Oncology for the Inquisitive Mind

ESMO 2024 was the year genitourinary cancer took front and centre stage with many exciting updates, trials, and tribulations. This week, OFTIM brings their greatest champion back to dive deep into the changes that will impact our patients and their families, the NCCN guidelines, and how we practice medicine. Unfortunately, the heavyweight champion boxer was unavailable, but we got the next best th...

With ESMO 24 firmly in the rearview mirror, the dust settling, and the end of the year closing in, Michael and Josh take one final look at the trials that may change practice, direct research, or are just generally interesting. This week, we interviewed Dr Geoffrey Chong, a medical oncologist specialising in gastrointestinal cancers who currently holds appointments at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer...

We have finally come to the end of ESMO 2024, and as is now tradition, Michael and Josh conclude their epic journey with a special episode highlighting their absolute favourite practice-changing selections from the Plenary Sessions. As always, ESMO brought a selection of wonderful studies that truly deserve the title "practice changing." As always, a huge thanks to everyone who joined us on this a...

The end of the road approaches, and ESMO 2024 will soon be in the rearview mirror. However, each new day brings new, incredible advances in the treatment of cancer. Today, Josh and Michael dive into biomarker analyses, overall survival updates and new antibody-drug conjugates galore. Listen on for our penultimate summary of ESMO. Studies discussed in this episode: Biomarker analysis of PEACE-1 ARA...

Day three of the European Society of Medical Oncology Congress had many exciting and potentially practice-changing trials in the genitourinary space. Gone are the days of urothelial cancer having a single treatment and prostate cancer only having androgen deprivation therapy. They look at biomarkers for ADC response in bladder cancer, the use of lutetium upfront for metastatic hormone-sensitive pr...

Josh and Michael's Spanish Sojourn continues with their review of Day 2 of the European Society of Medical Oncology. Your hosts have been on their feet rushing from lecture theatre to lecture theatre, attending as many incredible presentations and soaking in as much practice-changing information as their brains could manage. In this episode, Michael and Josh report presented data ranging from supp...

The European Society of Medical Oncology Congress has begun, and Michael and Josh are on the ground, bringing you breaking studies and heartbreaks along with some important updates in the science and art of medical oncology. Michael and Josh cover a range of tumour types on day one, a slight deviation from our regular coverage. They look at hepatocellular carcinoma, renal cancers, and breast cance...

Oncology for the Inquisitive Mind has been privileged to interview some truly brilliant specialists, and this week's guest is no exception. Professor Anthony Joshua is the Head of Oncology at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre and St Vincent's Health in Sydney. He is a globally recognised expert in genitourinary cancers and melanoma, with a special interest in ocular melanoma. Professor Joshua completed h...

Oncolytic viruses thrive in cancer cells and can replicate rapidly, destroying the cells and enabling the immune system to attack tumours. This week, we interview Dr Malcolm McColl and Prof Darren Shafren, a dynamic duo in Australian biotechnology and part of the leadership team of ImmVirx, a viral oncolytic company. Prior to creating ImmVirx, they successfully launched the product Cavatak, used i...

Metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer continues to dominate headlines, and new therapeutic options continue to be found for those afflicted with the disease. Before trastuzumab (anti-HER2 therapy), the overall survival for this cohort of patients was less than two years. As technology and treatments changed, it can boast an extended survival well beyond five years in numerous studies, with many p...

The discovery of EGFR as a driver mutation and the development of medications to take advantage of this mutation changed the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) forever. Not only did it vastly improve outcomes for patients with this subset of cancers, it opened the door for the likes of alectinib, lorlatinib and sotorasib to carve out niches for their own driver mutations. However, the...

It is rare on any show to be able to interview a true pioneer. On today's episode of Oncology for the Inquisitive Mind, we have the privilege of interviewing Dr Janet Abrahm, a pioneer in every sense of the word. An internist with over 20 years experience, Dr Abrahm was one of the founders and earliest proponents of palliative care in the United States. A staff specialist at the Dana Farber Cancer...

This week, we interview Dr Elias Chandran, a medical oncologist and emerging research juggernaut who is an assistant research physician at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. His focus is on genitourinary cancer, and he has recently published a pivotal systematic review and meta-analysis titled " Mismatch repair deficiency and microsatellite instability-high in urothelial carcinom...

