Every year, over 25,000 cancer scientists and doctors from around the world head to McCormick Place, a gigantic conference centre in Chicago, Illinois. This incredible assembly of world-class cancer researchers, organised by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), brings together oncologists from a vast range of specialities.
The ASCO Annual Meeting, which kicks off today, enables oncology professionals from all different backgrounds to share their expertise and learn from each other. The theme of the Meeting is ‘Building Bridges to Conquer Cancer’, encouraging experts from different disciplines to work together.
Possibly the biggest annual event in the cancer calendar, the ASCO Annual Meeting never fails to stir up excitement in the research community. The atmosphere is electric; life-changing breakthroughs in cancer treatment are often announced at conference before being formally published, so when you attend a session you could well be hearing about the next big thing.
Cancer experts from across the globe, including scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, meet every year at the ASCO conference to network with each other. Collaboration is a vital part of the scientific process, and the Annual Meeting allows researchers to keep up with developments in their own field, learn from other disciplines and form lasting connections which could grow into research partnerships.
Only the highest quality research is selected for presentation at the conference, and scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) have had almost 40 proposals accepted this year. Over the next five days, they will be discussing a wide range of important issues regarding cancer diagnosis, treatment and monitoring with other world-leading researchers.
Prostate cancer is a major theme of the ICR’s contribution to this year’s conference, with a number of our researchers involved in presentations and discussions about the disease. Professor Johann de Bono, Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the ICR and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at The Royal Marsden, is involved with many presentations on prostate cancer. These include trials involving abiraterone, a powerful ICR-discovered drug used to treat advanced prostate cancers which are resistant to other therapies. Professor de Bono is involved in trials which pair abiraterone with other drugs in the hope of discovering more effective combined treatments.
The best way to combat any cancer is to catch it earlier when it is usually easier to treat, but prostate cancer is particularly difficult to screen for. There is a test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), but it can come up positive when patients have benign tumours, minor infections or as a result of a number of environmental factors. However, it is possible that the PSA test would be more useful for screening people who already have a high genetic risk of prostate cancer. Professor Ros Eeles, Professor of Oncogenetics at the ICR, will be chairing a discussion panel on this topic on Saturday morning, entitled ‘High-Risk Populations and Cancer Screening: Prostate and Lung Cancer’.
Neuroblastoma is the most common form of cancer in children, and originates in nerve cells throughout the body. Some children can recover from mild cases with little medical intervention, whereas others require long, debilitating courses of treatment. It is therefore vital to identify cases which are likely to require the harshest treatments, to avoid unnecessary harm to patients whose cancers are less aggressive. Professor Andrew Pearson, Cancer Research UK Professor of Paediatric Oncology at the ICR, will be presenting some of his latest research which helps to identify the patients most in need of the strongest therapies.
These are only a few highlights of major work being presented at the conference, but ICR researchers will be having many more discussions on countless cancer-related topics. All throughout the conference, global leaders in cancer research will be announcing exciting discoveries in a huge range of fields. To stay in the loop, follow @ICR_London on Twitter for the latest news from ICR researchers at ASCO 2013.
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