Clinical Updates & Insights

Proton beam radiotherapy resulted in similar oncologic outcomes with less toxicity and improved quality of life than photon beam radiotherapy in patients with head and neck cancers, according to results of an MSK-led clinical trial presented today at the 2025 American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting.

MSK Kids is continuously investigating new ways to improve outcomes and the quality of life for pediatric patients with high-risk neuroblastoma. In this article we detail highlights of the latest clinical and molecular research advances for pediatric neuroblastoma.

Patients with early-stage, node-positive breast cancer whose nodes are pathologically tumor-free after neoadjuvant chemotherapy may safely skip post-mastectomy nodal irradiation without increasing the risk of invasive breast cancer recurrence or death, according to results from a clinical trial published recently in NEJM.

Clinicians and scientists at MSK continue to investigate new ways to improve outcomes for patients with thyroid cancer. Recent research insights from MSK thyroid cancer experts include, the safety and feasibility of active surveillance for certain patients, the identification of mutation profiles of subgroups, recommendations for future clinical trials of redifferentiation therapy, and study results showing that larotrectinib may be beneficial for treatment-naïve patients with NTRK fusion-positive thyroid cancer.

In this Q&A we discuss MSK’s pioneering work in rectal MRI, how it differs from endorectal ultrasound (ERUS), its role in groundbreaking clinical trials for patients with rectal cancer, why expertise matters, and new frontiers for future improvements to rectal MRI.

Event-free survival (EFS) was 27% higher for patients with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) who received standard-of-care with neoadjuvant and adjuvant pembrolizumab compared to the control group who did not receive the immune checkpoint inhibitor, according to a new study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

MSK researchers presented practice-changing advances in new treatment approaches for a range of cancer types at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting.Highlights included breakthroughs for patients with advanced gastric cancer, lung cancer, Lynch syndrome-related cancer and salivary gland cancer. Additionally, the first-ever CAR T cell trial for patients with light chain amyloidosis is showing promising results.

Two new therapy options have demonstrated significant advances in survival outcomes for select patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative advanced breast cancer. Both studies were presented today at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

As long-term cancer survival outcomes improve, the brain has increasingly become a site of refractory and recurrent disease.

Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Vivian Strong, MD, FACS, addressed peers from around the world in May 2025 at the 16th Annual International Gastric Cancer Congress. Dr. Strong, a surgeon and MSK’s Iris Cantor Chair in Honor of Dr. Sidney Winawer, presented, “Gastric Cancer: A Global Fight for Innovation, the U.S. Perspective,” as the meeting’s Jin Pok Kim Lecturer.