Journal of Clinical Oncology
The Journal of Clinical Oncology is ASCO's flagship journal and the workhorse of clinical oncology, publishing trials, ASCO guidelines, and the abstract supplements for the ASCO Annual Meeting.
JCO publishes three issues a month, carrying phase 2 and 3 trials across all tumour types, ASCO clinical practice guidelines (for example on immune-related adverse events), health-services and survivorship research, and the annual-meeting abstract supplements that make it the most cited oncology journal by volume. Hybrid access; guidelines are free. Sister titles include JCO Precision Oncology, JCO Oncology Practice and JCO Global Oncology.
Patients with high-risk bladder cancer confined to the lining whose disease has not responded to BCG now have a bladder-sparing option that clears the cancer in most cases, delivered through a simple outpatient procedure. It may allow many to avoid or defer cystectomy, a life-changing operation. Whether responses translate into avoided progression and cystectomy over the long term, and how it compares with cystectomy on survival, remain to be shown.
For hormone-receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer that has already had chemotherapy, Dato-DXd controls the disease for longer with fewer severe side effects than chemotherapy, but does not help patients live longer, so it is not a standard option here. The result is a reminder that progression-free survival is a surrogate; regulators and clinicians should wait for survival data before adopting an ADC in a setting where later therapies are effective.
CD20 x CD3 bispecifics gave patients whose lymphoma has failed CAR-T, or who cannot access it, an effective off-the-shelf treatment that can be started within days. Epcoritamab and glofitamab are now standard third-line options and are moving into earlier lines and combinations. They do not yet replace CAR-T, whose remissions appear more durable.
Checkpoint inhibitors are now given to hundreds of thousands of patients a year, many in community clinics and emergency departments, so a common, explicit playbook for their autoimmune side effects saves lives. The guideline standardised when to stop, when to give steroids and when to escalate, and made multidisciplinary toxicity teams routine. It does not remove the judgement needed for rare events or for patients whose cancer is responding.
Lifileucel proved that Steven Rosenberg's decades-old TIL concept could be industrialised into a licensed product and gave patients with checkpoint-refractory melanoma, who otherwise have few options, a chance of durable remission. It is the first cell therapy approved for any solid tumour. The treatment requires surgery to harvest tumour, hospitalisation for lymphodepletion and IL-2, and specialised centres, so its reach is limited.
Women with hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer that has spread to lymph nodes and has other high-risk features can now be offered two years of abemaciclib alongside their hormone therapy, with a durable reduction in relapse. It does not apply to node-negative or low-risk disease, and the diarrhoea and cost are real trade-offs to discuss.
Amod Sarnaik led the pivotal lifileucel trial that produced the first approved TIL therapy.
Aurélien Marabelle is the immunotherapy investigator behind the tumour-agnostic pembrolizumab data in MSI-high cancers.
Benjamin Besse is a lung cancer trialist central to the Dato-DXd and HER3-DXd lung programmes.
Principal investigator of CROWN, where lorlatinib produced the longest disease control ever recorded for a targeted lung cancer pill.
Charles Blanke is a GI oncologist who chaired SWOG for a decade and led early imatinib trials in GIST.
Christopher Flowers is a lymphoma specialist who leads MD Anderson's entire medical oncology division.
Clifford Hudis is a breast oncologist who has run ASCO since 2016.
Breast oncologist who co-leads SWOG and studies adherence, toxicity, and how care is actually delivered.
Nurse scientist who put patient-reported outcomes into cooperative group radiation trials.
Paediatric oncologist who chairs the world's largest childhood cancer research organisation.
Leading pancreatic cancer trialist, including the maintenance PARP-inhibitor and germline-BRCA studies.
Neuroendocrine tumour specialist who helps design the trials that set treatment for these rare cancers.
Prostate cancer trialist who helped bring abiraterone and sipuleucel-T to patients, and led ASCO in 2025-26.
Evanthia Galanis is a brain tumour specialist who chairs one of the largest US clinical trial networks.
Head and neck cancer leader who established organ-preserving chemoradiation and led ASCO in 2021-22.
Led PADA-1, the first trial to switch endocrine therapy on a rising ESR1 mutation in blood.
