Clifford A. Hudis, MD: A Message From ASCO’s CEO
2024 ASCO Annual Meeting
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), talks about the 2024 Annual Meeting, and a focus on the compassionate side of cancer care.
Transcript
Disclaimer: This video transcript has not been proofread or edited and may contain errors.
Welcome, everybody, to the 60th Annual ASCO Meeting. This meeting is an especially meaningful and exciting one for me because this comes on the heels of decades of really powerful advances across all of oncology, including, of course, targeted therapy, small molecules, immunotherapy, and engineered cells, among many other advances that I'd say in the last five to 10 years have truly transformed oncology. But what makes this year's meetings especially exciting, is that we have coupled this with a call for humanism in medicine and a reminder of the privilege of caring for patients and families through this most difficult time. Our president, Dr. Lynn Schuchter, who's been on the leading edge of the most exciting advances in cancer, especially those in melanoma, at the same time is one of the most compassionate, holistic kinds of physicians anyone could hope to see, and she brings that with passion to this meeting. So we're very, very excited by the inclusion of so many new resources and learnings for our community to help them help their patients around the world more effectively than ever before.
The ASCO Post Staff
Alex Andrea Francoeur, MD, of UC Irvine Health, discusses data showing an association between the increasing incidence of endometrial cancer and obesity, which disproportionately affects younger women and women of color. According to Dr. Francoeur, the findings warrant targeted health services and public health interventions to stabilize and ultimately reverse the rising rates (Abstract 5507).
The ASCO Post Staff
Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, of Emory University Winship Cancer Institute, and Christian F. Singer, MD, MPH, of the Medical University of Vienna, discuss the MUC-1 vaccine tecemotide. When added to standard neoadjuvant systemic therapy for patients with early-stage breast cancer, this vaccine improved distant relapse–free and overall survival rates. Despite the exploratory nature of this observation, says Dr. Singer, this is the first long-term survival benefit of an anticancer vaccine in breast disease reported to date (Abstract 587).
The ASCO Post Staff
Sherene Loi, MD, PhD, of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discusses a circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis from a cohort of patients with early-stage breast cancer who were enrolled in the monarchE trial. This large cohort was studied to look at the usefulness of a personalized tumor-informed assay for ctDNA detection in early stage high-risk patients (LBA507).
The ASCO Post Staff
Brian I. Rini, MD, of Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, discusses phase III findings of the KEYNOTE-426 study of pembrolizumab plus axitinib vs sunitinib for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma. He details the exploratory biomarker results, including RNA sequencing, whole-exome sequencing, and PD-L1 (Abstract 4505).
The ASCO Post Staff
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, CEO of the American Cancer Society, discuss a newly launched collaboration between the organizations to make it simpler for patients to find authoritative cancer information online. The effort creates one of the largest and most comprehensive online resources for credible cancer information, available for free to the public on cancer.org.
