Over the past few years it has been interesting to watch AACR organise and group it's sessions by pathways, so you end up with a higgledy piggledy collection of different inhibitors, therapeutics, chemotherapies etc as well as a mix of different tumour types.  This works well for the scientist, less so for the clinician who may specialise in only a few cancer types.  

Meanwhile, at ASCO, everything is organised by cancer track, so if you want to search for data on say, MEK, AKT or c-MET inhibitors for example, then the data is now all over the place and trying to get round and find it all is much more difficult.  The chances of missing something, or worse, having clashes in interesting sessions is much higher.  I'm already looking a potential schedule with too many clashes and periods of nothing.  That's not a very efficient way to organise the data, yet this was not something I experienced at AACR to the same extent.

image from farm4.static.flickr.comPersonally, I find myself much preferring the AACR approach because it's ultimately logical and allows you to see patterns and trends more strategically, providing you approach it sensibly. You do need to think in 3D though, much like that 3 level chess board beloved by Spock in the original Star Trek. This way allows you to see potential connections and future approaches more easily rather than being hemmed in by tumour siloes.

In the long run, I confidently predict that the future trend of personalised medicine is going to be more based on a pathways approach allied with mutational analysis based on constitutive activation, rather than simply thinking in terms of cancer type by line of therapy.  Once you start understanding which subsets exist and which inhibitors can be combined together, it is not hard to see a new world evolving out there that may lead to better outcomes and improved quality of life.

Who knows, we might even be able to get rid of toxic chemotherapies altogether and prescribe a cocktail of more targeted agents based on the patients characteristics.

Now that would be a fine thing indeed.  Thoughts?

Photo Credit: GiftsforyouBiz