Results of an EORTC study recently published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology show that gender is an independent prognostic indicator for progression and survival in patients with advanced stage metastatic melanoma.
The EORTC will present thirteen abstracts at the ASCO 2013 Annual Meeting which will be held 31 May – 04 June 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. All thirteen of the EORTC’s submitted abstracts were accepted for presentation: four abstracts will be presented in Oral Abstract Sessions, one in a Clinical Science Symposium, two in Poster Discussion Sessions, and five in General Poster Sessions. Full texts of these abstracts are available on the ASCO 2013 website.
Surgical resection is considered a potentially curative treatment for pancreatic adenocarcinoma, however, the five year survival rate of patients receiving this treatment is less than 20 percent. Adjuvant treatment, therefore, is used to prevent recurrence and improve survival for these patients.
A joint EORTC-ESGO (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer-European Society of Gynecological Oncology) session will be held at the society’s 18th International meeting in Liverpool on 19-22 October 2013. The session will focus on translational research in gynecological cancers.
Non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) are not only a fairly frequent form of cancer, but they also have a poor prognosis. Worldwide, there are over one million new cases of lung cancer diagnosed each year. Roughly 80% of these are NSCLCs, and the five year survival rate for these patients is not more than 14%. Furthermore, disease-free survival for patients with surgically removed NSCLC which has spread to mediastinal lymph nodes on the same side of the tumor is about 30% at three years, and the risk of local recurrence for these patients at three years is approximately 30%.
Early stage breast cancer is potentially curable, yet some patients still relapse even though they have had optimal treatment. It is thought that these patients relapse due to the presence of micro metastatic cells that cannot be detected by the imaging or conventional laboratory tests used following completion of the standard treatment. Recent studies have shown that the presence of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), either before or after a patient has received adjuvant chemotherapy, is a prognostic factor for poor clinical outcome in these patients.
In an article appearing in Expert Rev. Pharmacoecon. Outcomes Res. 13 ( 1 ), 43 – 45 ( 2013 )
Andrew Bottomley, Tony Kirby, John Bean, and Julie Walker review the 3rd EORTC Quality of Life, Symptom Research and Patient Reported Outcomes in Cancer Clinical Trials Conference held at The European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium, 17–20 October 2012
Successive EORTC trials have registered continuous progress in the development of treatment strategies for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. These trials have not only improved treatment efficacy, but have also identified clinical and biological parameters that could be used to adapt the treatment strategy.
