The ESMO Congress Starts This Week in Barcelona

More than 30,000 people will descend on Barcelona, Spain, this week for the 2024 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, which runs from September 13 to 17. 
Since the meeting’s start in 1975 with about 100 oncologists, it has grown to one of the world’s most important oncology events. This year, the meeting will feature more than 2000 abstracts, almost 100 of them late-breaking, presented across nearly 300 sessions.
Ann Partridge, MD, a breast cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, is looking forward to attending the meeting and hearing what’s new. 
ESMO “provides an invaluable opportunity to stay updated on the latest advances in cancer research, network with leading global experts, and bring back cutting-edge knowledge to improve patient care,” Partridge told Medscape. 
Social media is also abuzz with oncologists giving their top picks in anticipation of the meeting presentations as well as pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers promoting their latest findings. 
Two of the three presidential sessions this year will highlight “practice-changing trials.”
This will include overall survival results from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-522 (LBA4) in women with high-risk triple-negative breast cancer who received pembrolizumab (Keytruda) or placebo alongside chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting, followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab or placebo. 
Another trial — the phase 3 ENGOT-cx11/GOG-3047/KEYNOTE-A18 study — will explore overall survival data in patients receiving pembrolizumab plus chemoradiotherapy to treat high-risk locally advanced cervical cancer.
“It’s striking,” Rebecca Dent, MD, ESMO’s scientific chair this year, told Medscape Medical News, “that we now observe in harder-to-treat cancers such as bladder, cervical, and triple negative breast cancer, long-term improvements using immune-checkpoint inhibitors in the neoadjuvant setting similar to what we have seen, for instance, in lung cancer.” 
The findings can give “physicians confidence in their daily practice,” added Dent, a breast oncologist in Singapore.
New this year, Dent said, will be a presidential session titled “Eyes to the Future” on September 16. The session covers strategies for incorporating artificial intelligence into diagnostics, countering drug resistance, and improving organ preservation with systemic therapies.
Other themes at the meeting include new research on novel mRNA vaccines, combination treatments for central nervous system tumors, use of antibody-drug conjugates beyond breast cancer, the rise of cancer in young people, and problematic epigenetic changes and how to counter them. 
Partridge is looking forward to “a number of very exciting” breast cancer abstracts being presented, including two papers she co-authored on breastfeeding in breast cancer. One of the studies focuses on women with hormone receptor–positive tumors who take a break from endocrine therapy and the other explores breastfeeding after being diagnosed with BRCA-positive tumors.
Partridge said she is also anticipating updates about the potential to use fewer but higher doses of radiation to cut the number of sessions needed to treat early breast cancer and hopefully reduce patient burden. 
“The goal should be for everyone to step outside their comfort zone and learn about something new,” Partridge said.
 
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