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AACR CEO Margaret Foti highlights the AACR's central role as a catalyst among all sectors of the cancer research community during the Opening Ceremony at the AACR Annual Meeting 2022.Convening in the summer of 2023, this summit—titled “Harnessing Scientific Breakthroughs to Optimize the Future of Pediatric, Adolescent, and Young Adult Cancer Research and Care”—will be chaired by AACR Past President Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, FAACR. Under Dr. Mardis’ leadership, summit participants will define the specific challenges facing pediatric, adolescent, and young adult cancer patients and identify ways that the AACR can address those challenges. The summit will also feature a trailblazing collaboration between two AACR working groups, as members of the Pediatric Cancer Working Group and the Chemistry in Cancer Research Working Group will explore ways to accelerate progress in pediatric cancer drug development.
Chaired by Frank H. Laukien, PhD, and Charles Swanton, MBPhD, FAACR, the AACR Cancer Evolution Working Group (CEWG) was founded in 2021 to translate novel cancer evolution insights into new early detection, diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive strategies to improve outcomes for patients with cancer. Beginning in 2023, the AACR will create a platform for these strategies by establishing an annual special conference dedicated to cancer evolution. The inaugural conference, which will be chaired by Anna D. Barker, PhD, FAACR, Franziska Michor, PhD, Charles Swanton, MBPhD, FRCP, FMedSci, FRS, FAACR, and Jeffrey P. Townsend, PhD, is scheduled for December 2023.
The five-year BPC collaboration between ten biopharmaceutical companies was launched in 2019 with the goal of obtaining clinical and genomic data from 50,000 patients. By the end of 2022, the BPC had collected detailed clinical data from 7,500 cases and had made data from more than 1,800 NSCLC patients and nearly 1,500 colorectal cancer patients available for public use. The BPC will make further progress in 2023, adding data from another 12,500 cases and making the breast cancer dataset available for public use by mid-year.
