MARIYA STEPANOVA PRESENTED RESEARCH RESULTS AT THE CONGRESS IN BARCELONA

In early September, one of the significant congresses on lung cancer was held in Barcelona. The World Conference on Lung Cancer 2019 (WCLC 2019) was organized by the IASLC group. This was one of the largest events for doctors, researchers, and scientists in the field of thoracic oncology, which united more than 100 countries. The forum included the presentation of the results of clinical trials, as well as the discussion of cancer screening and approaches to the therapeutic choices.

During two congress days, a poster session took place. Six months before the forum, any medical researcher could have submitted his or her abstract, the best ones were recommended for poster presentations. Three posters were presented from Russia: one of them was from the N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology; and two of them were from the St. Petersburg Clinical Research and Practical Center of Specialized Types of Medical Care (oncology).

One of the posters presented by the St. Petersburg Center was a study of the “Predictive value of circulating tumor DNA for  progression-free survival (PFS) in patients receiving therapy with the third-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) ” (by Moiseenko F.V., Stepanova M.L., Zhabina A.S., Myslik A.V., Klimenko V.V., Klimenko D.D., Rysev N.V., Volkov N.M., Moiseenko V.M.). This was a part of the research program, which was carried out simultaneously with the research by one of our grantees Mariya Stepanova (research grant under the RUSSCO / RakFond 2018-01-YS-ECI funding program). In all patients before treatment, a blood test was performed to determine the EGFR mutation by liquid biopsy, followed by tests every 8 weeks. The analysis demonstrated a median PFS for all groups 16.7 months (data as of April 2019), while in patients without the mutation, a median PFS at the first control point after the start of therapy was 18.9 months, and in case of the mutation – 8.0 months (p=0.015). During this session, there was an opportunity to discuss the research results with colleagues.

Currently, Mariya is preparing to present the results of the second part of the study (mechanisms of resistance to the third generation TKIs) at a poster session at the Molecular Analysis for Personalized Therapy Congress (MAP 2019), which will be held on November 7-9, 2019 in London.