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The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will hold its Annual Meeting as a Virtual Online Format. Registration is free and open to all, including non members. Please go to
Presentation titles are available through the online meeting planner. The program also includes six virtual poster sessions consisting of brief slide videos. Poster sessions will not be presented live but will be available for viewing on demand. Poster session topics are as follows:
11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Minisymposium: Emerging Signaling Vulnerabilities in Cancer
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11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m.
Minisymposium: Advances in Cancer Drug Design and Discovery
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2:00 p.m.-4:50 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy
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1:55 p.m.-4:15 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Breast Cancer Therapy
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1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
Minisymposium: Drugging Undrugged Cancer Targets
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4:50 p.m.-6:05 p.m.
Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon 1_______________________
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4:50 p.m.-5:50 p.m.
Minisymposium: Therapeutic Modification of the Tumor Microenvironment or Microbiome
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4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
Minisymposium: Advancing Cancer Research Through An International Cancer Registry: AACR Project GENIE Use Cases__________________________
All session times are EDT.
TUESDAY, APRIL 28
Channel 1
Channel 2
Channel 3
9:00 a.m.-101:00 a.m.
Clinical Plenary: COVID-19 and Cancer
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11:00 a.m.-1:35 p.m.
Clinical Plenary: Adoptive Cell Transfer Therapy__________________________
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10:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Symposium: New Drugs on the Horizon 2_________________________
Article ID #273: Live Notes and Conference Coverage in Real Time. COVID19 And The Impact on Cancer Patients Town Hall with Leading Oncologists; April 4, 2020. Published 4/4/2020
This update is the video from the COVID-19 Series 4.
UPDATED 4/08/2020 see below
The Second in a Series of Virtual Town Halls with Leading Oncologist on Cancer Patient Care during COVID-19 Pandemic: What you need to know
The second virtual Town Hall with Leading International Oncologist, discussing the impact that the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak has on cancer care and patient care issues will be held this Saturday April 4, 2020. This Town Hall Series is led by Dr. Roy Herbst and Dr. Hossain Borghaei who will present a panel of experts to discuss issues pertaining to oncology practice as well as addressing physicians and patients concerns surrounding the risk COVID-19 presents to cancer care. Some speakers on the panel represent oncologist from France and Italy, and will give their views of the situation in these countries.
Speakers include:
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Professor of Pharmacology; Chief of Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital; Associate Cancer Center Director for Translational Research, Yale Cancer Center
Hossain Borghaei, DO, MS , Chief of Thoracic Medical Oncology and Director of Lung Cancer Risk Assessment, Fox Chase Cancer Center
Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, University of Milan and Head of Phase I Division at IEO, European Institute of Oncology
Paolo Ascierto, MD National Tumor Institute Fondazione G. Pascale, Medical oncologist from National Cancer Institute of Naples, Italy
Dr. Jack West from City of Hope talked about telemedicine: Coordination of the patient experience, which used to be face to face now moved to a telemedicine alternative. For example a patient doing well on personalized therapy, many patients are well suited for a telemedicine experience. A benefit for both patient and physician.
Dr. Rohit Kumar: In small cancer hospitals, can be a bit difficult to determine which patient needs to come in and which do not. For outpatients testing for COVID is becoming very pertinent as these tests need to come back faster than it is currently. For inpatients the issue is personal protection equipment. They are starting to reuse masks after sterilization with dry heat. Best to restructure the system of seeing patients and scheduling procedures.
Dr. Christopher Manley: hypoxia was an issue for COVID19 patients but seeing GI symptoms in 5% of patients. Nebulizers have potential to aerosolize. For patients in surgery prep room surgical masks are fine. Ventilating these patients are a challenge as hypoxia a problem. Myocarditis is a problem in some patients. Diffuse encephalopathy and kidney problems are being seen. So Interleukin 6 (IL6) inhibitors are being used to reduce the cytokine storm presented in patients suffering from COVID19.
Dr. Hope Rugo from UCSF: Breast cancer treatment during this pandemic has been challenging, even though they don’t use too much immuno-suppressive drugs. How we decide on timing of therapy and future visits is crucial. For early stage breast cancer, neoadjuvant therapy is being used to delay surgeries. Endocrine therapy is more often being used. In patients that need chemotherapy, they are using growth factor therapy according to current guidelines. Although that growth factor therapy might antagonize some lung problems, there is less need for multiple visits.
For metastatic breast cancer, high risk ER positive are receiving endocrine therapy and using telemedicine for followups. For chemotherapy they are trying to reduce the schedules or frequency it is given. Clinical trials have been put on hold, mostly pharmokinetic studies are hard to carry out unless patients can come in, so as they are limiting patient visits they are putting these type of clinical studies on hold.
