CONGRESS NEWS

Congress highlights SABCS 2021

SUMMARY

The hybrid SABCS 2021 could only attract a few hundred life attendees, but like every year, several key abstracts were presented. In early stage, a meta-analysis on aromatase inhibitor versus tamoxifen in premenopausal ER+ patients showed lower recurrence with aromatase inhibitors, while the impact on overall survival remains unclear. An EBCTCG meta-analysis showed no benefit for an anthracycline-taxane adjuvant chemotherapy regimen compared to a taxane only regimen, if the taxane was given sequentially after the anthracycline, confirming the role of anthracycline-free chemotherapy regimens in a large proportion of patients with early breast cancer. In ER+ metastatic disease, the new SERD elacestrant was more potent than classical endocrine therapy after progression on first/second line endocrine therapy. Datopotamab deruxtecan is a promising new ADC targeting TROP2 with clear activity in triple negative disease. In HER2 positive disease, T-DXd displayed substantial antitumour effect on brain metastases, and pyrotinib can be added to the list of highly potent HER2 tyrosine kinase inhibitors. In patients with HER2 mutations, neratinib showed clear antitumour activity both in ER positive and triple negative metastatic breast cancer. In the surgery field, black and Hispanic women were shown to be at higher risk for breast cancer related lymphedema after axillary lymph node dissection. The Italian SINODAR-ONE trial built further on the Z0011 trial and confirmed that axillary surgery can be omitted in patients with breast cancer patients and one or two macro metastatic sentinel nodes.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2022;16(2):79–87)

Highlights of the 15^th BSMO-Bordet symposium – The Integration of Molecular Biology Advances into Oncology Clinical practice

SUMMARY

In light of the ongoing global pandemic, the 15^th BSMO-Bordet symposium meeting went virtual in 2021. This did not detract from the engaging lineup of presentations, emphasising treatment breakthroughs in various cancers. In addition to this, several projects with a local impact on the Belgian oncology landscape were presented.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2022;16(2):88–96)

Highlights of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium 2021

SUMMARY

The annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium was held from 15 till 17 January 2021 in a virtual format. During this meeting, evolving immunotherapy options were shown in the upper digestive tractus, already presented at ESMO 2020. Besides immunotherapy, also the total neoadjuvant treatment approach (TNT) in rectal cancer reached sufficient attention, changing our current standard of practice in 2021. Targeted therapies for different gastrointestinal (GI) tumour locations showed promising results, paving the way for more personalised medicine.

In this report, the most important headlines will be discussed, with comments on the clinical relevance of the different studies.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2021;15(6):331-9)

Highlights in gynaecological cancer

“The United States is a long way from achieving clinical equity among its people” said Joe Elia, editor of NEJM Group in the introduction of the eBook on Racial Disparities in Clinical Medicine which was distributed among all ASCO members in June 2021. It is not without reason that this eBook is coming out now. In the President’s Address, Lori J Pierce mentioned how segregation impacts on health care. “Today”, she said, “ensuring equity of care – that is our good fight, this is the foundation of ASCO”. It was interesting to notice that this topic also got attention in the Gynaecological Cancer track of the meeting. Overall, ASCO 2021 featured 14 presentations on cervical cancer, 32 on uterine cancer and 60 on ovarian cancer. The most important messages of these different presentations will be discussed in this article.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2021;15(5):197-205)

Highlights in breast cancer

ASCO 2021 featured one crucial, practice-changing trial in early breast cancer: the OlympiA trial showed that one year of adjuvant olaparib improves invasive disease-free survival by 8.8% compared to placebo, when administered to high risk early breast patients (triple negative or hormone sensitive and HER2 negative) with a germline BRCA1 or 2 mutation. Furthermore, ECOG-ACRIN EA1131 failed to show improved outcome in triple negative breast cancer treated without pathological complete response after neoadjuvant chemo-therapy with platinum based chemotherapy compared to the current standard capecitabine. GeparNUEVO for the first time showed long term outcome with anti-PD(L)1 therapy administered with neoadjuvant chemotherapy in triple negative breast cancer. In the advanced setting, interesting overall survival updates of the PALOMA-3 and MONALEESA-3 studies were presented. Furthermore, the SYsucc-002 trial demonstrated that trastuzumab plus endocrine therapy was non-inferior to and had fewer toxicities compared with trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in patients with HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer. In addition, this article will touch upon several other studies that are notable.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2021;15(5):208-17)

Highlights in immunotherapy

Over the last decade immunotherapy has become an integral part of the oncogenic treatment arsenal. Meanwhile, the field of immune-oncology continues to evolve, which was amply illustrated by the large number of studies evaluating innovative immunotherapies presented at ASCO 2021.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2021;15(5):218-23)

Highlights in head and neck cancer

The ASCO Annual Meeting was held from 4 till 8 June 2021 in a virtual format. During this meeting, immunotherapy arrived in first-line recurrent/metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma, adjuvant capecitabine enters prudently the treatment algorithm of nasopharyngeal cancer, results of de-escalation studies in HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer are promising and forwarding to phase III studies, cabozantinib shows impressive results in later-line radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer, and immunotherapy tries to find a place in recurrent/metastatic salivary gland tumours, a tumour type without a uniform standard of care anno 2021. In this report, the most important headlines will be discussed, with comments on the clinical relevance of the different studies.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2021;15(5):226-33)