Collaborating for a moonshot on cancer

By Suzie Siegel

What can patients do to help the new federal “moonshot” cure cancers? “Demand collaboration from the scientific community,” Vice President Joe Biden, in charge of the project, said last week.

I’m happy to report that collaboration was evident at international meetings on sarcoma last fall in Salt Lake City. What stood out to me was synergy, whether it was drug combinations or people working together to be more effective.

The Connective Tissue Oncology Society (CTOS) celebrated its 20th anniversary with 750 doctors, scientists, students, advocates and other health-care professionals from around the world – more than expected.

The Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration (SARC) held its biannual meeting in conjunction with CTOS, as usual. For the first time, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) put on a conference on the “Basic Science of Sarcomas,” and nurses from the Oslo University Hospital in Norway had a symposium for their colleagues.

Dr. Jonathan Fletcher

The AACR conference grew out of a group of about 35 doctors, mostly men, who began meeting privately before CTOS to discuss cutting-edge sarcoma science, said Jonathan Fletcher, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. As the years passed, they wanted to open the meeting to others, especially younger doctors. This fall’s conference attracted 228 people, more than expected.

"We're thrilled to see this expansion," said Dr. Fletcher, one of the conference organizers. Everyone with whom I spoke raved about the conference.

Dr. Herman Suit

The CTOS meeting began by honoring Herman Suit, MD, its founding father. In the early 1950s, he said, each discipline was for itself and waged verbal combat. At England’s Oxford University, he was delighted to find it multidisciplinary and collaborative.

That is now the norm, except for a few people who have this “big Y chromosome problem,” said Dr. Suit, a professor emeritus of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Mass.

In 1993, a patient funded a meeting of sarcoma oncologists. Afterward, Dr. Suit suggested the doctors meet regularly. They thought of merging with the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society, but its members had to be surgeons.  In 1995, they founded CTOS.

In my next post, I’ll highlight the AACR presentations.

Annual meeting of world sarcoma society

By Suzie Siegel

New research on sarcoma will draw hundreds of doctors and scientists from around the world to a conference in Salt Lake City next month.

The international Connective Tissue Oncology Society (CTOS) will celebrate its 20th anniversary Nov. 4-7 at its annual meeting. Executive Director Barbara Rapp expects 600-700 people will attend.

Dr. Lor Randall

“Treatment has evolved from trying to control the spread of sarcoma through surgery and radiation to standard chemotherapy to targeting the biology of different types of sarcoma as well as helping the natural biology of the individual patient,” said Dr. R. Lor Randall, director of sarcoma services at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. He is a former CTOS president and its current program cochair.

“We are looking at which patients face the greatest risk of developing sarcomas and having the sarcoma spread. We are trying to detect this spread microscopically before tumors become visible via searching for tumor DNA in the blood,” he said. “We also will examine the specific challenges facing adolescents and young adults with sarcomas.”

CTOS has dubbed 2015 the Year of Angiosarcoma and Hemangioendothelioma, two related vascular sarcomas. Angiosarcoma survivor Corrie Painter, cofounder of Angiosarcoma Awareness, said: "I'm excited about the progress we're making in this aggressive cancer."

A scientist who has studied biochemistry and cancer immunology, Painter is associate director of operations at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Each year, about 300 people are diagnosed with angiosarcoma, she said, and almost a third of them will die within five years.

For the first time, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will hold a special conference on the “Basic Science of Sarcomas” Nov. 3-4, in conjunction with the CTOS. Participants will discuss recent advances in genomics using new sarcoma models, immunotherapy, metabolism and signaling pathways.

Once again, the Sarcoma Alliance has planned a dinner for patient advocates Nov. 4. "It's a great forum for advocates to talk to one another in person and discuss ways we can work together," said Executive Director Alison Olig, a rhabdomyosarcoma survivor.

The next day, the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration (SARC) will discuss its tissue bank, portal for genomic data and progress in its clinical trials. Another first will be a symposium Nov. 6 to strengthen international cooperation among sarcoma nurses, arranged by a group from Oslo University Hospital in Norway.

On Twitter, you can follow the news by searching for the hashtags #CTOS2015 and #AACRsar15.