Fabio Ynoe de Moraes, Associate Professor at Queen’s University, shared on LinkedIn:
“Seoul. Science. Global collaboration. AI. K-pop. And the future of lung cancer care.
What a week at WCLC26. Some meetings update us. Others make us rethink where our field is going. This one did both.
Maverick challenged a long-standing standard in small-cell lung cancer: prophylactic cranial irradiation. In the era of MRI surveillance, can we preserve cognition and reduce toxicity without compromising outcomes?
Sometimes innovation means doing less, better. ARTEMIS-008 showed the other side of progress: new therapeutic classes, including antibody-drug conjugates, changing settings where patients have historically had limited options.
Sometimes innovation means something entirely new. I also had the privilege of joining the Lancet Oncology Commission on Lung Cancer meeting. Experts from across countries, disciplines, and health systems came together around a bigger question:
How do we change the trajectory of lung cancer globally?
From prevention and early detection to staging, treatment, workforce, access, innovation, and health systems-because a breakthrough that never reaches the patient is not enough. And I had the privilege of taking the WCLC plenary stage to discuss AI in clinical decision-making.
AI can retrieve evidence, contour, predict, and increasingly recommend. But prediction is not clinical judgment. The next frontier is determining when to trust AI, how to validate it, and where human judgment and accountability must remain central.
Between the science, Commission discussions, friends and collaborators from around the world, the extraordinary energy of Seoul-and, of course, some K-pop message stayed with me: The future of lung cancer will not be defined by one drug, one trial, one specialty, or one algorithm.
It will be built at the intersection of: Science + technology + clinical judgment + health systems + global collaboration.
I leave Seoul with more questions, new collaborations, and enormous optimism about what comes next. Now the important part: turning progress into better outcomes for patients everywhere.
Thank you IASLC and everyone who made WCLC26 unforgettable.”
You can also read ‘Gilberto Lopes: Key Insights From WCLC26‘