Today, Michael and Josh interview Professor Meredith Broussard to discuss Artificial Intelligence (AI), its role in cancer diagnosis, her journey with breast cancer and her inspiration for her latest book, More than a Glitch. Meredith is a data journalist at the Arthur L Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and has had an exceptionally versatile career, previously having worked as a...

"Here at last, at the edge of the sea, comes the end of our Fellowship." So said Gandalf the White at the conclusion of J.R.R Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings . Today, Josh and Michael have a no less epic conclusion to their own adventure, that of ASCO 2024. Over the last fifteen days, our intrepid hosts have journeyed across the world of medical oncology, from the highs of colorectal, breast...

Today is the penultimate episode in our ASCO 2024 Odyssey. Michael and Josh have neglected sarcoma to date, but today is the day@ Sarcoma is rare, where clinician experience becomes paramount to treatment options and outcomes. They develop in soft tissues and bones and vary in origin, including deep soft tissue, bone, nerves, etc. Today, they explore three trials. The first is paclitaxel and avelu...

Some consider the number 13 unlucky; fear of the number has its own name, "triskaidekaphobia." So it is perhaps somewhat fitting that day 13 of our ASCO Odyssey is dedicated to the cancer type with which scientists and doctors have had arguably the least luck in treating: central nervous system cancers. We still await CNS oncology's immunotherapy or EGFR/ALK moment, and unfortunately, as of ASCO 2...

ASCO 2024 beat many attendees' expectations with interesting and thought-provoking lung cancer and mesothelioma studies. While not all of these will change the face of patient treatment, they will add to a body of evidence for biomarkers and build on the blocks of tailoring treatment to patients. Links to studies discussed in this episode (subscription may be required): BEAT-meso: Link Checkmate 8...

Our coverage of ASCO 2024 has rounded the final bend, and the finish line is in sight. Today, Josh and Michael examine four studies in the head and neck cancer space. Today's studies include a novel, viral-driven vector that aims to increase the immune response to treatment, potential treatment for the very rare nasal squamous cell cancer, data supporting the treatment of patients with poor progno...

ASCO 2024 never seems to end, and today, Michael and Josh do a bit of a backflip and report on the advancements in early colorectal cancer. Forever a confusing topic with PRODIGE23, OPRA, and many other rectal cancer trials and a spattering of neoadjuvant colorectal trials, the ability to redefine and provide clarity to this area is pertinent. Today, it heavily focuses on immunotherapy in the colo...

Our 2024 ASCO epic trundles onto its next generation, advanced colorectal cancer. Over the last 10 years, treatment in this area has made incremental progress through the discovery of the clinically meaningful KRAS and BRAF mutation pathways and most recently with the potential for immunotherapy in the deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) and high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) subgroups. In this...

Some oncologists may have already started counting down to ASCO 2025. However, Michael and Josh are still digesting the interesting world of ASCO 2024, specifically upper GI and Hepatobiliary Cancers. Like the eponymous lead of the 1992 classic Aladdin, several diamonds lie in the rough. We cover perioperative FLOT in the metastatic setting, but most excitingly, it is a potentially new groundbreak...

The second of our two GU ASCO 2024 episodes focusses on prostate and penile cancer, two diseases at different ends of the therapeutic spectrum. Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men, with well established, nuanced treatment paradigms and a glut of high-quality evidence. Penile SCC is a very rare cancer that tragically is much more common in low socioeconomic countries. Treatment...

Genitourinary Cancers dominated ASCO24 this year, and Josh and Michael's ASCO Odyssey needed two episodes to fit it all in. Join them as they board the Nautilus with Captain Nemo in search of the best trials to propel bladder and renal cancer to the forefront of your mind. This episode covers both the use of perioperative sacituzumab govitecan, avelumab as neoadjuvant therapy for bladder cancer an...

Unbeknownst to Josh, we are already at Day 5 of our ASCO Odyssey, and like Odysseus arriving at Circe's island of Aeaea, we have arrived at the episode devoted to early Breast Cancer. Today we examine four very interesting studies, looking at alternative immunotherapy strategies with adjuvant avelumab, adjuvant endocrine therapy omission in low-ER positive disease, ctDNA in predicting disease recu...