Mark Talamonti, MD, of NorthShore University Health System, discusses the technical prerequisites for minimally invasive surgery in pancreatic cancers and the potential benefits to patients.
Geoffrey Ku, MD, MBA, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the promise of immunotherapy drugs and the search for biomarkers that will help identify patients more likely to respond, not only to these medications, but to combinations of immunotherapies, other targeted treatments, chemotherapy drugs, and radiation.
Cynthia L. Sears, MD, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, summarizes her keynote talk on microbes, microbiota, and colon cancer. Next-generation sequencing combined with biologic studies suggests that most colorectal cancer cases have specific microbiome associations.
Masanori Terashima, MD, PhD, of Shizuoka Cancer Center, discusses phase III study findings evaluating bursectomy for patients with subserosal/serosal gastric cancer (Abstract 5).
Cornelis van de Velde, MD, PhD, of Leiden University Medical Center, discusses the International Watch & Wait database, established to track evidence on organ-preserving strategies in patients with rectal cancer (Abstract 521).
Karyn A. Goodman, MD, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, discusses initial study findings on PET scan–directed combined-modality therapy for esophageal cancer (Abstract 1).
