Winette van der Graaf, President of the EORTC, Professor of Medical Oncology at The Netherlands Cancer Institute, and Founding Member of Common Sense Oncology, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“The place to be for the multidisciplinary global sarcoma community is the annual meeting of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society. This year was the 30th edition at Boca Raton, and it was vibrant and a place of knowledge exchange and friendship, as always.
Patients represented by Sarcoma Patient Advocacy Global Network (SPAGN) and professionals, PhD students and healthcare and lab scientists at one place, in total around 1250 persons this year.
We mourned the far too early loss of Brian Van Tine, a great clinician scientist in the sarcoma field, and his presence was felt throughout the conference.
We also looked forward to the future by promising preclinical research, positive studies – such as in chondrosarcoma, the ChonDRAgon study with INBRX-109, a DR5 agonist antibody, while awaiting more results than the statistically significant PFS gain, which is the first positive study of this kind in this difficult-to-treat disease.
We had fantastic speakers and poster presenters from all over the globe – young and old(er)- with whom it was good to discuss the rare and ultrare challenging diseases we have to treat. The meeting covers (a.o.) areas of fundamental research, germline and somatic genetics, radiomics, clinical evaluations, AI, and patient-centric research, including Health Related Quality of Life (Catarina Simões Padilla).
Grateful that colleagues are putting their energy into many rare subtypes of sarcomas, because the patients of today and tomorrow need our expertise.
Finally, it’s always the place to spend time with colleagues beyond working hours, which generates energy and bonding that we all need to refresh our minds to be able to continue our work.
Thanks all, and in particular the (mostly/somehow) Dutch (speaking) group of this year, Winan van Houdt, Yvonne Schrage, Quirijn Tummers, Rick Haas, Judith Bovee, Evelyne Roets, Lisette Wiltink, Pim Schreuder, Louisa Vrijenhoek, Stefanie Hakkesteegt, Catarina Simões Padilla, Bauke van Riet, and Florine Foppele
And of course, a big congratulations to this year’s president, Silvia Stacchiotti, and the organising committee, Dario Callegaro, Liz Connolly, Gina D’Amato, Aisha Miah, and Sicklick Jason, for putting this program so well together.”
More posts featuring Winette van der Graaf.