Episode 394: Prostate Cancer Survivorship Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“The thought of recurrence is also a psychosocial issue for our patients. They’re being monitored very closely for five years, so there’s always that thought in the back of their head, ‘What if the cancer comes back? What are the next steps? What am I going to do next?’ It’s really important that we have conversations with patients and their families about where they’re at, what we’re looking for, and reassure them that we’ll be with them during this journey and help them through whatever next steps happen,” ONS member Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, manager...
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Episode 393: Antibody–Drug Conjugates in Metastatic Breast Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“I’ll go back to the backpack analogy. When your kids come home with a backpack, all of a sudden their homework is not on the desk where it’s supposed to be. It’s in the kitchen; it kind of spreads all over the place, but it’s still in the house. When we give antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs), the chemotherapy does go in, but then it can kind of permeate out of the cell membrane and something right next to it—another cancer cell that might not look exactly like the cancer cell that the chemotherapy was delivered into—is affected and the chemotherapy goes over to that cancer cell...
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Episode 392: ONS 50th Anniversary: Stories From the Other Side of Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“Working as an oncology infusion nurse, being oncology certified, attending chapter meetings, going to ONS Congress® has really taught me plenty. But being an oncology patient taught me way more. I know firsthand the fears ‘you have cancer’ brings. Then going through further testing, CT scans, MRIs, genetics, the whole preparation for surgery was something I never considered when I treated a breast cancer patient,” ONS member Catherine Parsons, RN, OCN®, told Valerie Burger, MA, MS, RN, OCN®, CPN, member of the ONS 50th anniversary planning committee, during a conversation about...
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Episode 391: Pharmacology 101: Antibody–Drug Conjugates
The ONS Podcast
“Antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) have three basic parts: the antibody part, the cytotoxic chemo, and the linker that connects the two. First, the antibody part binds to the target on the surface of the cell. Antibodies can be designed to bind to proteins with a very high level of specificity. That’s what gives it the targeted portion. Then the whole thing gets taken up by the cell and broken down, which releases the chemotherapy part. Some sources will call this the ‘payload’ or the ‘warhead.’ That’s the part that’s attached to the ‘heat-seeking’ part, and that’s...
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Episode 390: Prostate Cancer Treatment Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“Any time the patient hears the word ‘cancer,’ they shut down a little bit, right? They may not hear everything that the oncologist or urologist, or whoever is talking to them about their treatment options, is saying. The oncology nurse is a great person to sit down with the patient and go over the information with them at a level they can understand a little bit more. To go over all the treatment options presented by the physician, and again, make sure that we understand their goals of care,” ONS member Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, manager of clinical education and...
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Episode 389: Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“It’s critical to identify those mutations found that are driving the cancer’s growth and guide the personalized treatment based on those results. And important to remember, too, early testing is crucial for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In studies, it has been found to be associated with improved survival outcomes and reduced mortality,” ONS member Vicki Doctor, MS, BSN, BSW, RN, OCN®, precision medicine director at the City of Hope Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, and Phoenix, AZ, locations, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing...
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Episode 388: ONS 50th Anniversary: Milestones in Oncology Advocacy and Health Policy
The ONS Podcast
“I think we really need to push more of our oncology nurses to get into elected and appointed positions. So often we’re looking at health positions to get involved in, and those are wonderful. We need nurses as secretaries of health, but there are others. We as nurses understand higher education. We understand environment. We understand energy. So I think we look broadly at, what are positions we can get in? Let’s have more nurses run for state legislative offices, for our House of Representatives, for the U.S. Senate,” ONS member Barbara Damron, PhD, LHD, RN, FAAN, told Ryne Wilson,...
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Episode 387: Prostate Cancer Screening, Early Detection, and Disparities
The ONS Podcast
“[When] a lot of men think about prostate exams, they immediately think of the glove going on the hand of the physician, and they immediately clench. But really try to talk with them and discuss with them what some of the benefits are of understanding early detection. Even just having those conversations with their providers so that they understand what the risk and benefits are of having screening. And then educate patients on what a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and digital rectal exam (DRE) actually are—how it happens, what it shows, and what the necessary benefits of those are,”...
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Episode 386: Interprofessional Navigation and the Oral Anticancer Medication Care Compass
The ONS Podcast
“This was a panel of subject matter experts of various nurses and pharmacists. We often found common ground but also discovered new ideas, different touchpoints, and key junctures along that oral anticancer medication journey. For example, the pharmacists were able to share their insights into their unique workflows within their practice setting. What resulted is a resource that truly reflects that collaborative effort between the disciplines,” ONS member Mary Anderson, BSN, RN, OCN®, senior manager of nursing membership and professional development at the Network for Collaborative...
