The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting kicks off this week in Chicago. A whirlwind of sessions, keynotes, fireside chats, posters, and exhibitors, the meeting is THE annual event for the cancer community.
Before the conference, GEN spoke with AACR program chairs Lillian L. Siu, MD, director of Phase I Clinical Trials Program, co-director, Robert and Maggie Bras and Family Drug Development Program, and clinical lead, Tumor Immunotherapy Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, and Matthew Vander Heiden, MD, PhD, director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, in Cambridge, MA.
In this interview, they share their perspectives on the event, what attendees should be looking out for, and what they, personally, are most looking forward to.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
LeMieux: When you were building the meeting program, what did you feel were some of the most important themes to include?
Vander Heiden: When we were planning the meeting, we tried to be cognizant that this is a meeting that covers all of cancer research from basic to clinical trials. And our hope was to build something across the meeting that would be interesting to everybody. But we also hoped to create opportunities for people to get out of their comfort zone and go learn about areas of science that are less directly focused on where they are. Because I think basic science can learn from the clinic, and clinical science obviously can benefit from a better understanding of basic science.
The theme of the meeting, “Unifying Cancer Science and Medicine, a Continuum of Innovation for Impact,” basically covers exactly what I said. That research benefits from the continuum of information and innovation, from basic understanding all the way through to clinical trials. And we tried to highlight that across the entire meeting, building sessions that demonstrate that, where possible. And even in the sessions where that was not possible, hopefully it’ll still be evident to fit that theme.
Siu: The fact that Matt and I are the co-chairs reflects the theme in the sense that Matt is a fundamental scientist with translational research as well. And I am a clinician with translational research in my portfolio. I think we complement each other in our interests and expertise, and I think that comes through in the sessions. It truly is a spectrum from bench to bedside, and back.
LeMieux: What are some of the hot topics for this year?
Siu: I will highlight the clinical trials that are being presented first, because obviously that’s close to my heart since I’m a clinician and I’m a clinical trialist. I think there are going to be several very high-profile trials. We have over 230 trials, or different types of clinical research trials, being presented. But I would say the ones that are going to be of highest profile will be, for example, KEYNOTE-689, which is being presented in a clinical trials plenary. That’s a head and neck cancer study where immunotherapy with pembrolizumab is added before surgical resection in patients with oral cavity cancers. I expect it will create quite a lot of interest in the head and neck community.
We also have some novel agents as well. For example, there is a HER2-selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor, zongertinib, which is being tested in patients with HER-2 mutant lung cancer, which tends to be harder to treat than HER-2 amplified cancers. And we are going to see an early readout of their response rates.
And there will be the first WRN helicase inhibitor being presented. Not the only one out there, but it’s one of the first ones reading out in patients who have MSI high tumors post immunotherapy, because for those who don’t respond, or for those who responded and then progressed on immunotherapy for MSI high tumors, there is a gap. And I think there is a lot of interest in the WRN helicase inhibitors in the past couple of years in terms of how these drugs will work out. So there are many of them. I just want to highlight a few.
Vander Heiden: The plenaries really cover a lot of exciting science across the spectrum of basic moving to translational research. And we thought long and hard in building the plenaries about what are up and coming areas, but also areas that are broadly interesting to many people. So, I don’t want to go through and list all the plenaries. But I can note a couple of things that we tried to focus on, that are maybe a little bit different than prior years. One is my own interest in basic science really lies at the intersection of how environment can influence many aspects of cancer. And I think you’ll see themes of that play out through many of the sessions and plenary, and you can define environment broadly in that respect.
But I think there is a little bit there for everybody. We have a focus across some of the sessions that is maybe a little bit different from past AACRs in really trying to highlight more research in prevention, interception, early detection. I think if we’re going to make a difference for reducing cancer, we need more focus in that space.
There is a little bit more on how we can learn from hememalignancies to understand solid tumors. Also, we did this year, for one of the first times, a survey of the membership because we wanted to know what the membership was interested in.
And we took care to try to build those things in—like extra chromosomal DNA and RAS inhibitors—based on that feedback into the program. I’m a little hesitant to overhighlight one or two things because that really reflects our interests. Neither of us are population scientists, but we also tried to build a lot of population science into the meaning and keep that up to date as well.
LeMieux: What are some of the biggest challenges right now in cancer biology that you think people will be discussing and talking about at the meeting?
Vander Heiden: We have a lot of new drugs out there. You’re going to hear some practice changing things, but there are still lots of pockets of cancer research where we need more research because we don’t do well enough with treating patients, right? Patients need better options. As amazing as immunotherapy has been, where it works, it’s great. Where it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
Or RAS inhibitors, which are amazing, and I think we will hear about a lot of exciting science advances in that space. But we also know some patients, even if they benefit for some time, don’t benefit forever. So how to deal with drug resistance, looking for places where we can offer new approaches and new therapies, and places where things don’t work, I think is really what the challenge of cancer research has always been and continues to be.
