The Third Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies and Best Clinical Practices for Lung Cancer and Head and Neck Cancer will provide oncologists, hematologist/oncologists and other physicians and clinicians treating thoracic malignancies with the most current clinical and scientific data on this subject, including the added benefit of the “Best Data from ASCO” of June 2010.

Thus, by attending our one-day, interactive symposium on August 28, 2010, if you did not attend ASCO, or if you did not attend any post-ASCO 2010 highlights meetings this summer, all of what you need to know in order to provide optimal, personalized care to your patients with thoracic malignancies will be taught in our August 28 symposium by 17 of the USA’s true experts in personalizing therapies for thoracic malignances. This CME symposium will discuss how to utilize the most up-to-date clinical regimens for treating these malignancies, including the new "game-changing" data with initial, maintenance and relapsed therapies. You can earn up to 9 CME credits.

To make this symposium as interactive as possible it will be highly case study-based where you will select treatment strategies for each of the challenging patient cases. Clinical cases will be included in almost all presentations as well as in three, separate, dedicated case study sessions. And as in all our symposia there will be several lively “Point-CounterPoint Debates” addressing important controversial topics where you will vote your opinions before and after each debate.

Session #1: Personalizing Chemotherapy-Based Clinical Strategies, will be chaired by Dr. Paul Bunn, Jr. This session addresses the following clinical questions in practice: 1) Which chemotherapy strategies should be used based upon histology? 2) For what duration (# of cycles) should chemotherapy be given? 3) When and for whom should we use maintenance chemotherapy? 4) Is chemotherapy still the backbone of initial therapy? 5) What are the effective lab tests and biomarkers for personalizing chemotherapy that we can use in the clinic today? 6) How can we obtain tissue for using diagnostic tests — are their better methods than biopsy? 7) Should targeted therapies be combined with chemotherapy for maintenance therapy of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)? 8) Should targeted therapies be included with chemotherapy for treating Head and Neck Cancer (HNC)?

Session #2: Personalizing Anti-Angiogenesis-Based Clinical Strategies, will be chaired by Dr. Roy Herbst. This session addresses the following clinical questions in practice: 1) Are either monoclonal antibodies or small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors more effective than each other? 2) What are the issues related to treatment withdrawal from anti-angiogenic therapy such as toxicity with maintenance therapy? 3) Where are combinations of small molecules and chemotherapy useful? 4) What are the most important of these combinations to consider? 5) What are the optimal maintenance strategies? 6) What are the potential combinations of angiogenesis inhibition used with inhibition of other targets and pathways?

Session #3: Personalizing Anti-EGFR-Based Clinical Strategies, will be chaired by Thomas Lynch. This session addresses the following clinical questions in practice: 1) Should all patients be tested for the EGFR mutation? 2) How do you manage EGFR resistance, both primary and secondary resistance? 3) How should long-term toxicity with EGFR inhibition be managed? 4) With what other targeted therapies should anti-EGFR agents be combined? 5) Are there any clinical trials in which we can enroll our patients with thoracic malignancies today that are particularly attractive?

Session #4: Investigational Targeted Therapies in Late-Stage Development, will be chaired by Dr. Roy S. Herbst. This session is a review of the numerous investigational agents in late-stage clinical development for both NSCLC and SCLC that have not yet been adequately reviewed in any presentation of this symposium, thus far. The objective of this session is to ensure that the oncologists treating thoracic malignancies are aware of the many therapeutic options for enrolling their patients into clinical trials in addition to using the drugs that are currently available on the market.

Several improvements have been made to this symposium that will help make it even better than last year's highly successful symposium. These include the following:

1. Nine new faculty have been added to the program.
2. The symposium is more interactive between the audience and faculty. The format is heavily case-study based with numerous patient treatment decision questions asked of the audience. Each presentation will begin with a patient case study with several therapy-related questions for the audience. And within three of the four symposium sessions there are additional patient case study sessions where the audience again is questioned and selects treatments.
3. There are three Point-CounterPoint debates on important controversial topics, and the audience votes before and after each debate. These debates have been rated very highly by past participants who have requested more case studies and more debates.
4. To ensure that the data presented by the faculty can be put into clinical practice today, after each session, a fifteen-minute "Interactive Roundtable Discussion and Consensus Period" will be conducted where the faculty asks each other the following three questions: 1) Is this a new standard of care? 2) Should it be discussed with your patients? and 3) How can you use it today in your practice?
5. A "Lunch with Professors" session is included providing additional opportunities to interact with the faculty. Each of the eighteen faculty will sit at a separate lunch table. The audience decides which faculty with whom they wish to have lunch. This also provides an extra hour of CME credit.

LUNG CANCER

Until today, treatment decisions for lung cancer patients have been largely empirical. And with this empirical approach NSCLC patient outcomes have only marginally improved during the past several decades. Approximately 217,000 patients were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009 and approximately 160,000 patients died that same year from this malignancy.

