ASCO: Immunotherapy is ‘Cancer Advance of the Year’

Source: Healio.com/hermatology-oncology, February 2016

ASCO has named progress in immunotherapy for melanoma and other malignancies as the top cancer advance of the year, according to “Clinical Cancer Advances 2016: ASCO’s Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer.”

“The last few years have brought about incredibly exciting advances in our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of these diseases,” Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO, president of ASCO and chief of the hematology and oncology division at University of Nebraska Medical Center, said during a press conference held on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on World Cancer Day. “In the era of precision medicine and molecular medicine, we can select treatment based on the genomic profiling of each patient and each tumor. Cancer immunotherapy uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer, which is something that those of us in cancer research have been dreaming about for years, and which has finally come to fruition.”

Within the report — published in Journal of Clinical Oncology — researchers highlighted the improvements that have been made with immunotherapy across cancer types.