Klaus Pantel, MD, PhD, Catherine Alix-Panabières, PhD, and Victor E. Velculescu, MD, PhD (left to right), discussed the current state of the art, open questions, and potential clinical applications of liquid biopsy during the AACR Annual Meeting.

Philip E. Castle, PhD, MPH, Ernest T. Hawk, MD, MPH, and Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD (left to right), discussed the challenges and benefits of detecting precancerous lesions in the era of minimally invasive tests like liquid biopsies on the final day of the Annual Meeting.

Growing evidence suggests a critical role for clonal hematopoiesis (CH) in driving complications associated with oncological care through systemic inflammation. Three investigators, including Ross L. Levine, MD, provided a state-of-the-art update on CH during one of the first-ever AACR Annual Meeting sessions dedicated to the topic.

During the final session of the AACR Annual Meeting 2022, Program Committee Chair Marcia R. Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, and three members of the Program Committee reviewed several significant highlights and important themes from the meeting.

On the final day of the Annual Meeting, Anna D. Barker, PhD, chaired a plenary session dedicated to tumor evolution. “We are going to see people putting evolution to work in the very near future,” she said.

“There is no one leader in this overall effort of creating trust in science. The AACR is an engine behind the overall effort, but we must come together from various sectors to develop a common agenda and achieve this goal,” said William S. Dalton, MD, PhD.

The cancer world changed in 1982 when three labs, working independently, identified the first human oncogene, RAS, and cloned three variants: HRAS, KRAS, and MRAS. Patricia M. LoRusso, DO, PhD (hc), chaired a special symposium at the Annual Meeting to mark the anniversary and review more recent advances.

Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, FAACR, was honored for pioneering the development of effective immunotherapies and gene therapies for patients with advanced cancers, among other significant research contributions.

Although biology plays a role in all types of cancer, a person’s “ZNA,” or the zip code where they live, is just as important to consider as DNA and may play an even greater role in health outcomes, according to Robert A. Winn, MD.

Donna R. Rivera, PharmD, MSc (left), and Deborah Schrag, MD, MPH, moderated an Annual Meeting symposium that featured several case studies illustrating how real-world data can be translated to real-world evidence.