COSA’s 35th Annual Scientific Meeting a resounding success
Dr Eva Segelov and her very committed team put together an exceptional program. The theme this year was “Information in, information out”, featuring interdisciplinary plenaries and symposia of interest to all COSA members. The meeting focused on upper gastrointestinal cancers, skin cancers and melanoma, as well as urological and gynaecological cancers. We welcomed leading international and Australian experts, as well as the largest number of delegates ever registered for the COSA ASM.
Her Excellency Marie Bashir AC, CVO, Governor of New South Wales, officially opened the 2008 COSA, IACR and ANZGOSA Annual Scientific Meeting and provided a valuable introduction to depth and scope of the meeting that lay ahead.
The ASM had a range of stimulating and informative presentations from international and Australian experts covering the many disciplines of oncology, research and clinical practice. They encouraged the strong multidisciplinary focus that characterises our organisation and makes it unique in the Australian oncology landscape.
The stimulating and informative presentations from world leaders included David Forman and Takeshi Sano in the first plenary entitled ‘Global considerations in oesophago-gastric cancer’. The presentations provided an outstanding mix of local and international perspectives on the burden and impact of this disease. Remaining with Upper GI cancer , David Currow chaired the second plenary ‘Quality of life in Upper GI cancer’. Derek Alderson, Frank Brennan, Elisabeth Isenring, Megan Rogers and Linda Diaz presented exceptional multi-disciplinary approaches to this area of patient care.
Professor Ian Frazer presented to an overflowing room during the New Therapeutics seminar. He discussed his latest research and spoke to the emerging evidence supporting the efficacy of immunising males with the HPV vaccine.
Melanoma in the modern era chaired by John Thompson and Bruce Mann was an exceptional update on the management of melanoma over the years. John Thompson spoke to a packed audience about the historical release of the Melanoma Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Melanoma in Australia and New Zealand and thanked the untiring work of Professor Tom Reeve who has steered the 51 member working party through the process.
Excellent updates were provided in the Translational Science session chaired by Lara Lipton. Targeted alpha therapy (Barry Allen), Lactate deydrogenase 5 (LDH50) by Liqing Zhuang) stem cells origin of head and neck SCC (Stephen Goldie).
Other aspects of the multidisciplinary meeting were the forecasts in cancer trends (David Roder/Ana Miranda) and supportive care research such as in fatigue after treatment for breast cancer (Barbara Bennett), cancer nutrition rehabilitation program (Wendy Jong), and palliative care services needs ( David Currow). Global considerations of oesophageal cancers (Stanley Hamilton), Gynae oncology and extended strategies in ovarian cancer(Jonathan Lederman), tissue banking and use of next generation sequencing for targeted therapies ( Emile Voest) were also presented. Daily plenary lectures, symposia and breakfast sessions also featured international speakers. Strong representation from Australian-based experts covered a broad range of topics.
Highlights also included the hot topic debate with well known and respected journalist George Negus moderating a very controversial area, ‘Who owns your genes?’.
As always, there was a fabulous social program which set the scene with a gregarious conference dinner meeting new friends and old, on the dance floor and around the table with approximately 700 guests dancing the night away.
Our thanks go out to all those who helped to make this meeting such a success, and we look forward to meeting up with you again on the Gold Coast, Queensland in 2009.