Until every patient has good options, there’s still a lot more work to do. How do we address that in the meeting? I hope there is a lot of discussion at the meeting where people could be inspired to learn something from outside of their field. I think if we’re going to improve immunotherapy, it helps to learn from more than people who have been thinking about T-cell immunology forever, but think about broader aspects of cancer biology and cancer science. Because maybe there’ll be inspiration there to suggest a different approach that could help immunotherapy in a way that didn’t happen before. Or better understand resistance to RAS inhibitors, or better use antibody drug conjugates, or any other challenge. I feel strongly that, to make progress in science, we have to be open to new ideas and learning new things.
I hope that becomes part of the discussion around the meeting; that people really do take advantage to learn from many areas across the continuum of cancer science and hopefully inspire their own research to make a bigger difference for patients. Which, of course, is the big challenge.
And that is before we even get into what the challenges are of, as I said, early detection and interception, because there’s a whole new set of challenges in there. And I think trying to bring some of those things more into the conversation of the broader cancer research community will be important if we’re going to tackle those challenges in the future.
Siu: I think we do have several ultrasensitive assays now in the early cancer detection space. Obviously, for primary detection, it’s still a challenge. But in patients with, for example, molecular residual disease, I think with the current generation of ctDNA, there is a lot of promise that we can detect at very minute quantities of DNA that we can start seeing a whole new generation of intersection studies. And we will see at least one that I know of, in the clinical trials plenary, looking at MSI (Microsatellite Instability Status) high tumors with cancer interception in these tumors where we can detect ctDNA and try to intervene before they have a chance to become macro metastatic. So, I think it’s a challenge, but it’s an opportunity, and I see that as a very exciting area where a whole new field can be emerging because we can take a lot of the drugs we know could be active in the metastatic setting to be treated much earlier.
In terms of challenges, I recently wrote a commentary for Cancer Cell in terms of how we have designed trials up to this date being very linear, very cross-sectional, using one single profile at the most, even for precision medicine.
We haven’t been using a lot of data extrinsic to the patient or even intrinsic to the patient over a longitudinal timeframe beyond just genomics. And how we can best now, in the machine learning AI age, take all that information to help us make the best decisions for patient treatments (whether it’s an adaptive platform or other ways to design clinical trials to make it more flexible) and then we keep learning from it to help choose the right treatment for the next patient. I think there should be many more multidimensional studies than just one single linear point. So that is an area that I see as a challenge in terms of trials for patients.
LeMieux: Will there be any programming at the meeting that addresses the chaos going on right now with scientific funding and the administration?
Siu: Yes, we have an important special session titled, “Cancer Research at a Crossroads: Sustaining Progress Against Cancer for the Benefit of Patients.” Monica Bertagnolli, MD, and Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, will join AACR president Patricia LoRusso, DO, PhD, and other leaders from the scientific and patient advocacy communities to discuss the environment in Washington and its impact on cancer research, new discoveries, clinical trials, and the lives of patients who depend on continued progress.
The important thing is that cancer is still going to be with us, no matter what happens. So, the science has to go on, and this is why AACR is so important as a meeting, so that we can continue to develop our ideas to take it to the next step.
Vander Heiden: I will echo what Lillian said in that cancer is still with us. It is a burden that affects all people in society at some level. It’s hard to find anyone, anywhere in the world, that is not touched by cancer in some way or will be at some point in their lifetime, touched by cancer. All would agree that we need better options and better solutions for many, many people. And the goal of this meeting is not political. We want to help more cancer patients do better, and research is important to do that. And hopefully, this meeting can serve as a reminder for both the importance of research in addressing things like this to really matter to anybody, no matter what your politics might be.
LeMieux: What are you looking forward to outside of the sessions?
Siu: I am going to give an opening talk at the AACR run on Saturday morning. So, I have to start practicing and get in shape for the run since I’m not a runner (laughing). If I don’t show up at the opening plenary, it’s because I’m out of shape or collapsed, so please carry on without me!
Vander Heiden: I’m excited to run in the opening run! I’m also looking forward to Chicago. Chicago is a great city. It’s near and dear to my heart because I did my training there. I grew up not too far away from there in Wisconsin. Any chance I get to go back to Chicago is always fun. I think many people, if they haven’t been to Chicago, will really enjoy the city. It’s a big city, so there’s a little something there for everybody. There is fantastic food there and a lot of cultural things to do. I hope a lot of people will enjoy being in Chicago as much as I will that week.
