This year’s ESMO Congress convenes in Berlin from October 17 through 21. With a focus on solid tumors, there will be sessions on basic science, translational research, developmental therapeutics, remote monitoring, survivorship, and emerging biomarkers. Multiple educational and special sessions will address treatment of cancers by type and stage, as well as discuss cutting edge advances in oncology.
Many European Oncology Nursing Society sessions will tackle topics ranging from cancer nursing in difficult circumstances, including war, to health promotion, prevention, and screening, rehabilitation and survivorship care, and workforce and educational issues. The young oncologists track includes sessions on career, mentorship, clinical case discussion, biostatistics, genomics, and fellowship opportunities.
A patient advocacy track, three presidential symposia, poster sessions, two scientific congress highlight sessions, and multiple industry satellite symposia will round out the meeting.
Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) feature in a keynote lecture on their “arrival” and development of combinations, as well as in an educational session on the next frontier of ADC development, and in proffered papers on clinical trial results.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will be discussed in an educational session on AI-based image biomarkers in oncology, radiology and pathology, and in a special symposium on clinical trials in the age of AI. Tumor-agnostic anticancer therapies will be presented in two special symposia, one considering whether they are ready for prime time, and another on accelerating their use.
There will be multiple presentations on the use of circulating DNA (ctDNA). Its use for detection and/or monitoring of early cancer, minimal residual disease, and mutations will be discussed in a special session. Other sessions exploring ctDNA include abstracts on the association of radiomic features ± on-treatment ctDNA detection with treatment outcomes in resectable NSCLC, exploratory analyses from the AEGEAN trial (LBA70); results from IMvigor011, a phase 3 trial of ctDNA-guided adjuvant atezolizumab vs placebo in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (LBA8); ctDNA-guided adjuvant chemotherapy de-escalation in stage III colon cancer, a primary analysis of the ctDNA-negative cohort from the randomized AGITG DYNAMIC-III Trial (LBA9); and reliability of cerebrospinal fluid ctDNA as a surrogate for tumor mutational profiling in central nervous system metastases, results from the BrainStorm (OncoDistinct006) Study (666MO).
Among many presentations of phase 3 trial results are the final results of the RAR-IMMUNE study, a randomized, comparative, prospective, multicenter phase 3 trial of the efficacy of nivolumab plus ipilimumab vs pazopanib in advanced sarcoma of rare subtype (LBA98); event-free survival with pathological outcomes in MATTERHORN, a randomized, phase 3 study of durvalumab plus 5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin and docetaxel in resectable gastric/gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma (LBA81); final overall survival and safety analysis of the phase 3 ALEX study of alectinib vs crizotinib in previously untreated, advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (LBA73); and primary results from ASCENT-03, a randomized phase 3 study of sacituzumab govitecan vs chemotherapy in patients with previously untreated advanced triple-negative breast cancer who are unable to receive PD-1 inhibitors (LBA20).
Dr. Lederman has no conflicts of interest to report.
Illustration by April Brust
