Despite its exponential growth since launching in 2007—from 1,450 attendees then to a record 2,530 last year—the Genitourinary (GU) Cancers Symposium remains an inviting meeting that feels small, accessible, and comfortable.
And that’s the perfect blend for networking, said Jeff Michalski, MD, Chair of the meeting’s Program Committee and Vice Chair and Director of Clinical Programs in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine.
“The GU Cancers Symposium allows a more intimate setting for the practicing oncologist,” Dr. Michalski said. “It gives you the opportunity to interact not just with colleagues that you might encounter in your own practice, but also with professionals and researchers who are working in an area that has interest to you but with whom you might not otherwise have an opportunity to speak to one-on-one.”
Talking with the Experts
This is especially useful for early-career providers interested in expanding into research, Dr. Michalski said, pointing to the Fellows, Residents, and Junior Faculty Networking Luncheon specifically. This event, on day 2 of the symposium, allows junior faculty, fellows, and residents to meet with more seasoned faculty, oncologists, and investigators in a group setting.
“This gives them the opportunity to talk about how to advance one’s career,” said Dr. Michalski. “How do you start a lab? How do you start, manage, and conduct a clinical trial? Then also, how do you actually introduce some of these new advances into your own clinical care?”
Truly Multidisciplinary
The 3-day meeting, which will take place February 14–16, 2013, in Orlando, Florida, is open to all members of the cancer care community interested in the prevention, screening, evaluation, and management of GU cancer, including medical oncologists, urologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, and translational-oriented laboratory scientists.
In the early days of the GU Cancers Symposium, prostate cancer was the focus, but since then the meeting has greatly expanded its scope. It now also provides the latest strategies in prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment of bladder and kidney cancer, as well as some of the less common cancers such as those of the penis and testes.
Poster Sessions Offer Unique Opportunity
This year, the symposium will again offer the popular Best of Journals session, where top leaders discuss recent groundbreaking articles, and Translational Science General Sessions, where the latest translational research is applied to clinical practice.
In addition to the educational sessions, the poster sessions represent another tremendous learning opportunity where attendees can talk to the researchers one-on-one, said Dr. Michalski.
“These offer a very nice opportunity to meet the investigators and have detailed conversations about what went into their research [and] to ask, what are some of the details about their patient population? How might those results apply to your clinical practice?” he said.
Fully Connected
Just as last year, many of the symposium’s sessions will be interactive, with attendees encouraged to submit questions online or via text or tweet. In addition, 12 hours after select sessions, attendees will be able to access the presentation on their handheld devices or computers, searchable by title, presenter, or track. Attendees will again receive an eTote, a USB device that contains proceedings content in digital format, including meeting abstracts, education articles, and links to the symposium’s daily news.
The deadline for abstract submission is October 16, 2012, at 11:59 PM EST.
To learn more about the GU Cancers Symposium and to register, go to www.gucasym.org. ■
© 2012. American Society of Clinical Oncology. All rights reserved.
