'These Results Are Astonishing': What We Heard at ACR 2018 Save

"If radiation was a drug that could improve survival in the metastatic setting like that it would be millions and millions of dollars." -- James B. Yu, of Yale Cancer Center, discussing aggressive use of stereotactic body radiation therapy in oligometastatic cancer.

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"Here is a severe, frustrating autoimmune disease where patients improved and have remained off DMARDs for over a decade." -- Keith Sullivan, MD, of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in scleroderma.

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"I think this work truly exemplifies the shifting paradigm towards hypofractionation in prostate cancer..." -- Neha Vapiwala, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, on radiotherapy that was as effective as longer-course standard treatments for prostate cancer.

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"It is quite popular amongst the frail." -- Murray Brunt, MD, of University Hospitals of North Midlands and Keele University in England, on short-course radiation therapy (RT) and long-term data confirming the safety of weekly hypofractionated RT in early breast cancer.

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"The real aim of our treatment now needs to be very much focused on preventing that first recurrence, which occurs in 70% of patients." -- Jonathan Ledermann, MD, of University College London, on upfront maintenance therapy with PARP inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) for newly diagnosed, advanced BRCA-positive ovarian cancer.

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"These results will have a major impact for practice, because we have to implement genomic testing for breast cancer." -- Fabrice Andre, MD, of Institute Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France, on the PI3K inhibitor alpelisib for advanced hormone receptor-positive breast cancer associated with PIK3CA mutations. 

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"Drug development has been very bittersweet in lupus." -- Susan Manzi, MD, of the Lupus Center of Excellence, Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, on ustekinumab's (Stelara) clinical benefits for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) through 1 year. 

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"This study uproots 40 years of clinical practice and took over 15 years from the time we started this line of inquiry to get to this point in discovery." -- E. Wesley Ely, MD, MPH, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, on a trial of antipsychotics for delirium in ICU patients.  

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"The Trump administration is choosing to protect pharma's monopolies over saving lives." -- Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, on the administration's failure to address a request for the authorization of generic competition for opioid overdose antidotes such as naloxone (Narcan and Evzio). 

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"These results are astonishing." -- Roy Fleischmann, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, on the outcomes of a phase IIb study of the monoclonal antibody bimekizumab for psoriatic arthritis presented in a late-breaker session at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.