Dialogues

Nov 11, 2024, 14:38

ASCO24 Updates: Elen Baloyan on LMICs’ Role in Immune Oncology Trials

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting is one of the largest and most prestigious conferences in the field of oncology. This year, the meeting took place from May 31 to June 4 in Chicago, Illinois. The event gathers oncologists, researchers, and healthcare professionals from around the world to discuss the latest advancements in cancer research, treatment, and patient care. Keynote sessions, research presentations, and panel discussions are typically part of the agenda, providing attendees with valuable insights into emerging trends and innovations in oncology.

This year, OncoDaily was at ASCO 2024 for the first time covering the meeting on-site. We had the pleasure of interviewing researchers who summarized the highlights of their work.

In this video, Elen Baloyan, A medical oncology resident at Yerevan State Medical University and managing editor of OncoDaily, shared insights on ‘Global disparities in immunotherapy clinical trials: A comprehensive analysis of low- and middle-income countries over the past decade.’

Hi, my name is Elen Baloyan. I am a medical oncology resident at the Ionian Hematologyand Oncology Center of Yerevan State Medical University. I am also the managing editor of OncoDaily and I had the pleasure to present my poster at this year’s ASCO annual meeting.

Me and my co-authors searched for clinical trials in clinicaltrials.gov to find out what was the LMIC involvement in I.O. trials for the past decade. We searched for relevant keywords and we found 1,283 results, which were analyzed further.

We found that no low-income countries were involved in any of the trials during the past decade and only 2.4% of the trials included any lower-middle-income countries.

That percentage was 21% for upper-middle-income countries and higher for high-income countries.

The lower-middle-income countries involved in clinical trials were only 8, led by Ukraine, that had 16 trials, followed by Philippines, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Morocco, Guatemala, and Eswatini, each of which had less than 10 trials. The upper-middle-income country group was led by China, followed by Russia, Brazil, and Mexico.

Overall, the most number of trials had USA, followed by European countries, Canada, and Australia. We also searched for pediatric I.O. trials and we found that only 80 of 1,200 trials were pediatric-inclusive, three of which were done in LMICs. The most trials that were done in LMICs, 90%, was funded by the industry.

Our results show that the clinical trials inimmune oncology that were done during the past 10 years are not generalizable and do not meet global cancer burden.

More videos and content from ASCO 2024 on OncoDaily.