CONGRESS HIGHLIGHTS

Highlights in lung cancer

With an estimated 1.6 million deaths worldwide annually, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death. However, progress is being made in improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of this malignancy. At the European Cancer Congress in Vienna, a substantial number of presentations reported encouraging results of early and late phase clinical trials in lung cancer. Below an impression of several of these studies.

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Highlights in lung cancer

This report will highlight 8 important phase III studies presented during ASCO 2015 and 5 small but promising phase I/II trials. This year’s ASCO will be remembered for the paradigm shift and step forward in the treatment of lung cancer with immunotherapy via checkpoint inhibitors. Two important phase III trials in second-line NSCLC with anti-PD-1 inhibition were presented at ASCO this year and are discussed below. Also in small cell lung cancer and mesothelioma this approach seems promising.

Other highlights of the ASCO 2015 congress in the field of thoracic oncology include new targeted therapies for patients with defined molecular targets and for patients with acquired resistance after first-line first generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) or first generation ALK inhibitors.

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Highlights in melanoma

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Highlights in gastrointestinal cancers

The 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting represents the 50^th anniversary celebration from ASCO’s foundation. This is the beginning of the second half of our first 100 years. We’re going to think about what cancer and cancer care delivery will look like 10, 20, or 30 years from now,” said the 2014– 2015 ASCO President, Peter Paul Yu. The chosen theme of this year’s meeting is “Illumination and Innovation: Transforming Data into Learning” as reflected in Dr. Yu’s question “How do we harness our vastly increasing knowledge base and deliver the fruits of that labor to our patients?”

In gastrointestinal oncology results, updates and sub analyses of phase III trials were presented but also many negative trials. Data from early phase trials in the fields of immunology, incorporating new promising treatments like anti-PD-1, potential related markers and HER2 receptor blockage were also of interest. Furthermore, debates with a focus on financial aspects of treatment approaches, including the innovative, but yet very expensive immune modulation therapies, and comparisons of standard “targeted” approaches were discussed.

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Highlights in gynaecological cancers

The studies in gynaecological cancers presented at this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, although not reporting breakthrough practice-changing results, are in line with the trend towards targeted therapies witnessed in recent years. In addition to this, several studies confirm the potential of immunotherapy in this setting.

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Highlights in targeted therapy

In the previous decade major advances were made in targeted therapies as exemplified by the great progress in lung cancer. Today therapeutic innovation is dominated by the overwhelming breakthroughs in immunotherapy.¹ This is particularly great news as these novel immunotherapeutic drugs work best in those cancers in which our targeted therapies fail: cancers with many mutations. There is a strong emerging interaction between targeted therapies and immunotherapy and it appears that targeted therapies silence oncogenic pathways that promote immune tolerance. For example BRAF inhibition with vemurafenib leads to expansion of T-cells infiltrating melanoma, a prerequisite for response to PD1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitors.

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Highlights in genitourinary cancers

From May 29^th till June 2^nd, Chicago was host for the 2015 ASCO annual meeting. The theme for this year’s congress was ‘Illumination and Innovation: Transforming Data into Learning’. With over 30,000 registered attendees from over 120 countries worldwide and more than 6,000 submitted abstracts, this year’s meeting was a great success. This report will highlight 12 key studies concerning genitourinary cancers presented during the meeting.

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