Dr. Harriet Kluger: Melanoma community of oncologists gathered together two weeks ago to discuss guidelines and best practices during this pandemic. The discussed that there is a lack of data on immunotherapy long term benefit and don’t know the effectiveness of neoadjuvant therapy. She noted that many patients on BRAF inhibitors like Taflinar (dabrafenib) or Zelboraf (vemurafenib) might get fevers as a side effect from these inhibitors and telling them to just monitor themselves and get tested if they want. Yale has also instituted a practice that, if a patient tests positive for COVID19, Yale wants 24 hours between the next patient visit to limit spread and decontaminate.
Marianne Davies: Blood work is now being done at satellite sites to limit number of in person visits to Yale. Usually they did biopsies to determine resistance to therapy but now relying on liquid biopsies (if insurance isn’t covering it they are working with patient to assist). For mesothelioma they are dropping chemotherapy that is very immunosuppressive and going with maintenance pembrolizumab (Keytruda). It is challenging in that COPD mimics the symptoms of COVID and patients are finding it difficult to get nebulizers at the pharmacy because of shortages; these patients that develop COPD are also worried they will not get the respirators they need because of rationing.
Dr. Barbara Burtness: Head and neck cancer. Dr. Burtness stresses to patients that the survival rate now for HPV positive head and neck is much better and leaves patients with extra information on their individual cancers. She also noted a registry or database that is being formed to track data on COVID in patients undergoing surgery and can be found here at https://globalsurg.org/covidsurg/
About CovidSurg
There is an urgent need to understand the outcomes of COVID-19 infected patients who undergo surgery.
Capturing real-world data and sharing international experience will inform the management of this complex group of patients who undergo surgery throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, improving their clinical care.
CovidSurg has been designed by an international collaborating group of surgeons and anesthetists, with representation from Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Dr. Burtness had noted that healthcare care workers are at high risk of COVID exposure during ear nose and throat (ENT) procedures as the coronavirus resides in the upper respiratory tract. As for therapy for head and neck cancers, they are staying away from high dose cisplatin because of the nephrotoxicity seen with high dose cisplatin. An alternative is carboplatin which generally you do not see nephrotoxicity as an adverse event (a weekly carboplatin). Changing or increasing dose schedule (like 6 weeks Keytruda) helps reduce immunologic problems related to immunosupression and patients do not have to come in as often.
Italy and France
Dr. Paolo Ascierto: with braf inhibitors, using in tablet form so patients can take from home. Also they are moving chemo schedules for inpatients so longer dosing schedules. Fever still a side effect from braf inhibitors and they require a swab to be performed to ascertain patient is COVID19 negative. Also seeing pneumonitis as this is an adverse event from checkpoint inhibitors so looking at CT scans and nasal swab to determine if just side effect of I/O drugs or a COVID19 case. He mentioned that their area is now doing okay with resources.
Dr. Guiseppe Curigliano mentioned about the redesign of the Italian health system with spokes and hubs of health care. Spokes are generalized medicine while the hubs represent more specialized centers like CV hubs or cancer hubs. So for instance, if a melanoma patient in a spoke area with COVID cases they will be referred to a hub. He says they are doing better in his area
In the question and answer period, Dr. West mentioned that they are relaxing many HIPAA regulations concerning telemedicine. There is a website on the Centers for Connective Health Policy that shows state by state policy on conducting telemedicine. On immuno oncology therapy, many in the panel had many questions concerning the long term risk to COVID associated with this type of therapy. Fabrice mentioned they try to postpone use of I/O and although Dr. Kluger said there was an idea floating around that PD1/PDL1 inhibitors could be used as a prophylactic agent more data was needed.
Please revisit this page as the recording of this Town Hall will be made available next week.