The post AACR 2025 Chairs Identify Themes and Highlights From the Conference appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
Before the conference, GEN spoke with AACR program chairs Lillian L. Siu, MD, director of Phase I Clinical Trials Program, co-director, Robert and Maggie Bras and Family Drug Development Program, and clinical lead, Tumor Immunotherapy Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, and Matthew Vander Heiden, MD, PhD, director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, in Cambridge, MA.
In this interview, they share their perspectives on the event, what attendees should be looking out for, and what they, personally, are most looking forward to.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
LeMieux: When you were building the meeting program, what did you feel were some of the most important themes to include?
Vander Heiden: When we were planning the meeting, we tried to be cognizant that this is a meeting that covers all of cancer research from basic to clinical trials. And our hope was to build something across the meeting that would be interesting to everybody. But we also hoped to create opportunities for people to get out of their comfort zone and go learn about areas of science that are less directly focused on where they are. Because I think basic science can learn from the clinic, and clinical science obviously can benefit from a better understanding of basic science.
The theme of the meeting, “Unifying Cancer Science and Medicine, a Continuum of Innovation for Impact,” basically covers exactly what I said. That research benefits from the continuum of information and innovation, from basic understanding all the way through to clinical trials. And we tried to highlight that across the entire meeting, building sessions that demonstrate that, where possible. And even in the sessions where that was not possible, hopefully it’ll still be evident to fit that theme.
Siu: The fact that Matt and I are the co-chairs reflects the theme in the sense that Matt is a fundamental scientist with translational research as well. And I am a clinician with translational research in my portfolio. I think we complement each other in our interests and expertise, and I think that comes through in the sessions. It truly is a spectrum from bench to bedside, and back.
LeMieux: What are some of the hot topics for this year?
Siu: I will highlight the clinical trials that are being presented first, because obviously that’s close to my heart since I’m a clinician and I’m a clinical trialist. I think there are going to be several very high-profile trials. We have over 230 trials, or different types of clinical research trials, being presented. But I would say the ones that are going to be of highest profile will be, for example, KEYNOTE-689, which is being presented in a clinical trials plenary. That’s a head and neck cancer study where immunotherapy with pembrolizumab is added before surgical resection in patients with oral cavity cancers. I expect it will create quite a lot of interest in the head and neck community.
We also have some novel agents as well. For example, there is a HER2-selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor, zongertinib, which is being tested in patients with HER-2 mutant lung cancer, which tends to be harder to treat than HER-2 amplified cancers. And we are going to see an early readout of their response rates.
And there will be the first WRN helicase inhibitor being presented. Not the only one out there, but it’s one of the first ones reading out in patients who have MSI high tumors post immunotherapy, because for those who don’t respond, or for those who responded and then progressed on immunotherapy for MSI high tumors, there is a gap. And I think there is a lot of interest in the WRN helicase inhibitors in the past couple of years in terms of how these drugs will work out. So there are many of them. I just want to highlight a few.
Vander Heiden: The plenaries really cover a lot of exciting science across the spectrum of basic moving to translational research. And we thought long and hard in building the plenaries about what are up and coming areas, but also areas that are broadly interesting to many people. So, I don’t want to go through and list all the plenaries. But I can note a couple of things that we tried to focus on, that are maybe a little bit different than prior years. One is my own interest in basic science really lies at the intersection of how environment can influence many aspects of cancer. And I think you’ll see themes of that play out through many of the sessions and plenary, and you can define environment broadly in that respect.
But I think there is a little bit there for everybody. We have a focus across some of the sessions that is maybe a little bit different from past AACRs in really trying to highlight more research in prevention, interception, early detection. I think if we’re going to make a difference for reducing cancer, we need more focus in that space.
There is a little bit more on how we can learn from hememalignancies to understand solid tumors. Also, we did this year, for one of the first times, a survey of the membership because we wanted to know what the membership was interested in.
And we took care to try to build those things in—like extra chromosomal DNA and RAS inhibitors—based on that feedback into the program. I’m a little hesitant to overhighlight one or two things because that really reflects our interests. Neither of us are population scientists, but we also tried to build a lot of population science into the meaning and keep that up to date as well.
LeMieux: What are some of the biggest challenges right now in cancer biology that you think people will be discussing and talking about at the meeting?
Vander Heiden: We have a lot of new drugs out there. You’re going to hear some practice changing things, but there are still lots of pockets of cancer research where we need more research because we don’t do well enough with treating patients, right? Patients need better options. As amazing as immunotherapy has been, where it works, it’s great. Where it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
Or RAS inhibitors, which are amazing, and I think we will hear about a lot of exciting science advances in that space. But we also know some patients, even if they benefit for some time, don’t benefit forever. So how to deal with drug resistance, looking for places where we can offer new approaches and new therapies, and places where things don’t work, I think is really what the challenge of cancer research has always been and continues to be.
