Kevin Chen, PharmD, MS, BCOP, CPP, University of North Carolina Medical Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, presented highlights on new solid tumor drug approvals, emphasizing the rapid expansion of biomarker-directed therapies, at the 2025 Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology (JADPRO) meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

He reviewed 7 newly approved agents with novel mechanisms of action and discussed their precision targeting, efficacy, and distinct toxicity profiles. 

Dr Chen concluded, “We know this is a rapidly advancing field, we know oncology and we always have to keep up with the new drugs.”

Transcript:

Hey everyone. My name is Kevin and I'm one of the outpatient oncology pharmacists at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I have the honor of presenting the new drug approvals in solid tumors at the JADPRO Annual Conference this past October, where we highlighted 7 of the newly approved drugs with novel mechanisms of action for our solid tumor malignancies.

Now, the theme of this year's presentation was really biomarker-directed therapies or biomarker-selected therapies. We're in the age now where we have drugs that work exquisitely well for patients targeting the underlying mutations, which is causing their cancers. These therapies oftentimes are more effective and less toxic than our traditional chemotherapy type agents, but the challenge with these therapies is we have to know which of these patients are going to benefit from the individual treatments that we can offer them. 

The other thing is these biomarker-directed therapies oftentimes have a very unique side effect profile depending on what specific mechanism of action in our specific medications. It's been really helpful for APPs to know all these new novel drug updates because we have to understand how the drugs work as well as the side effects in order to make sure that we're providing our patients the best care.

The other piece of this is also how do we keep up with the emerging therapies? Although I mentioned, I highlighted 7 of the therapies in depth, we actually had 15 different drugs that were approved in the last calendar year since JADPRO last year. We know this is a rapidly advancing field, we know oncology and we always have to keep up with the new drugs. 

That's one of the benefits of attending the JADPRO Annual meeting, you have the opportunity to learn from these sessions, not just solid tumor, but there's also an update in heme malignancies as well, so for people who are practicing as generalists, or even those who are practicing as specialists, this is a great opportunity by attending this meeting to be able to keep up to date with the most recent approvals, as well as the most novel therapies that your patients are receiving, and make sure that we're able to support them through their treatment as fast as possible Hope to see you all on next year's JADPRO.

Source:

Chen K. New Drug Updates in Solid Tumors. October 23-26, 2025; National Harbor, Maryland.