Last week saw the release of the majority of the abstracts for the 2013 European Cancer Congress that takes place at the RAI conference center in Amsterdam from September 27 to October 1st (Twitter hashtag #ECC2013). Not yet available are the late-breakers and those abstracts included in the media press conference program.
The European Cancer Congress is the euro equivalent of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting and is organized in alternate years by the European CanCer Organization (ECCO) and European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). This year it’s the turn of ECCO who ran an excellent meeting in Stockholm in 2011.
Here are links to the #ECC2013 abstracts and searchable Congress programme.
There is also an ECCO App that’s well worth downloading. It offers the meeting program with links to abstracts, as well as floor plans and can also be used to follow the #ECC2013 conversation on Twitter.
ECCO have made it as easy as possible for people to download the app, just scan the QR code and it will take you to the download page for your phone (iPhone or Android).
ECCO have also published their list of abstracts not to be missed – a few on their list that stand out for me include:
Breast Cancer:
1859 – PI3KCA mutations and correlation with pCR in the NeoALTTO trial (BIG 01-06)
Prostate Cancer:
2853: An open-label phase 1/II safety, pharmacokinetic, and proof-of-concept study of ODM-201 in patients with progressive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).
2854: The effects of enzalutamide (ENZA) in combination with abiraterone acetate (AA) in patients with bone metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC)
Lung Cancer:
3401: Updated results of a first-in-human dose finding study of the ALK/EGFR inhibitor AP26113 in patients with advanced malignancies.
3408: Clinical activity, safety and biomarkers of PD-L1 blockade in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): additional analyses from a clinical study of the engineered antibody MPDL3280A (anti-PDL1)
Ovarian Cancer:
In the plenary Presidential sessions several of the presentations focus on ovarian cancer with results being report for the following trials: ICON6 (cediranib), AURELIA (bevacizumab), ICON7 (bevacizumab).
As always I will be mining the posters for gems, and attending as many of the scientific and educational sessions as I can.
Regretably, to offset costs, I will be introducing a paywall for most of the conference coverage from ECC2013 in Amsterdam. In this respect I’m following leading publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I will be providing some additional commentary to those who subscribe to BSB email alerts so do sign up if you have not already done so.
I hope to see you in Amsterdam!
Update Sept 17: Preview of Late Breaking Abstracts and PI3K Abstracts
Sally Church (@MaverickNY) has published her ECCO 2013 preview on Pharma Strategy Blog (free access). Abstracts that caught Sally’s attention included those on T-DM1, everolimus, FLT1 gene varation in NSCLC and evaluation of GDC-0032, a next generation PI3K inhibitor.
Data on GDC-0032 and its early promise in breast cancer was presented at the AACR annual meeting earlier this year.
One of the key sessions I’m looking forward to at ECCO is the Saturday Lung Cancer Symposium on new therapeutic targets. It includes not only a presentation on PD-1 and PD-L1 Immune checkpoint antibodies, but also overviews of progress in several other pathways, namely PI3K-AKT-mTOR, RAS-RAF-MEK and ALK+/Hsp inhibitors. This should be an excellent session that allows a broad overview of many of the key areas of research in the disease.