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Episode 385: ONS 50th Anniversary: Evolution of Cancer Survivorship
The ONS Podcast
“It started out by doing a kind of a white paper that we called Imperatives for Quality Cancer Care. Ellen Stovall, our CEO [of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship] at the time, gave this report to Dr. Richard Klausner, who was the head of National Cancer Institute at the time. He called Ellen immediately and said, ‘Why are we not doing something about this?’ Within one year, we had the Office of Cancer Survivorship at NCI,” ONS member Susan Leigh, BSN, RN, told ONS member Ruth Van Gerpen, MS, RN-BC, APRN-CNS, AOCNS®, PMGT-BC, member of the ONS 50th anniversary...
info_outline“All of these TKIs [tyrosine kinase inhibitors] inhibit BCR-ABL1 in some way, shape, or form. When BCR-ABL1 is mutated, it has uncontrolled tyrosine kinase activity, leading to rapid cell proliferation. When we then inhibit that BCR-ABL1 that’s been mutated, we disrupt this abnormal signaling pathway that drives CML [chronic myeloid leukemia] cell proliferation and survival, ultimately leading to decreased cancer cell growth, increased apoptosis or cell death, and potentially inducing a disease remission,” Samantha Maples, PharmD, BCOP, clinical pharmacy specialist supervisor for hematology and cellular therapy at Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, PA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about the BCR-ABL1 inhibitor drug class.
Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0
Earn 0.5 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by September 5, 2026. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
Learning outcome: Learner will report an increase in knowledge related to the use of BCR-ABL1 inhibitors in the treatment of CML.
Episode Notes
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- ONS course: Safe Handling Basics
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- Other ONS resources:
- National Comprehensive Cancer Network
- National Comprehensive Cancer Network patient resources
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Highlights From This Episode
“The IRIS study led to the approval of the BCR-ABL1 and TKI, imatinib, for CML in 2001 and completely changed the landscape of CML treatment. Then came the second-generation BCR-ABL1 TKIs: dasatinib in 2006, quickly followed by nilotinib in 2007. Thereafter came our second-generation, bosutinib, and our first approved third-generation TKI, ponatinib, both in 2012, which was a huge milestone as ponatinib overcomes resistance to the T315 I mutation, which no previously approved TKIs worked against.” TS 2:16
“The newest approved TKI, asciminib, is an allosteric inhibitor that binds to a different pocket on the BCR-ABL kinase via allosteric binding to the ABL myristoyl pocket. It’s what’s called a STAMP inhibitor, where STAMP stands for ‘specifically targeting the ABL myristoyl pocket.’ And while all the TKIs target the BCR-ABL1 binding site, they can also inhibit different off-target kinases. And these differences in off-target inhibition are responsible for some of the different toxicities we see among the TKIs.” TS 4:51
“As a class, common toxicities include nausea; vomiting; diarrhea; cardiac toxicities, including cardiac arrhythmias and congestive heart failure; metabolic abnormalities such as hypercholesterolemia and hypertriglyceridemia; nephrotoxicity; hepatic toxicity; hemorrhaging and bleeding; as well as cytopenia. Individually, some of these agents are more likely to cause certain side effects compared to others, and there are unique toxicities associated with certain TKIs.” TS 8:10
“We’ve moved to using preemptive loperamide [in our clinic] for the first three days of starting treatment, because it’s really hard to get patients to continue to take a medication if they have such severe diarrhea that they end up in the hospital or they’re unable to leave their house. A lot of times, we will proactively give patients antiemetics and loperamide to help with the nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. And then we can back off to an as-needed basis once they’ve been established on treatment. We can also use medications to help manage long-term complications that can require supportive care, such as statin therapy for high cholesterol, levothyroxine for hypothyroidism, anticoagulants for any venous thromboembolism, and antihypertensive medications for managing any new or worsening high blood pressure.” TS 12:44
“We are continually seeing these agents expand their indications to different lines of therapy, as well as more TKIs being approved for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. For example, asciminib just got approved in the frontline setting within the last year, whereas previously it was only approved in relapsed refractory setting. Last year, imatinib was the first BCR-ABL1 TKI to come out with a commercially supplied suspension option as well, which is huge in the pediatric space and [for] our adult patients who are unable to swallow tablets for other clinical reasons.” TS 21:22
“There is more information being published on the safe discontinuation of these medications with treatment-free remissions, and more information is coming out about who would be eligible and who can have the option to stop these treatments instead of having a lifelong chronic condition requiring continuous treatment. We're seeing more patients in clinical practice be able to stop BCR-ABL1 treatment, which has been a great development in CML.” TS 25:29