From basic science breakthroughs that are advancing the frontiers of cancer research to late-breaking clinical trials on novel drugs and new therapies, the Annual Meeting Program Committee has created a robust scientific program covering the most important advances and hottest topics in cancer science and medicine.

“We have put together a program that truly reflects the spectrum of basic and translational cancer research from personalized medicine to population science. So no matter what type of cancer you study, you will find it covered at the AACR Annual Meeting,” said Program Committee Chair Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, Director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Annual Meeting participants will learn from top experts and thought leaders from around the world about the most innovative research and the latest discoveries that are driving the field. From clinical trials and daily plenary sessions, through a wide range of in-depth symposia, forums, educational sessions, workshops, and a series of sessions on recent advances, the meeting will provide high-level overviews of some of the hottest topics in cancer science.

Advances in the early detection of cancer are always a hot topic at the meeting, and this year is no exception. An entire plenary session and numerous oral sessions and poster presentations will be devoted to early detection.

“The rapidly emerging concept of ‘interception’ is part of that — and a topic I expect will generate a lot of conversation this year,” Vonderheide said. “Interception is not prevention and it’s not treatment. It’s using new technology and new genetics to understand who’s at risk, who has a smoldering, noninvasive, early lesion that we can erase biologically, as opposed to mechanically. This is an exciting concept because we think we can, as a cancer field, make even more impact on cancer if we intercept early instead of waiting for a patient to become a patient.”

The nature of cancer immune responses is another area of cutting-edge research strongly represented in this year’s program. A plenary session will examine emerging therapeutic strategies to stimulate anti-cancer immunity, and there will be dozens of sessions exploring the latest developments driving rapid advances in cancer immunology research.

“Scientifically, people may have thought we’ve hit a plateau with immunology, but we’ve actually only just begun,” Vonderheide said.

Annual Meeting participants will also hear about the latest drugs and therapies making their way through clinical trials, as well as new technologies that are providing biological insights and new model systems to study, laying the foundation for novel drugs and new therapeutic targets.

“We are in a technological new age in drug development. New insights on protein folding and mRNA biology, for example, are suggesting that targets we thought undruggable are actually probably druggable,” Vonderheide explained. “The Annual Meeting program includes a variety of sessions on new types of drugs and new antibody conjugates that apply to every cancer, including a state-of-the-art plenary session on drug development and drug engineering that people will not want to miss.”