During the past year clinical data has emerged resulting in practice-changing paradigm shifts for the treatment of patients with NSCLC. This is especially relevant for initial and maintenance therapy of NSCLC with an increasing number of novel strategy options available, including both chemotherapy and targeted therapy-based approaches. The need exists to discuss when and where to best use each of these options for personalized and optimal patient care.

Chemotherapy has been an essential component for initial and maintenance therapy for thoracic malignancies. With the myriad of new data and options, standard therapy has undergone many major changes and several promising novel therapies are on the horizon.

Advancements in molecular biomarker technology continue to evolve quite significantly and help lead to new clinical applications of these predictive and prognostic factors. These molecular biomarkers have helped researchers find more effective clinical roles for established and emerging chemotherapies and targeted therapies for treating NSCLC. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of both the science and of the practical aspects, or “how to use” the state-of-the-art molecular biomarker technology, is a major goal of the Third Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies and Best Clinical Practices for Lung Cancer and Head & Neck Cancer.

HEAD & NECK CANCER

The treatment of Head and Neck Cancer (HNC) in patients with locally advanced, recurrent, or metastatic disease remains quite challenging. Long-term survival varies from 10% to 50%, depending upon the site, stage and resectability of the tumor. Surgical intervention is potentially curative in resectable patients.

Chemotherapy before definitive surgery and radiation therapy has been demonstrated to increase response in both localized disease and disease with lymph node metastasis. For many patients with unresectable, locally advanced HNC, induction chemotherapy with docetaxel, cisplatin and 5-FU is considered a standard of care. But how systemic therapy can be optimally applied in a personalized approach to the treatment of HNC is an important, current, clinical question-in-practice.

Improved results have been observed with the clinical applications of targeted therapies for HNC. Understanding the optimal roles of targeted therapies such as anti-EGFR strategies for the treatment of HNC are areas that are rapidly evolving and need to be reviewed.

Proteomics has helped provide further support for using anti-EGFR monotherapy with either erlotinib or cetuximab for squamous cell HNC. Much of the newest and key data for treating HNC involves an improved use of biomarkers. Data exists that suggests tumor HPV status is strongly associated with survival in patients with oropharyngeal cancer receiving standard of care chemo-radiation and that tumor HPV status should now be used as a stratification factor for all clinical trials in this malignancy. Also, data exists showing the prognostic significance of tumor HPV status in oropharyngeal cancer treated with chemo-radiation, but also that the biomarker p16 identifies a larger group of patients with improved prognosis. P16-positive tumors have a better prognosis than p16-negative tumors.

 

This CME symposium is designed to meet the educational needs of medical oncologists, hematologist/oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgical oncologists, pathologists, Fellows, nurse practitioners/nurses, pharmacists, and other health care professionals who are involved in the treatment or management of patients with lung cancer or head and neck cancer. These thoracic malignancies are treated optimally by a multi-disciplinary approach of clinicians and, thus, they are all targeted for invitation to these educational activities.

The following learning objectives have been developed for this CME symposium

The Oncology Learning Center is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The Oncology Learning Center designates this educational activity for a maximum of 9 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Physician Assistants: AAPA accepts certificates of attendance for educational activities certified for Category 1 credit from AOACCME, Prescribed credit from AAFP, and AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ from organizations accredited by ACCME or a recognized state medical society. Physician Assistants may receive a maximum of 9 hours of Category 1 credit for attending this symposium.

Nurse Practitioners, nurses, pharmacists and Fellows will receive a certificate of attendance that they can submit to their accrediting organizations for continuing education credit.

In accordance with the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards for Commercial Support, all educational programs sponsored by the Oncology Learning Center (OLC) demonstrate fair balance, complete independence from any commercial supporters, objectivity, and scientific rigor. All faculty, authors, editors, OLC staff and planning committee members participating in an educational activity who are in control of content or in communication with faculty are required to disclose any relevant financial interest or other relationships with the manufacturer(s) of any commercial product(s) and/or provider(s) of commercial services that are discussed in an OLC educational activity. All disclosures will be made available to all activity participants prior to the conduct of its educational activity. In addition, all conflicts of interest will be resolved prior to the conduct of its educational activity.

This educational activity may contain discussion of published and/or investigational uses of agents that are not indicated by the FDA. The Oncology Learning Center does not recommend the use of any agent outside of the labeled indications.

The opinions expressed in the educational activity are those of the faculty and do not necessarily represent the views of the Oncology Learning Center. Please refer to the official prescribing information for each product for discussion of approved indicated, contraindications, and warnings.

Participants of OLC's educational activities have an implied responsibility to use the newly acquired information to enhance patient outcomes and their own professional development and practices. The information presented in this activity is not meant to serve as a guideline for patient management. Any procedures, medications, or other courses of diagnosis or treatment discussed or suggested in this activity should not be used by clinicians without evaluation of their patient's conditions and possible contraindications on dangers in use, review of any applicable manufacturer's product information, and comparison with recommendations of other authorities.