Until every patient has good options, there’s still a lot more work to do. How do we address that in the meeting? I hope there is a lot of discussion at the meeting where people could be inspired to learn something from outside of their field. I think if we’re going to improve immunotherapy, it helps to learn from more than people who have been thinking about T-cell immunology forever, but think about broader aspects of cancer biology and cancer science. Because maybe there’ll be inspiration there to suggest a different approach that could help immunotherapy in a way that didn’t happen before. Or better understand resistance to RAS inhibitors, or better use antibody drug conjugates, or any other challenge. I feel strongly that, to make progress in science, we have to be open to new ideas and learning new things.
I hope that becomes part of the discussion around the meeting; that people really do take advantage to learn from many areas across the continuum of cancer science and hopefully inspire their own research to make a bigger difference for patients. Which, of course, is the big challenge.
And that is before we even get into what the challenges are of, as I said, early detection and interception, because there’s a whole new set of challenges in there. And I think trying to bring some of those things more into the conversation of the broader cancer research community will be important if we’re going to tackle those challenges in the future.
Siu: I think we do have several ultrasensitive assays now in the early cancer detection space. Obviously, for primary detection, it’s still a challenge. But in patients with, for example, molecular residual disease, I think with the current generation of ctDNA, there is a lot of promise that we can detect at very minute quantities of DNA that we can start seeing a whole new generation of intersection studies. And we will see at least one that I know of, in the clinical trials plenary, looking at MSI (Microsatellite Instability Status) high tumors with cancer interception in these tumors where we can detect ctDNA and try to intervene before they have a chance to become macro metastatic. So, I think it’s a challenge, but it’s an opportunity, and I see that as a very exciting area where a whole new field can be emerging because we can take a lot of the drugs we know could be active in the metastatic setting to be treated much earlier.
In terms of challenges, I recently wrote a commentary for Cancer Cell in terms of how we have designed trials up to this date being very linear, very cross-sectional, using one single profile at the most, even for precision medicine.
We haven’t been using a lot of data extrinsic to the patient or even intrinsic to the patient over a longitudinal timeframe beyond just genomics. And how we can best now, in the machine learning AI age, take all that information to help us make the best decisions for patient treatments (whether it’s an adaptive platform or other ways to design clinical trials to make it more flexible) and then we keep learning from it to help choose the right treatment for the next patient. I think there should be many more multidimensional studies than just one single linear point. So that is an area that I see as a challenge in terms of trials for patients.
LeMieux: Will there be any programming at the meeting that addresses the chaos going on right now with scientific funding and the administration?
Siu: Yes, we have an important special session titled, “Cancer Research at a Crossroads: Sustaining Progress Against Cancer for the Benefit of Patients.” Monica Bertagnolli, MD, and Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, will join AACR president Patricia LoRusso, DO, PhD, and other leaders from the scientific and patient advocacy communities to discuss the environment in Washington and its impact on cancer research, new discoveries, clinical trials, and the lives of patients who depend on continued progress.
The important thing is that cancer is still going to be with us, no matter what happens. So, the science has to go on, and this is why AACR is so important as a meeting, so that we can continue to develop our ideas to take it to the next step.
Vander Heiden: I will echo what Lillian said in that cancer is still with us. It is a burden that affects all people in society at some level. It’s hard to find anyone, anywhere in the world, that is not touched by cancer in some way or will be at some point in their lifetime, touched by cancer. All would agree that we need better options and better solutions for many, many people. And the goal of this meeting is not political. We want to help more cancer patients do better, and research is important to do that. And hopefully, this meeting can serve as a reminder for both the importance of research in addressing things like this to really matter to anybody, no matter what your politics might be.
LeMieux: What are you looking forward to outside of the sessions?
Siu: I am going to give an opening talk at the AACR run on Saturday morning. So, I have to start practicing and get in shape for the run since I’m not a runner (laughing). If I don’t show up at the opening plenary, it’s because I’m out of shape or collapsed, so please carry on without me!
Vander Heiden: I’m excited to run in the opening run! I’m also looking forward to Chicago. Chicago is a great city. It’s near and dear to my heart because I did my training there. I grew up not too far away from there in Wisconsin. Any chance I get to go back to Chicago is always fun. I think many people, if they haven’t been to Chicago, will really enjoy the city. It’s a big city, so there’s a little something there for everybody. There is fantastic food there and a lot of cultural things to do. I hope a lot of people will enjoy being in Chicago as much as I will that week.
The post AACR 2025 Chairs Identify Themes and Highlights From the Conference appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.