Funda Meric-Bernstam runs the world's largest phase 1 programme and led the tumour-agnostic HER2 ADC study.
Gary Lyman is an oncologist and health economist behind guidelines on growth factors, thrombosis, and biosimilars in cancer care.
Hagen Kennecke is a GI oncologist who leads SWOG's gastrointestinal and melanoma committees.
Mapped how EGFR-mutant lung cancers resist osimertinib and led the HER3-directed ADC trials that followed.
Breast oncologist who led key ADC and CDK4/6 trials and moved from UCSF to City of Hope in 2024.
Led the first talimogene laherparepvec plus ipilimumab study and co-wrote the immune toxicity management guidelines.
Jame Abraham leads medical oncology at Cleveland Clinic and its breast cancer trial programme.
Runs NCI's immuno-oncology clinical programme, from prostate cancer vaccines to bifunctional checkpoint fusion proteins.
Jennifer Litton led the EMBRACA trial that brought talazoparib to BRCA-mutated breast cancer.
Julie Park led the COG trial that made tandem transplant standard for high-risk neuroblastoma.
Paediatric oncologist whose trials established transplant and 13-cis-retinoic acid for high-risk neuroblastoma.
Kevin Harrington is a head and neck oncologist and oncolytic virus pioneer who led the OPTiM trial of T-VEC.
Leads medical oncology at Tata Memorial and its programme of pragmatic trials that make treatments affordable.
Defined EGFR resistance mechanisms in lung cancer and now leads early-detection research including the Sybil AI lung-risk model.
Lori Pierce is a breast radiation oncologist and ASCO past president focused on equity in cancer care.
Lynn Schuchter is a melanoma oncologist who led ASCO in 2023-24.
Breast oncologist who led MONARCH 3 and studies how genetics shapes response to endocrine therapy.
Nancy Lin is the leading authority on brain metastases from breast cancer, including the HER2CLIMB tucatinib data in patients with active brain disease.
Brazil's most prominent GI oncologist, a former MD Anderson faculty member who built oncology programmes at Sírio-Libanês and ICESP.
Peter O'Dwyer is a GI oncologist who co-leads ECOG-ACRIN, one of the NCI's national trial networks.
Peter Pisters is the surgeon who has run the world's largest cancer centre since 2017.
Primo Lara is a GU and lung oncologist who co-chairs SWOG and directs UC Davis's cancer centre.
Made mesothelin a drug target, from immunotoxins to ADCs and CAR-T, and leads NCI's mesothelioma programme.
Prostate oncologist studying how tumours transform to escape hormone therapy and how to target them with radioligands.
A surgeon-scientist whose low-cost randomised trials, from peritumoral lidocaine to timing of surgery, challenged assumptions in breast cancer.
Robert Fenstermaker invented SurVaxM, a survivin-targeted vaccine in late-stage trials for glioblastoma.
Community oncologist who led ASCO in 2024-25 with a focus on bringing trials to patients close to home.
Ryan Sullivan is a melanoma trialist and a leading voice on managing immunotherapy side effects.
Leads Dana-Farber's breast oncology division and many of the trials that moved ADCs and de-escalated therapy into breast cancer care.
Showed that immune cells inside breast tumours predict outcome, the basis for de-escalating chemotherapy in TNBC.
Neuroblastoma expert who built the international risk classification used to guide treatment.
Showed how radiation, including proton therapy, can be used in liver and pancreatic cancers previously considered unsuitable.
Radiation oncologist who developed adaptive liver radiotherapy and radiosensitising drug combinations.
Thomas Lynch is a lung cancer oncologist who co-discovered EGFR mutations and now leads Fred Hutch.
Surgeon who has led Siteman since its founding and built it into a top NCI comprehensive centre.
A medical oncologist who co-leads Tata Memorial's lung cancer trials and built India's geriatric oncology programme.
Showed that very low-dose nivolumab added to cheap chemotherapy improves survival in head and neck cancer, a landmark for affordable immunotherapy.
A senior gastric cancer oncologist whose adjuvant and perioperative trials in Korea helped define post-gastrectomy chemotherapy.