Group Meeting: So Much to Explore

If you had hoped to register but somehow missed doing so, fear not. Online registration has closed but will reopen – for virtual attendance only – on Tuesday, May 9th. For in-person attendance, you can register at the meeting itself, starting Wednesday, May 10th, 7 am PT.

The meeting agenda book is now online as a PDF, so you can preview it as you fine tune your schedule. If this is your first group meeting, I recommend jumping straight to page 22 for a condensed schedule of events for the four days.

It’s worth taking a close look through all the session agendas in the book, even those for committees outside of your primary area of interest, as there are so many fascinating opportunities for learning. These aren’t necessarily the big events that have colorful ads in the book (though by all means, consider those as well) – these are some of the talks and presentations you might otherwise miss, such as the following:

• The prevention and epidemiology committee is featuring a keynote talk on cancer incidence and the effects of metformin and intensive lifestyle intervention, building on data from two clinical trials in diabetes and diabetes prevention.
• A plenary talk in the symptom control and quality of life committee session will address “ Complex care issues for individuals living with advanced and metastatic cancers”.
• The early therapeutics and rare cancers committee will hear updates from our sarcoma and our central nervous system (CNS) working groups, two groups whose work you’ll want to be aware of.
• In the immunotherapeutics committee session, a panel of experts representing all four adult NCTN groups will present on each group’s current immunotherapy research efforts and will then discuss collaboration on immunotherapy work across the network.
• A panel discussion on the S2302 Pragmatica-Lung trial will be part of the lung committee session (a great opportunity to learn more about the trial).
• The melanoma committee meeting will include a keynote talk on the topic of pathology review in neoadjuvant trials.

These are just a few of the opportunities that await.

Given the density of great content at the meeting, scheduling conflicts are likely to make you miss a few sessions you would rather not miss. Happily, we record open sessions and will post them to SWOG’s YouTube channel within a couple of weeks of the meeting, so you can tune in then to what you miss next week.

Keep in mind that many of the sessions you’ll attend can earn you continuing medical education (CME) credits. The agenda book includes a table (page 17) you can use to track your attendance at credit-eligible sessions, along with instructions on how you can claim those credits.

Finally, look for the posters or handouts on SWOG’s membership profiles project. They include instructions on how you can review initial mockups of phase 1 and provide feedback on the project, which is meant to help us in our efforts to build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive SWOG.

I want to close by reminding members of our board of governors that the board meeting has been moved to Friday evening (6:45 pm PT). Our candidates for group co-chairs – Drs. Primo “Lucky” Lara and Dawn Hershman – will attend that session, and board members will vote on their joint candidacy. I’ll report the outcome in a special Front Line in the days following the group meeting.

Safe travels, and see you in San Francisco!