PHILADELPHIA--Two highlights of the 1996 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting (to be held May 18-21 in Philadelphia) will be the integrated symposia, ASCO president John Glick said in an interview. Dr. Glick, of the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center, said that the innovative symposia will integrate educational material and state-of-the-art abstracts.
Thrombopoietin Results
The subjects of the integrated symposia are thrombopoietin and adjuvant therapy for colon cancer. "At the thrombo-poietin symposium, results of some of the double-blinded large national trials on its use to bolster platelet counts will be unblinded for the first time," he said.
Other important presentations include the President's Symposium on the biological, clinical, and ethical implications of genetic testing for cancer. Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Genome Project, will be one of the speakers at this timely session.
Dr. Glick noted that the director of the National Cancer Institute, Richard Klausner, MD, will be at ASCO to give his vision of the NCI and will also be available for a question and answer session after his talk.
The plenary session will include results of tamoxifen(Drug information on tamoxifen) studies from the NSABP and the Swedish Breast Cancer group. Dr. Bernard Fisher will present the NSABP's trials of adjuvant tamoxifen in node-negative and node-positive breast cancer, and Dr. Lars Rutquist will report on the Swedish findings.
Results of two studies on the use of chemotherapy plus radiotherapy will be presented: a SWOG study on its use in early stage non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and an Intergroup study on its use in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
Dr. Glick's address the afternoon of May 20 will review the state of the Society, including its work on developing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines; its public policies on testing for genetic