UPDATED 4/08/2020
Below find theLIVE RECORDING and TAKEAWAYSby the speakers
Town Hall Takeaways
Utilize Telehealth to Its Fullest Benefit
· Patients doing well on targeted therapy or routine surveillance are well suited to telemedicine
· Most patients are amenable to this, as it is more convenient for them and minimizes their exposure
· A patient can speak to multiple specialists with an ease that was not previously possible
· CMS has relaxed some rules to accommodate telehealth, though private insurers have not moved as quickly, and the Center for Connected Health Policy maintains a repository of current state-by-state regulations: https://www.cchpca.org/
Practice Management Strategies
· In the face of PPE shortages, N95 masks can be decontaminated using UV light, hydrogen peroxide, or autoclaving with dry heat; the masks can be returned to the original user until the masks are no longer suitable for use
· For blood work or scans, the use of external satellite facilities should be explored
· Keep pumps outside of the room so nurses can attend to them quickly
· Limit the use of nebulizers, CPAPs, and BiPAPs due to risk of aerosolization
· Caution is urged in the presence of cardiac complications, as ventilated patients may appear to improve, only to suffer severe myocarditis and cardiac arrest following extubation
· When the decision is made to intubate, intubate quickly, as less invasive methods result in aerosolization and increased risks to staff
Study the Lessons of Europe
· The health care system in Italy has been reorganized into “spokes” and “hubs,” with a number of cancer hubs; if there is a cancer patient in a spoke hospital with many COVID patients, this patient may be referred to a hub hospital
· Postpone adjuvant treatments whenever possible
· Oral therapies, which can be managed at home, are preferred over therapies that must be administered in a healthcare setting
· Pneumonitis patients without fevers may be treated with steroids, but nasal swab testing is needed in the presence of concomitant fever
· Any staff who are not needed on site should be working from home, and rotating schedules can be used to keep people healthy
· Devise an annual epidemic control plan now that we have new lessons from COVID
We Must Be Advocates for Our Cancer Patients
· Be proactive with other healthcare providers on behalf of patients with a good prognosis
· Consider writing letters for cancer patients for inclusion into their chart, or addendums on notes, then encourage patients to print these out, or give it to them during their visit
· The potential exists for a patient to be physiologically stable on a ventilator, but intolerant of decannulation; early discussions are necessary to determine reasonable expectations of care
· Be sure to anticipate a second wave of patients, comprised of cancer patients for whom treatments and surgery have been delayed!
Tumor-Specific Learnings
Ø Strategies in Breast Cancer:
· In patients with early-stage disease, promote the use of neoadjuvant therapy where possible to delay the need for surgery
· For patients with metastatic disease in the palliative setting, transition to less frequent chemotherapy dosing if possible
· While growth factors may pose a risk in interstitial lung disease, new guidelines are emerging
· The use of BRAF/MEK inhibitors can cause fevers that are drug-related, and access to an alternate clinic where patients can be assessed is a useful resource
Ø Strategies in Lung Cancer:
· For patients who are stable on an oral, targeted therapy, telehealth check-in is a good option
· For patients who progress on targeted therapies, increased use of liquid biopsies when appropriate can minimize use of bronchoscopy suites and other resources
· For patients on pembrolizumab monotherapy, consider switching to a six-week dosing of 400 mg
· Many lung cancer patients worry about “discrimination” should they develop a COVID infection; it is important to support patients and help manage expectations and concerns
UPDATED 5/11/2020
Townhall on COVID-19 and Cancer Care with Leading Oncologists Series 4
Addressing the Challenges of Cancer Care in the Community
AACR and Dr. Margaret Foti Announce Free Virtual Annual Meeting for April 27, 28 2020 and other Free Resources
Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD
Please see the following email from Dr. Foti and the AACR on VIRTUAL MEETING to be conducted April 27 and 28, 2020.
This is truly a wonderful job by AACR. In a previous posting I had considered the need for moving international scientific meetings to an online format which would make the information available to a wider audience as well as to those who don’t have the opportunity to travel to a meeting site. At @pharma_BI we will curate and live tweet the talks in order to enhance meeting engagement, as part of the usual eConference Proceedings we do.
Again Great Job by the AACR!
Dear Colleagues,
We hope you are staying safe and well and are adjusting to the challenges of the COVID-19 global pandemic. During this crisis, we remain steadfast in supporting our members and our mission.
I am pleased to announce a number of actions that we are taking to disseminate innovative cancer science and medicine to the global cancer research community:
AACR Virtual Annual Meeting 2020: Selected Presentations. We were excited to receive more than 225 clinical trials for presentation at the Annual Meeting. Due to the time-sensitive nature of these trials—many of which are practice-changing—we are making them available to the community at the time of the original April meeting. Therefore, as per our recent announcement, the AACR will host a slate of selected sessions online featuring these cutting-edge data.
This Virtual Annual Meeting will be held on April 27 and 28, 2020, and will include more than 30 oral presentations in several clinical trial plenary sessions along with commentaries from expert discussants, as well as clinical trial poster sessions consisting of short videos providing the authors’ perspectives. The Virtual Meeting will feature a New Drugs on the Horizon session as well as nine minisymposia that will showcase a broad sample of basic and translational science. Topics will include genomics, tumor microenvironment, novel targets, drug discovery, therapeutics, immunotherapy, biomarkers, and cancer prevention. A special minisymposium titled “Advancing Cancer Research Through an International Cancer Registry” will feature use cases of data available through AACR Project GENIE.
