November always brings two of my favourite smaller meetings on the oncology calendar, so here’s a quick snapshot of what’s coming soon.
First up is the NY Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium Foundation, also known by many as the Greenspan Meeting, in honour of the late Ezra Greenspan who founded the event. This year, it will be at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan from November 8-12th. For those interested, here is the 2011 program.
The annual Greenspan Memorial lecture is usually held at lunchtime on the Thursday of the event and the talks are usually both informative and entertaining. The last two presenters have included experts such as Norman Wolmark on colorectal cancer and Larry Norton on cancer cell seeding.
This year, it is Martine Piccart’s turn and she will be discussing:
“CURE OF HER2 POSITIVE BREAST CANCER WITH NO OR MINIMAL CHEMOTHERAPY AT THE DOOR STEP?”
That should prove to be an provocative talk!
The Greenspan meeting is always useful for practising community oncologists in the Tri-State region because it largely focuses on clinical data (with some new developments in R&D highlights) and where the practice of cancer treatment is changing.
The second meeting I’m attending (they’re virtually back to back) is the AACR Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics conference, also euphemistically known in Pharmaland as the EORTC meeting, although it is co-sponsored by the AACR, EORTC and NCI and alternates between the US and Europe.
This year, it’s in San Francisco and you can view the program here. I’m particularly looking forward to the personalised medicine plenary session, which features luminaries such as:
- Jose Baselga (MGH)
- Levi Garraway (DFCI)
- William Pao (Vanderbilt)
Other interesting talks include:
- Tona Gilmer (GSK) BRAF and MEK inhibition in melanoma
- Scott Ebbinghaus (Merck) Dual inhibition of mTOR and IGFR pathways
- Jean-Pierre Issa (MDACC) Novel agents for epigenetic therapy
- Christine Eischen (Vanderbilt) Mdm2 regulates DNA repair and chromosome stability
- Johann de Bono (Marsden) Androgens, biomarkers, and abiraterone
And many many more.
The great thing about this meeting is that there aren’t too many concurrent sessions – I really hate missing interesting presentations because they clash with something else!
If you’re attending either meeting and would like to meet up or say hello, do let me know.