ASCO: You’re listening to a podcast from Cancer.Net. This cancer information website is produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, known as ASCO, the world’s leading professional organization for doctors who care for people with cancer. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Cancer research discussed in this podcast is ongoing, so the data described here may change as research progresses. Every year, the ASCO Annual Meeting brings together attendees from around the globe to learn about the latest research in the treatment and care of people with cancer. This year, a record 42,750 attendees from 138 countries worldwide gathered virtually for the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, held Friday, May 29 through Sunday, May 31. In the annual Research Round Up podcast series, Cancer.Net Associate Editors answer the question, “What was the most exciting or practice-changing research in your field presented at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program?” In this first episode, 3 editors discuss new research in the fields of leukemia, colorectal cancer, and lung cancer. First, Dr. Jessica Altman will discuss 2 studies in myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia. Dr. Altman is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Hematology Oncology Division at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Medicine. She is also the Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Leukemia. View Dr. Altman’s disclosures at Cancer.Net. Dr. Altman: Hi, everyone. My name is Jessica Altman. I am a leukemia physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and I am pleased to talk today about some interesting studies that were presented at ASCO 2020 and really use that as a marker of the excitement that is ongoing in the field of myeloid malignancies. In both myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia, there have been a lot of novel therapies that have been recently approved, and other agents that are currently ongoing in a clinical trial. I think it's important for me to mention that the studies that I will be discussing today, I do not have any direct conflicts of interest, but I am involved with the development of other novel therapies. I'll be talking about two studies today. The first one is a clinical trial, and the second one is a palliative care study that was conducted. The first study that I would like to discuss is the study presented in an oral session at this year's ASCO presented by Dr. David Sallman on behalf of his group at Moffitt and a large clinical trial network of other investigators. They studied the combination of a novel agent called magrolimab, which I'll mention more in a moment, in combination with a standard lower-intensity chemotherapy called azacitidine. This is studied for the treatment of high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia. Magrolimab is an antibody that blocks something called PD47, which is a macrophage immune checkpoint and essentially a signaling cancer that says, "Don't eat me." And this antibody allows the engulfment or destruction of tumor cells and also is able to eliminate the really deep stem cells that cause the development or maintain the leukemia and MDS. So in this study, the investigators conducted a trial of azacitidine in combination with magrolimab, and they treated a handful of patients with both myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia. And what they found was that the combination therapy was both well tolerated and resulted in a better-than-anticipated response rate. So better than what we would anticipate with a low-intensity chemotherapy alone. In particular, they found a nice response rate in indivi