ESMO explores collaboration to fight cancer on all fronts

Leading figures in the global fight against lung cancer are meeting in the city of Geneva, Switzerland this week to discuss the latest tools for preventing and treating chest malignancies, which kill more than 1.3 million people each year.

At a press conference at 12:00 on Friday, 30 March 2007, at the Geneva Palexpo, reporters will have the chance to hear senior scientists, clinicians and representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) brief them on the latest approaches to targeted therapies, chemotherapy and, most crucially, the prevention of lung cancer. The press conference marks the opening of the European Society for Medical Oncology’s International Symposium (EIS) on Chest Tumors.

“Over the next 25 years, the number of lung cancer deaths is projected to nearly double – to 2.2 million in 2030,” according to WHO projections.

“The most effective way to fight lung cancer is to prevent it,” said Dr. Catherine Le Galés-Camus, Assistant Director-General, Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health at the World Health Organization. “Effective prevention means combating the global epidemic of tobacco use and the other known environmental factors causing lung cancer, whether that is reducing exposure to coal-burning indoors or to ozone outdoors.”

While in Geneva hosting the EIS on Chest Tumors, ESMO senior executives will meet with WHO officials to discuss ways of collaborating and strengthening clinicians’ involvement to improve prevention and treatment for lung cancer.

“Cancer prevention spans a wide range of disciplines,” said ESMO president, Håkan Mellstedt. These include population, nutrition, behavioral, environmental and social sciences; diagnostics; and clinical therapeutics like chemoprevention. “All of these help to identify and quantify cancer risk in individuals and family, ethnic, and racial groups. This is the main reason why cancer can truly be fought on all fronts and by all those who are touched in some way by this disease!”

“The ESMO International Symposium on Chest Tumors is a three-day meeting held in Geneva at which many of the world’s leading cancer experts will gather,” said Prof. Rafael Rosell, Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol Medical Oncology Service, a member of EIS on Chest Tumors Task Force.

Highlights will include:

• How genetic testing can improve the outcome of new targeted therapies for lung cancer (William Gullick, GB, Rolf Stahel, CH, and Giuseppe Giaccone, US)
• The major impact on survival time that will come from a new system for assessing the severity of patients’ cancer (Peter Goldstraw, GB, Didier Lardinois, CH)
• New data on combing chemotherapy and radiotherapy from a large clinical trial (Cecile Le Pechoux, FR)
• The latest therapeutic approaches for advanced cancer, including using monoclonal antibodies (Cesare Gridelli, IT, Paris Kosmidis, GR, Robert Pirker, AT and Nick Thatcher, GB)
• A comprehensive report on novel approaches to mesothelioma, including new drugs like pemetrexed, vorinostat and bevacizumab (Paul Baas, NL).