This Virtual Meeting will be available free to everyone, although attendees will be asked to register to participate. The session and presentation titles for the Virtual Meeting, as well as a link to the registration site, will be posted to the AACR website by Monday, April 13.
Release of Abstracts. All of the abstracts scheduled for presentation in the Virtual Meeting—and any other clinical trial abstracts that are scheduled for presentation at the rescheduled meeting—will be posted online on Monday, April 27. All other abstracts that have been accepted for presentation at the rescheduled meeting will be posted online on Friday, May 15.
AACR Annual Meeting 2019: Free Webcast Presentations. The complete webcasts of the AACR Annual Meeting are typically made freely available 15 months after the conclusion of the meeting. However, we have made these webcast presentations available free effective immediately, so that you can review the most compelling science from the Annual Meeting 2019 which was held in Atlanta.
Free Access to AACR Journals. To ensure that all members of the cancer research community have access to the information they need during this challenging time, we have opened access to our nine highly esteemed journals effective today through the end of the virtual meeting. Please be sure to visit the AACR journals webpage for journal highlights, and to sign-up for eTOC alerts.
Rescheduled AACR Annual Meeting. We are planning to reschedule the Annual Meeting for late August while at the same time closely monitoring the developments surrounding COVID-19. An official announcement of the rescheduled meeting will be made in the near future.
We hope that these plans will enable you to continue your important work during this global health crisis. Thank you for all you do to accelerate progress against cancer, and thank you for your loyalty to the AACR.
Sincerely,
Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc)
Chief Executive Officer
American Association for Cancer Research
For more information on Virtual Meetings please see
Is It Time for the Virtual Scientific Conference?: Coronavirus, Travel Restrictions, Conferences Cancelled
Curator: Stephen J. Williams, PhD.
UPDATED 3/12/2020
To many of us scientists, presenting and attending scientific meetings, especially international scientific conferences, are a crucial tool for disseminating and learning new trends and cutting edge findings occurring in our respective fields. Large international meetings, like cancer focused meetings like AACR (held in the spring time), AAAS and ASCO not only highlight the past years great discoveries but are usually the first place where breakthroughs are made known to the scientific/medical community as well as the public. In addition these conferences allow for scientists to learn some of the newest technologies crucial for their work in vendor exhibitions.
During the coronavirus pandemic, multiple cancellations of business travel, conferences, and even university based study abroad programs are being cancelled and these cancellations are now hitting the 2020 Spring and potentially summer scientific/medical conferences. Indeed one such conference hosted by Amgen in Massachusetts was determined as an event where some attendees tested positive for the virus, and as such, now other attendees are being asked to self quarantine.
Today I received two emails on conference cancellations, one from Experimental Biology in California and another from The Cancer Letter, highlighting other conferences, including National Cancer Coalition Network (NCCN) meetings which had been canceled.
Dear Stephen,
After thoughtful deliberations, the leaders of the Experimental Biology host societies have made the difficult but necessary decision to cancel Experimental Biology (EB) 2020 set to take place April 4–7 in San Diego, California. We know how much EB means to everyone, and we did not make this decision in haste. The health and safety of our members, attendees, their students, our staff, partners and our communities are our top priority.
As we have previously communicated via email, on experimentalbiology.org and elsewhere, EB leadership has been closely monitoring the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease). Based on the latest guidance from public health officials, the travel bans implemented by different institutions and the state of emergency declared in California less than 48 hours ago, it became clear to us that canceling was the right course of action.
We thank you and the entire EB community for understanding the extreme difficulty of this decision and for your commitment to the success of this conference – from the thousands of attendees to the presenters, exhibitors and sponsors who shared their time, expertise, collaboration and leadership. We deeply appreciate your contributions to this community.
What Happens Next?
Everyone who has registered to attend the meeting will receive a full registration refund within the next 45 days. Once your registration cancellation is processed, you will receive confirmation in a separate email. You do not need to contact anyone at EB or your host society to initiate the process. Despite the cancellation of the meeting, we are pleased to tell you that we will publish abstracts in the April 2020 issue of The FASEB Journal as originally planned. Please remember to cancel any personal arrangements you’ve made, such as travel and housing reservations.
We ask for patience as we evaluate our next steps, and we will alert you as additional information becomes available please see our FAQs for details.
NOTE: An earlier version of this story was published March 4 on the web and was updated March 6 to include information about restricted travel for employees of cancer centers, meeting cancellations, potential disruptions to the drug supply chain, and funds allocated by U.S. Congress for combating the coronavirus.
