative breast cancer, adding pembrolizumab to chemotherapy before and after surgery cleared more tumors completely, lowered the risk of recurrence, and improved survival — regardless of PD-L1 status.
Read the summaryThe FLAURA2 trial
For newly diagnosed EGFR-mutated advanced lung cancer, adding chemotherapy to the targeted pill osimertinib delayed the cancer’s growth by about 9 months and extended survival by nearly a year — at the cost of more side effects.
Read the summaryA new class of drug for hot flashes
For the hot flashes caused by anti-estrogen breast cancer treatment — where hormone replacement isn’t an option — a new class of non-hormonal pills (the NK-receptor antagonists) cut hot flashes substantially in two recent trials.
Read the summaryMetastatic prostate cancer: beyond hormones alone
When prostate cancer has spread but still responds to hormones, adding a second drug — and for some men chemotherapy as a third — to hormone therapy helps men live substantially longer. A plain-language review of a decade of trials.
Read the summaryThe VISION trial: targeted radiation for prostate cancer
For advanced prostate cancer that had stopped responding to hormone therapy and chemotherapy, a radioactive drug that homes in on the PSMA protein on cancer cells helped men live longer and held the disease back — a landmark for “theranostics.”
Read the summaryPARP inhibitors for prostate cancer
A targeted class of pills, often paired with hormone therapy, that slows advanced prostate cancer — but the benefit is concentrated in men whose cancer carries a BRCA or other DNA-repair (HRR) mutation, which is why genetic testing matters.
Read the summaryThe ALINA trial
For early-stage ALK-positive lung cancer, two years of the targeted pill alectinib after surgery — instead of chemotherapy — sharply cut the chance of recurrence, and was especially good at preventing spread to the brain.
Read the summaryThe CABINET trial
For advanced neuroendocrine tumors that had kept growing despite other treatments, the pill cabozantinib more than doubled the time the cancer was held in check — in both pancreatic and non-pancreatic types.
Read the summaryThe OPRA trial
For locally advanced rectal cancer, giving all chemotherapy and radiation first and then watching closely let about half of patients keep their rectum — avoiding major surgery — with the same cancer survival.
Read the summaryThe CheckMate 214 trial
For advanced kidney cancer, combining two immunotherapy drugs helped people live longer than the standard targeted pill — and produced deep, durable remissions, with about a third of patients alive at nine years.
Read the summaryImmunotherapy + pill combinations for kidney cancer
Three immunotherapy-plus-targeted-pill combinations (with axitinib, cabozantinib, or lenvatinib) have all beaten the old standard for advanced kidney cancer — shrinking the tumor in most people and helping them live longer.
Read the summaryRSClin: gene test + clinical risk
For early hormone-positive breast cancer, combining the Oncotype DX gene test with clinical features (tumor size, grade, age) gives a more personalized estimate of recurrence risk — and of who truly benefits from chemotherapy.
Read the summaryThe IMbrave150 trial
For advanced liver cancer, combining the immunotherapy atezolizumab with the anti-blood-vessel drug bevacizumab beat the old standard pill on survival — the first to do so in over a decade — while better preserving quality of life.
Read the summaryThe CheckMate 9DW trial
For advanced liver cancer, two immunotherapy drugs together (nivolumab + ipilimumab) shrank the tumor nearly three times as often as the standard pills and helped more people reach three years — a second immunotherapy option alongside IMbrave150.
Read the summaryThe MATTERHORN trial
For removable stomach and gastroesophageal-junction cancer, adding the immunotherapy durvalumab to standard chemotherapy before and after surgery lowered recurrence and nearly tripled the number of people whose tumor had vanished by the operation.
Read the summaryDESTINY-Gastric04 (trastuzumab deruxtecan)
For HER2-positive stomach cancer that grew after first treatment, a targeted “smart bomb” drug — an antibody carrying chemotherapy to HER2-marked cells — helped people live longer than standard second-line chemotherapy.
Read the summaryThe RELATIVITY-047 trial
For advanced melanoma, adding relatlimab — the first drug to release a newly-targeted immune brake called LAG-3 — to nivolumab held the cancer in check more than twice as long, and at 4 years helped people live longer — introducing a third class of checkpoint inhibitor.
Read the summaryThe CheckMate 067 trial
For advanced melanoma — once survivable only for months — two immunotherapy drugs together helped more than half of people be alive four years later, a durable benefit that redefined the disease.
Read the summaryThe SWOG S1801 trial
For melanoma removable by surgery, giving some immunotherapy before the operation — rather than all of it afterward — sharply lowered recurrence, even though the drug and total amount were the same. Timing was the difference.
Read the summary