CONGRESS NEWS

Highlights in gastrointestinal cancers

Summary

During the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, a robust body of phase III trials was presented in the gastrointestinal (GI) oncology field, including updates and interesting post-hoc analyses. Once more, the early phase research was mainly focused on immunotherapy, with some promising results.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016;10(5):150–155)

Melanoma and skin cancer highlights at ASCO 2016

Summary

To set the scene for the skin cancer updates presented at ASCO 2016, it is worth looking at the spectacular evolution in the survival of patients with advanced melanoma. In the nineties, the 1-year overall survival (OS) for patients with metastatic melanoma was low at only 25% to 35%. For decades, not a single treatment was able to improve the OS rates seen with dacarbazine-based chemotherapy. This trend of negative studies was broken in 2010 when ipilimumab was shown to increase the 1-year OS rate to 47%.¹ Shortly thereafter, the BRAF-inhibitor vemurafenib was shown to be associated with a 1-year OS rate of 56% in BRAF-mutated advanced melanoma patients.² Building further on these positive data with vemurafenib, dabrafenib was shown to increase this 1-year OS rate to 70%.³ In 2014, phase III data with the PD1 inhibitor nivolumab were presented. With nivolumab, 71% of patients were still alive after 1 year.⁴ This finding was confirmed in 2015 when a similar 71% 1-year OS rate was demonstrated with another PD1 inhibitor, pembrolizumab.⁵ 2015 also featured the presentation of 2 phase III studies evaluating combinations of a BRAF and a MEK inhibitor. In these studies, three quarters of patients was still alive after 1 year when they were treated with dabrafenib/trametinib, or vemurafenib/cobimetinib.^6,7 Finally, in 2016 phase II data of a study combining nivolumab and ipilimumab demonstrated a 1-year OS rate of 73%.8 Similarly, the 2-year OS rate has risen from 15% with dacarbazine-based therapy to 50% or more with PD1 inhibitors and the BRAF/MEK inhibitor combinations.^1-7 In the phase II study with nivolumab and ipilimumab, the 2-year OS rate was even higher at 64%.⁸ The three-year OS was shown to be 22% with ipilimumab, while long-term data of earlier phase studies with nivolumab and dabrafenib/trametinib show a 3-year OS of respectively 42% and 38%. Finally, the 5-year follow-up data with ipilimumab demonstrated the long-term benefit of this agent with 18% of patients still alive at that time point.⁹ Five-year follow-up data of the phase I study with nivolumab showed a 5-year OS rate of 32%.¹⁰

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016;10(5):156–158)

Highlights in genitourinary cancers

Summary

From June 3^rd till June 8^th, Chicago was host for the 52^nd ASCO annual meeting. The theme for this year’s venue was ‘Collective Wisdom: The Future of Patient-Centred Care and Research’. With almost 35,000 registered attendees from over 100 countries worldwide and about 6,000 submitted abstracts, this year’s meeting was a great success. This report will highlight 10 key studies concerning genitourinary cancers presented during the meeting.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016; 10(5): 162–169)

Highlights in gynaecological cancer

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016;10:170–176)

Highlights in thoracic oncology

Summary

During ASCO 2016, 190 abstracts were presented in the lung cancer track: 18 oral presentations, 22 discussion sessions and 172 posters. This report will highlight 7 selected phase III trials and 3 small but promising phase I/II trials.
This year’s ASCO focused on the promising and exciting domain of immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors. Of special interest were the data in first line treatment of NSCLC, the combination of PD-L1 and CTLA-4 antibodies, and the phase I/II results in mesothelioma, small cell lung cancer and thymic carcinoma.
Other highlights of ASCO 2016 in the field of thoracic oncology included updated results of new targeted therapies for patients with defined molecular targets and for patients with acquired resistance after firstgeneration EGFR or ALK-inhibitors.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016;10(5):179–185)

Highlights in head and neck cancer

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016;10(5):186–189)

Breast cancer highlights from ASCO 2016

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2016;10:190–196)