Further updates will be posted as the story develops.
Forecasts of the inevitable spread of coronavirus can be difficult to ignore, especially at a time when many of us are making travel plans for this spring’s big cancer meetings.
The decision was made all the more difficult earlier this week, as cancer centers and at least one biotechnology company—Amgen—implemented travel bans that are expected to last through the end of March and beyond. The Cancer Letter was able to confirm such travel bans at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Meetings are getting cancelled in all fields, including oncology:
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network March 5 postponed its 2020 annual conference of about 1,500 attendees March 19-22 in Orlando, citing precautions against coronavirus.
“The health and safety of our attendees and the patients they take care of is our number one concern,” said Robert W. Carlson, chief executive officer of NCCN. “This was an incredibly difficult and disappointing decision to have to make. However, our conference attendees work to save the lives of immunocompromised people every day. Some of them are cancer survivors themselves, particularly at our patient advocacy pavilion. It’s our responsibility, in an abundance of caution, to safeguard them from any potential exposure to COVID-19.”
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Board of Directors has made the difficult decision, after careful consideration and comprehensive evaluation of currently available information related to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, to terminate the AACR Annual Meeting 2020, originally scheduled for April 24-29 in San Diego, California. A rescheduled meeting is being planned for later this year.
The AACR has been closely monitoring the rapidly increasing domestic and worldwide developments during the last several weeks related to COVID-19. This evidence-based decision was made after a thorough review and discussion of all factors impacting the Annual Meeting, including the U.S. government’s enforcement of restrictions on international travelers to enter the U.S.; the imposition of travel restrictions issued by U.S. government agencies, cancer centers, academic institutions, and pharmaceutical and biotech companies; and the counsel of infectious disease experts. It is clear that all of these elements significantly affect the ability of delegates, speakers, presenters of proffered papers, and exhibitors to participate fully in the Annual Meeting.
The health, safety, and security of all Annual Meeting attendees and the patients and communities they serve are the AACR’s highest priorities. While we believe that the decision to postpone the meeting is absolutely the correct one to safeguard our meeting participants from further potential exposure to the coronavirus, we also understand that this is a disappointing one for our stakeholders. There had been a great deal of excitement about the meeting, which was expected to be the largest ever AACR Annual Meeting, with more than 7,400 proffered papers, a projected total of 24,000 delegates from 80 countries and more than 500 exhibitors. We recognize that the presentation of new data, exchange of information, and opportunities for collaboration offered by the AACR Annual Meeting are highly valued by the entire cancer research community, and we are investigating options for rescheduling the Annual Meeting in the near future.
We thank all of our stakeholders for their patience and support at this time. Additional information regarding hotel reservation cancellations, registration refunds, and meeting logistics is available on the FAQ page on the AACR website. We will announce the dates and location of the rescheduled AACR Annual Meeting 2020 as soon as they are confirmed. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to everyone impacted by this global health crisis.
Is It Time For the Virtual (Real-Time) Conference?
Readers of this Online Access Journalare familiar with our ongoing commitment to open science and believe that forming networks of scientific experts in various fields using a social strategy is pertinent to enhancing the speed, reproducibility and novelty of important future scientific/medical discoveries. Some of these ideas are highlighted in the following articles found on this site:
In addition, we understand the importance of communicating the latest scientific/medical discoveries in an open and rapid format, accessible over the social media platforms. To this effect we have developed a methodology for real time conference coverage
Using these strategies we are able to communicate, in real time, analysis of conference coverage for a multitude of conferences.
Has technology and social media platforms now have enabled our ability to rapidly communicate, in a more open access platform, seminal discoveries and are scientists today amenable to virtual type of meetings including displaying abstracts using a real-time online platform?
Some of the Twitter analytics we have curated from such meetings show that conference attendees are rapidly adopting such social platforms to communicate with their peers and colleagues meeting notes.
Other Twitter analyses of Conferences Covered by LPBI in Real Time have produced a similar conclusion: That conference attendees are very engaged over social media networks to discuss, share, and gain new insights into material presented at these conferences, especially international conferences.
And although attracting international conferences is lucrative to many cities, the loss in revenue to organizations, as well as the loss of intellectual capital is indeed equally as great.
Maybe there is room for such type of conferences in the future, and attending by a vast more audience than currently capable. And perhaps the #openscience movement like @MozillaScience can collaborate with hackathons to produce the platforms for such an online movement of scientific conferences as a Plan B.
Other articles on Real Time Conference Coverage in the Online Open Access Journal Include:
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