Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

You are very welcome to our congress report of ESMO’s Gastrointestinal Cancer Congress from Barcelona. Wait. No! It’s Munich, this year! Some may feel sorrow trading vino tinto for beer and tapas for weisswurst – scientifically speaking, this was, however, a congress with remarkable news. Here is some of it:

• You will see that ARMANI not only stands for highly elegant (albeit unaffordable) suits–but also for a rather intriguing study, exploring early systematic switch of chemotherapy in advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction (G/GEJ) cancer: how much grade 3 toxicity would you consider a trade-off for 2 months survival? Or take the risk that your patient will never make it to second line?
• An anti-claudin 18.2 conjugate may soon integrate the standard-of-care of advanced G/GEJ cancer, an even more important fact, since overexpression is frequent.
• KEYNOTE-585 is an eagerly awaited study. At a first glance, adding a checkpoint inhibitor doesn’t seem to bring a significant survival benefit as compared with standard FLOT in early G/GEJ cancers. Have a closer look, though, as some do seem to benefit, and not only MSI-high ones.
• Wasn’t Lu-DOTATATE reserved for low-grade GEP-NET’s only? Maybe no longer so. Check out NETTER-2.
• Maybe there’s finally a monoclonal antibody with activity in ductal pancreatic cancer…
• …and post-operative MRD status, detecting circulating tumour DNA is THE prognostic marker in early colorectal cancer.

As always, I just made some picks.
Enjoy your read.

Yours sincerely,

Stefan Rauh

 

Biography

Dr Stefan Rauh is currently working as oncologist/haematologist 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 a 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 interested in survivorship of cancer patients
and has published a clinician’s handbook on this topic: Survivorship Care for Cancer Patients.

 

Conflict of Interest Statement: Nothing to declare.



Posted on 21 August 2024