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As the complexity of the cancer landscape increases, miscommunication and misunderstanding emerge as major obstacles to patient self-determination

How ESMO is transforming the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic into opportunities to re-shape the future of the oncology community 

New insights into breast cancer immunology and genomics support further segmentation of patient subgroups and treatment approaches, says Prof. Sherene Loi 

Medical oncologists have traditionally played a marginal role in helping drive the adoption of preventive lifestyles, “but now it is time to strengthen our commitment” says ESMO President

This year’s recipient of the TAT Honorary Award Prof. Ruth Plummer, retraces the most significant milestones of her career in early phase studies 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, real-world data have shown they can support clinical decision-making in complex situations but extensive bureaucracy is still a limiting factor

While locally tailored cancer screening programmes, particularly for cervical cancer, are showing encouraging results in some areas with limited resources, cancer care is still suffering some bottlenecks due to lack of training for healthcare staff and shortages of medicines

Promising results with cancer vaccines based on specific antigen mutations in individual tumours, and typically used in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, are fuelling an upsurge of interest in cancer vaccination for patients with established cancer, explains Prof. Pedro Romero. 

According to Prof. Urania Dafni, high quality real-world evidence can provide broader information and more generalisable conclusions to verify the clinical applicability of evidence from RCTs 

Despite early promises, advances are needed in targeting tumour-specific epitopes, overcoming the tumour microenvironment, and automating CAR-T production, explains Prof. Ulrike Köhl 

Efficacy of targeted therapies has enabled unprecedented survival gains in the last few years, but Prof. Jean-Charles Soria believes overcoming drug resistance is likely to be a local battle fought in the tumour microenvironment 

Faced with an explosion in the complexity of genomic, imaging and clinical data, AI is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for oncologists.

Tumour evolution is one of the primary reasons for resistance to treatment and researchers are now learning how to use it to lead tumours down a dead end

While mature data from trials have demonstrated that periodic rounds of low-dose CT scan reduce lung-cancer related mortality, major issues are now implementation of screening on a large-scale and how to engage the target population 

With the growing use of real-world evidence (RWE) to support regulatory approvals of new anti-cancer medicines in Europe and the USA, can this type of research ensure greater inclusion of women, the elderly, diverse ethnic groups, those with rare cancers and other under-represented populations in oncology studies?

Read all articles from Edition 1 of the ESMO Perspectives.