Cancer Today’s Summer 2026 Issue: Using Patient-reported Outcomes to Address Side Effects, Preventing Graft-versus-host Disease, and More
As her stomach ached with pain, Jill Feldman curled up on the bathroom floor in her home in 2019. Her 21-year-old son, Jack, wanted to call 911, but Feldman told him not to. Later, Jack showed his mom the photo he had captured of her lying on the floor. Feldman, who was taking a targeted therapy for non-small cell lung cancer, realized the seriousness of her side effects. “He was right,” Feldman said. “That was a big deal.”
When pushing through treatment, people with cancer may not bring up symptoms to their doctors. Additionally, research has found oncologists often overlook or underestimate the severity of patients’ symptoms compared with accounts from patients themselves. However, efforts to capture patient-reported outcomes—a patient’s own account of their health status without clinician interpretation—may help offer a fuller picture of the patient’s condition.
In its latest issue, Cancer Today, a magazine and online resource published by the American Association for Cancer Research, describes the push to integrate patient-reported outcome measures, such as surveys and questionnaires, into clinical research and everyday practice to help improve patients’ quality of life. “It’s about making sure that the burdens we carry, the impact is seen, it’s heard, it’s accounted for, and addressed,” Feldman told Cancer Today.
Preventing and Treating Graft-versus-host Disease
The magazine’s summer issue also explores advances in preventing and treating graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a serious complication that can affect people with blood cancer who receive donor stem cell transplants. GVHD occurs when immune cells from a donor attack the patient’s healthy tissue. Up to half of people who undergo a donor stem cell transplant will develop acute GVHD, which occurs in the first months after transplant. Corticosteroids can control GVHD symptoms for many patients, but about half of people with acute GVHD do not respond to steroids. These people may face long-term or serious complications, such as skin and joint problems, liver or lung damage, infections, and reduced quality of life. Now, new treatments can reduce the risk and severity of GVHD symptoms. The story tracks these developments, including research on Orca-T, which received Food and Drug Administration approval on June 30, 2026, under the brand name Tregzi. “The field has transformed over the last 10 years with dramatically better prevention and treatment of GVHD,” William Hogan, MB BCh, a hematologist and blood and marrow transplant specialist at the Mayo Clinic, told Cancer Today.
Staying Ahead of Treatment Resistance
Researchers and health care providers are often all too familiar with an unfortunate reality: For many patients, treatments that once kept cancer at bay can stop working. “Drug development efforts have brought a large number of new agents and new strategies so that there’s pretty good therapy for nearly all primary cancers, and yet metastatic cancer remains a fatal disease,” Robert Gatenby, MD, a clinical radiologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, told Cancer Today. In this issue, Cancer Today examines researchers’ efforts to better understand the mechanisms of treatment resistance and to try to develop regimens that proactively address the disease’s relentless drive to grow.
Encouraging Participation in Cancer Research
In this issue, Cancer Today also features prostate cancer survivor Robert Ginyard, who urges other Black men to enroll in clinical trials. After being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010, Ginyard had trouble finding studies that looked at treatment outcomes for Black men with the disease. In the years since, Ginyard has advocated for Black men to become more involved in clinical trials. He has also reviewed government research grants. “Twenty years from now, I would love more Black men to share their stories about prostate cancer, to help another generation become aware of the disease and to get involved in clinical trials to help us eradicate this disease,” he told Cancer Today.
Treating Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Dating After Cancer, and More
Cancer Today’s latest issue also provides practical takeaways from recent studies, including research that shows some children and young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia may be able to avoid radiation prior to receiving a stem cell transplant. Other articles explain how to divulge a cancer diagnosis to a new romantic partner and how indoor gardening can help improve mental health. Plus, William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, DSc, FAACR, Cancer Today’s editor-in-chief and director of the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, questions how shifting federal priorities are undermining gains in cancer survival. “Without [a] pipeline of dedicated researchers, a future devoid of the threat of cancer becomes ever more remote,” he writes.
The American Association for Cancer Research offers Cancer Today free of charge to those affected by cancer. To view content from the summer 2026 issue, visit Cancer Today’s website or read the digital edition.
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