Veronica Diermayr, PhD, on AI-Driven Prediction of N256-Glycosylated CEACAM5/6 Expression in Gastric and Esophageal Cancer
ASCO 2026
Veronica Diermayr, PhD, of EDDC and A*STAR, discusses the use of artificial intelligence (AI) driven strategy called H&E 2.0 in gastric and esophageal cancer. Researchers tested the feasibility of training deep-learning models on hematoxylin and eosin images of gastroesophageal carcinomas and their ability to predict EBC-129 antigen expression directly from these images. EBC-129 is an experimental antibody-drug conjugate that targets N256-glycosylated CEACAM5/6, which is highly expressed on solid tumors, including gastroesophageal cancers (Abstract 4018).
The ASCO Post Staff
Katharina C. Kaehler, MD, of University Hospital (UKSH), Campus Kiel, presents an update on the primary outcome and sensitivity analyses from the PIVOTAL phase III trial of daromun, a combination of two fibronectin-targeting immunocytokines (L19IL2 and L19TNF), as a neoadjuvant intralesional therapy in patients with resectable, locally advanced stage III melanoma (Abstract LBA9517).
Rami Manochakian, MD, FASCO, of Mayo Clinic Florida, summarizes an educational session at ASCO that reviewed the state of the field of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) treatment. After decades of limited treatment progress, advances are being seen in immunotherapies, radiation therapy, bispecific T-cell engagers, antibody-drug conjugates, and radionuclide therapies.
Jennifer A. Woyach, MD, of The Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute at The Ohio State University, discusses the ongoing, actively recruiting ROCKET-CLL trial, which is a phase III study aiming to compare the efficacy of rocbrutinib vs pirtobrutinib in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) who have been pretreated with Bruton tyrosine kinase covalent inhibitors (Abstract TPS7100).
For more information about the trial, visit ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier NCT07342478).
Suneel Kamath, MD, of Cleveland Clinic, discusses a study that found tissue tumor mutation burden (TMB) was a stronger predictor of immunotherapy outcomes than blood-based circulating tumor DNA testing, with high tissue TMB associated with a longer time to treatment failure (Abstract 2580).
The ASCO Post Staff
Julie R. Brahmer, MD, FASCO, of the Bloomberg–Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, provides expert commentary on the overall survival results from the phase III HARMONi-6 trial presented in this year’s Plenary Session. The study compared ivonescimab plus chemotherapy vs tislelizumab plus chemotherapy in previously untreated patients with advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (Abstract LBA4).
