Plenary Session

Today we sit down (in person!) with Dr. Jeff Bien of Stanford University to break down all the details -- from the methods to the statistical analysis to the conclusions -- of the CheckMate 649 trial, which pitted first-line nivolumab plus chemotherapy against chemotherapy alone for advanced gastric, gastro-oesophageal junction, and oesophageal adenocarcinoma. CheckMate 649: doi.org/10.1016/S0140-...

Today we have two short monologues for you on recent papers. The first, by popular request, is the problems with the VISION trial, which treated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with lutetium-177–PSMA-617 (Lu-177–PSMA-617) radioligand therapy and standard of care. The second is on the paper recently published in Science titled "Fecal microbiota transplant promotes response in immuno...

In today's quick episode, we talk about our new paper out now in JAMA Network Open titled "The Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee Votes of April 2021—Implications for the Fate of Accelerated Approval" ODAC Votes: doi.org/10.1001/jamaoncol.2021.3046 Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUibd0E2kdF9N9e-EmIbUew

We have a reverse episode for you today! Emma Greenstreet, a second-year medical student at UCSF, interviews our usual host, Dr. Vinay Prasad on why and how he chose hematology/oncology as a specialty, engaging with criticism, mentorship, medical student rotations, choosing a research project, and urging doctors in academia to aim higher. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check ou...

We sat down in person with Dr. Rahul Banerjee, a BMT/CAR-T fellow at UCSF, to talk about all manner of topics including CAR-T, randomized trials in oncology (and, specifically, Dr. Banerjee's two recent papers out now), social media, treating Multiple Myeloma, and how people make career decisions. What Oncologists Can Learn From COVID-19: doi.org/10.1038/s41571-020-00448-y Are Observational, Real-...

Today we are joined by Dr. Ameet Sarpatwari of Harvard Medical School to discuss how so many great minds in oncology are leaving cancer research in academia for industry. We also talk about the evidence (or lack thereof) behind the recent FDA approval of aducanumab to treat Alzheimer's disease. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channe...

Today we have a short monologue for you on just a few topics: a treatment algorithm for follicular lymphoma and our host Dr. Prasad's new paper out now in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation: "Reliable, cheap, fast and few: What is the best study for assessing medical practices? Randomized controlled trials or synthetic control arms?" RCTs or Synthetic Control Arms?: doi.org/10.1111/eci...

Today we're back with another real-life (non-virtual!) interview. We're joined by Dr. Nina Shah of UCSF to discuss her career and her work in mutiple myeloma as well as the complexities of advancing your career -- dealing with productivity metrics like the h-index or the Kardashian index, switching institutions, balancing work with your home life, adapting to the changing field of oncology, and mo...

Today we sit down with Dr. George Sledge of the Stanford University Medical Center to hear the story of his career and to discuss the history of breast cancer research and treatment. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUibd0E2kdF9N9e-EmIbUew

Today we're launching season 4 of Plenary Session! This season we're returning to our love of monologues. On today's episode we talk about highlights from the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUibd0E2kdF9N9e-EmIbUew

On today's episode, we interview Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health on how he chose his path in medicine, how health care as it is in the United States needs to change, and how groupthink dominated COVID-19 health policy. We discuss a variety of topics from his research on overuse, the prevalence of burnout in healthcare professionals, silos...

Today we have a brief monologue for you on how to think about COVID-19 policy in the context of rare event and declining probabilities. We also touch on what to expect from season 4 of this podcast, as season 3 comes to an end. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUibd0E2kdF9N9e-EmIbUew

Today's episode is hosted by guest Logan Powell, an incoming medical student at the Texas A&M College of Medicine and creator of this podcast's show notes. He reverse interviews our usual host, Dr. Vinay Prasad, in honor of the one-year anniversary release of Dr. Prasad's book "Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer". They explore a few behind-the-scenes stories. Show n...

Today we try something new. We're joined by five esteemed multiple myeloma experts for a back-and-forth round table discussion on the disease, including initial therapy, high risk, and maintenance. Our guests are Dr. Raj Chakraborty of Columbia University, Dr. Sam Rubinstein of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Dr. Manni Mohyuddin of the University of Utah, Dr. Ben Derman of the Univer...

Today we bring back our popular Journal Club with a Fellow segment. We're joined by Dr. Karine Tawagi of the Oschner Clinic in Louisiana to discuss the CLEAR trial: "Lenvatinib plus Pembrolizumab or Everolimus for Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma" as published in the New England Journal of Medicine. CLEAR: doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2035716 Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our...

Our guest today is Dr. Joshua Briscoe of Duke University. We discuss Med-Psych (a joint internal medicine and psychiatry residency) and how it and palliative care connect to the human side to medicine: providing the care for quality of life and dignity that patients actually need, from comfortable bedding to physician-assisted suicide. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out o...

We're joined today by Dr. Aaron Goodman, a hematologist/oncologist at the University of California San Diego, to discuss diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). We talk about bad cancer drugs and bad Twitter users. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUibd0E2kdF9N9e-EmIbUew

Today we sit down with Dr. Ioana Cristea of the University of Pavia, Italy and the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford to discuss meta-research, reproducibility, and expertise. We also talk about our shared experiences as "early career researchers" (ECRs), also known as Early Stage Investigators, a term coined by the National Institutes of Health to describe researchers who earned their la...

Today we host a Classical Hematology Chat on thrombosis associated with COVID-19 vaccines. We're joined by Drs. Sven Olson and Joseph Shatzel of Oregon Health & Science University as we talk about cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) and vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/U...

Today we are joined by Genève Campbell, scholar of democracy and government, as we discuss sociology and politics in the context of COVID-19. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUibd0E2kdF9N9e-EmIbUew

Today we sit down with Dr. Bishal Gyawali of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and with Dr. Nathan Cherny of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel to talk about the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the ESMO-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (ESMO-MCBS), which aims to improve cancer therapy decision-making. Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession...

On today's episode, we sit down with Dr. Cathrine Axfors of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) to discuss how Sweden responded to COVID-19 and the nation's attention to what policies would be sustainable. We also touch on her paper "Mortality outcomes with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in COVID-19 from an international collaborative meta-analysis of randomized trials" a...

Today we talk with Dr. Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics about astronomy and the culture of the academy, as well as diving into topics discussed in his new book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. Extraterrestrial: https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Extraterrestrial/9780358274551 Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out...

Today we talk with Dr. Mark Lythgoe, a Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London, on his new paper titled "Race reporting and diversity in US food and drug administration (FDA) registration trials for prostate cancer; 2006-2020", out now in Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases. Race Reporting: doi.org/10.1038/s41391-021-00361-0 Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check o...

On today's episode, we invite Dr. Chris Whaley of RAND and Dr. Neeraj Sood of the USC Price School of Public Policy to discuss their new paper titled "Back to School: The Effect of School Visits During COVID-19 on COVID-19 Transmission", out now in the National Bureau of Economic Research. Back to School: doi.org/10.3386/w28645 Back us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/plenarysession Check out our YouTu...