2-Minute Drill: Biggest Winner From the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
Thought leaders from various institutions offered their take on the biggest winner that came out of the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Following the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting, Ruemu E. Birhiray, MD, Hematology Oncology of Indiana; Sameer A. Parikh, MBBS, Mayo Clinic; Javier Pinilla, MD, PhD, Moffitt Cancer Center; and Nakhle Saba, MD, Tulane University School of Medicine, discuss the biggest winner that came out of the meeting.
The participants had 30 seconds each to give their response.
Kahl: Okay, so studies aside, this next topic can be on anything that's out of ASCO. So it can be trials, data, a certain drug, a presenter, the meeting itself, you name it. 30 seconds each: Who or what was the biggest winner out of ASCO this year? Dr. Birhiray, let's start with you.
Birhiray: I will say again, my biggest winner was Alex Herrera, [MD]. He presented data at a plenary session. So when you walk down the hallway at ASCO, there was a big battle that talked about equity and trying to make sure everyone was taken care of. And that did happen, and having been presented was so powerful that I went to the green room and I gave him a hug and I kissed him on the check.
Kahl: Alright, 30 points. Dr. Pinilla?
Pinilla: Definitely that was a really, really big thing. I think I’m going to go with themes. I was impressed by the large amount of BiTES and CAR T technologies that are really erupting in multiple myeloma specifically, [a disease] I don't [treat]. But definitely, I was really shocked by the amount of activity in this area.
Kahl: Absolutely, 40 points. Dr. Parikh?
Parikh: So, I think this was really a presentation that caught my attention was by Monica Bertagnolli, MD, she was at [Dana-Farber Cancer Institue], and now likely going to be at the NIH and the main person that I think when she was talking and presenting and she was showing a Kaplan Meier curve, she was talking about how every step down in the Kaplan Meier curve really represents an event which to us, as investigators, is a step down. But, in fact, affects the quality and the quantity of each person. And there is a story behind each of these patients that I think is important for us to recognize as we talk about overall survival, progression-free survival, and I think she just brought that humane sort of aspect to the whole discussion, which I found was very powerful.
Kahl: Absolutely. You did go over a little bit there. So I'm going to go 20 points on that one. Sorry to do that to you. Alright, Dr. Saba?
Saba: I'm going to stay a little classic and choose a drug, golidocitinib, which is a JAK1 inhibitor In peripheral T-cell lymphoma. This is a disease that most lymphoma specialists don't like. You need to really be focused on that to treat it. But finally, a drug that is not really heavily investigated in in B-cell lymphoma, and now it's showing really promising efficacy in relapsed/refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma disease that has a lot of unmet needs.
Kahl: Alrighty, 40 points there.
Transcription edited for clarity.
