Highlights from one of the biggest oncology congresses of the world: ESMO 2023

Almost 30,000 people from 152 countries came together to find answers to a very complex disease: cancer. A brief snapshot of ESMO 2023 reveals that, on the one hand, innovation continues to thrive in cancer treatment advancements, but on the other hand, cancer continues to be a crisis riddled with health equity challenges. Below, you can also find some key ESMO takeaways:

The ongoing effort to find the most innovative and effective treatment is astonishing. A significant number of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are in development, even in just one therapeutic area, such as cancers driven by HER-2. Besides ADCs, there are many other pathways in development, giving us hope for the future of cancer treatment and outcomes…
Historic practice-changing results were presented, demonstrating significant overall survival benefit. One of the highlights was in bladder cancer, enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab provided overall survival benefit in previously untreated, locally advanced, or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04223856).
Innovation with known targets (eg, VEFG-F), have provided significant benefit to patients, but new targets and delivery methods are on the horizon promising even more benefit. Peptide-based cancer vaccines and novel delivery mechanisms of immunotherapies were just some of the exciting advancements at ESMO this year.
The development of new cancer treatments and how to design early clinical trials was a key topic discussed. Experts from regulatory bodies, patients, investigators, and industry discussed the balance between finding the right dose and the potential to delay progress and innovation. You can find more information about Project Optimus here on the FDA website.
Access to healthcare is a challenge, this includes access to physicians, diagnostics, medicines, etc. But sometimes, health awareness and literacy can be a more significant challenge. There are many ways to prevent cancer, and to have better cancer outcomes with early diagnosis is possible. But many of us are not leveraging easy and accessible solutions. It is extraordinary to see the number of late-stage cervical cancer patients globally, even in developed countries. Is it our role as citizens, alongside governments, to leverage the existing healthcare solutions.
There were many real-world data presented at this year’s ESMO. How we can integrate technology and data collection in a better way to support our decision-making for treatment selection and the interpretation of treatment results is critical. The role of real-world data will be even more important with the advancements in technology in cancer.
We are living in times of many types of crises, and health equity is a crucial topic in healthcare. It affects oncology care and oncology patients in many ways. Where some of these innovations require very high scientific centers and significant budgets, there are still ways to leverage existing, more traditional treatments to improve cancer outcomes. An important session during the presidential session discussed how utilizing chemotherapy and radiation in a novel way to treat cervical cancer can improve outcomes.
Clinical trials are sometimes not considered as a health service but should be for cancer and rare disease patients. Unfortunately, clinical trials are not distributed equally, as well as other aspects of cancer care. There are many reasons behind it, and some are understandable. The question is…can we allow patients to participate in clinical trials cross borders and should borders be a barrier for patients with a high unmet medical need?
The role of quality of life as a metric in the ESMO Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale was an important topic. Decreasing the score based on QoL for some treatments demonstrated that patients value quality of life over other aspects of treatment results.
The people aspect of ESMO was also excellent. Many passionate researchers, clinicians, patient advocates, government officials, members of NGOs, and pharmaceutical industry colleagues gathered for a common cause. Meeting with all these great friends and colleagues was a joy for us. We look forward to meeting with friends and colleagues again at ESMO 2024 in Barcelona!