Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

The 2023 ESMO Annual Meeting is to be remembered: This year has brought us a rarely precedented load of practice-changing studies including:

A feast for oncologists treating lung cancer with new data on the benefits of peri-operative immune chemotherapy in operable stages, as well as strategies in the adjuvant targeted treatments of oncogene-driven non-small cell lung cancer. News also accumulates in advanced lung cancer disease, from the treatment of niche indications (as EGFR exon 20 mutations) as well as antibody-drug-conjugates (ADC).

A dazzling number of ADCs are invading the scene, making it a challenge to remember substance names and correctly attribute them to their indications.

An ADC also represents a new standard in advanced urothelial bladder cancer – with a benefit translated by a hazard ratio rarely witnessed in urothelial cancers – leading to a long enthusiastic standing ovation to the presenter (Prof. T. Powles) by the thousands of attendees during a Presidential Session.

Also surprising, there is progress in areas which have been in hope for good news for a long time – such as systemic induction in locally advanced cervical cancer.

Both research (check out our digest) and educational sessions (which you can check out via OncologyPro on esmo.org) covered a plethora of topics and truly relevant themes. I would like to attract your particular attention to the session on the rechallenge of checkpoint inhibitors and oligometastatic disease.

Likely, not all relevant news will be presented in our report,  we apologize, but we were tasked to make difficult choices to stick to our report’s content size limits.

Last but not least, in the midst of a horrible year in political and climate change, this congress really brought some good news

Please, enjoy the read!

 

Yours, sincerely

Stefan Rauh

 

Biography

Dr Stefan Rauh is currently working as haematooncologist in the oncology department of Centre Hospitalier Emile Mayrisch, Esch, Luxembourg. He is mainly involved in clinical work but also in research and teaching activities and is interested in public policy and international cooperation projects in oncology. He is member of the ESMO Practicing Oncologist’s Working Group since 2011 (chair 2014-2018), member of the ESMO Public Policy Committee, and has been an ESMO Executive Board member in 2015-2016. He is coauthor of the 2017 ESMO European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC) Patient Survivorship Guide and an invited expert for the ECPC.

 

Conflict of Interest Statement: Nothing to declare.



Posted on 19 December 202319 December 2023