The 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting

For those of you particularly interested in topical brain tumor research, here’s a link to an article by Tom Halkin about the 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

Since this sounds important, I’m sure you have a lot of questions, e.g.

Question: “Was it a BIG meeting?”

Answer: “Yes, with more than 30,000 attendees from across the oncology field, the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) Annual Meeting is one of the largest and most important yearly gatherings in the field of cancer research.”

Question:  “Were there lots of important presentations?”

Answer: Yes, the society estimates that it received 5,530 proposed presentations, of which, 2,900 were presented at the meeting as a talk or a poster.

Question: “What was the biggest news?”

Answer:  According to Halkin’s article in the National Brain Tumor Society Website, “Immunotherapies" stole the show.

Question: “How so?”

Answer: “A class of cancer treatment, called immunotherapies, that harness the power of the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells (we will have more about this treatment modality later this month on the blog), were all the rage at ASCO. Much of the buzz was created from results from skin cancer trials, where much of the early studies into the viability of this type of treatment approach have been performed.”

Here’s a link to the NBTS article:  http://blog.braintumor.org/897/

John

PS - Yes, this is a lame picture.