Cancer Treatment Advances and the European Oncology Congress ESMO 2017

Bringing together professionals from 130 countries, totaling 23 thousand, the European Oncology Congress ESMO 2017will take place on 8-12 September in Madrid, Spain's capital.

Since its foundation in 1975, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has supported cancer research across Europe and worldwide.

This year's congress has record attendance and scientific submissions: an increase of %30 over last year brought acceptance of 1500 original studies. Scientific and public awareness motivate cancer research, and international annual oncology meetings are major steps against a disease respecting neither borders nor social class.

At this year's ESMO, as in recent years, cancer immunotherapy and targeted molecular treatments appear prominent, but with a difference!

New cancer drugs are usually first tested in advanced disease, then investigated in early stages, where effective drug treatments are fewer. Measuring early-stage efficacy requires much longer, sometimes decades, while surgery and other interventions may provide faster, lasting results. Nevertheless, more postoperative treatments are needed to prevent cancer recurrence after surgery.

ESMO 2017 attracts attention because early-stage results will be announced for immunotherapies and targeted drugs effective in many advanced cancers.

Let Us Look at Some Studies Together:

1- Lung cancerat stage 3 is normally treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Despite this, 5-year survival remains around %30. Reducing recurrence after standard stage 3 treatment through preventive (adjuvant) therapy has long been sought. PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi) was tested after standard treatment, with preliminary results promising for progression-free survival (PACIFIC study).

2- Another important example of adjuvant immunotherapy concerns the skin cancer malignant melanoma. A study presented at ESMO 2016 showed postoperative ipilimumab (Yervoy) significantly reduced recurrence, as reported in the study , but used a high dose (10 mg/kg). Higher doses raised concerns about increased immunotherapy side effects and further increasing already high costs. Thus, ipilimumab 10 mg/kg was compared with standard-dose nivolumab every 2 weeks (CheckMate 238 study).

3- BRAF-positive melanoma studies investigating targeted medicines not only in metastatic disease but also postoperatively to prevent recurrence include BRIM8 and COMBI-AD , whose results are eagerly awaited.

4- ASCO 2017presented initial results in ALK-positive lung cancer from the alectinib (Alecensa) versus crizotinib (Xalkori) comparison ; longer follow-up will appear at ESMO 2017. Alectinib was superior, particularly in reducing brain metastases and extending survival (ALEX study). These studies raise an important question:

Should the strongest treatment be used first, or should treatments follow a particular sequence?

Starting with the strongest drug to control disease longest may be best.

5- Not every notable ESMO 2017 study concerns immunotherapy or targeted treatment. A French study may change daily practice and lung cancer follow-up. IFCT-0302 offers new ideas on monitoring after lung cancer surgery or chemoradiotherapy, given lung cancer's relatively higher recurrence risk: how frequently should routine visits, chest X-rays, CT scans and bronchoscopy be used?

6- Another study likely to attract attention concerns cervical cancer as its subject. NACTcervix addresses an important question for the first time: after neoadjuvant (tumor-reducing) chemotherapy, is surgery or concurrent chemoradiotherapy best for cervical cancer patients?

7- Our final topic is two of ASCO 2017's most striking studies, STAMPEDE and LATUTUDE . They showed stronger early hormone suppression in prostate cancer, usingabiraterone , significantly extended survival. Longer-term results of these studies, potentially changing the entire treatment strategy, focus not only on survival but also on patients' quality of life and will be presented at ESMO 2017.

We are excited to continue our website's mission of explaining cancer medicine advances clearly and carefully to the public by sharing important ESMO 2017 studies.