ASCO Abstracts!

The ASCO Abstracts are finally available!

If you've been reading the blog for a few years, you know how much I love this time of year. The ASCO conference (the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology) starts next week. It's the largest gathering of oncologists in the country, and the place where many researchers try to present their findings, knowing they will have a large potential audience.

Before the conference begins, the abstracts are released. It's like Christmas for Cancer Nerds -- those who are planning to attend can read summaries of the research and decide which presentations they want to go to. As I have said, I've never been able to attend an ASCO in person (it's never a good time of year for me), but ASCO allows to patient advocates to see some extra stuff online, so I'm looking forward to a deep dive.

So far, there are only 20 abstracts available when I search for "Follicular Lymphoma," which is fewer than usual. However, the email announcement that I got last night said that "over half" of the abstracts are now available, so I suspect a few more will trickle in soon.

Twenty isn't a lot, but I can see a couple of trends already.

First, there are three abstracts for Odronextamab. This is the bi-specific that was denied approval a couple of months ago by the FDA, but only because they didn't have enough data yet, not because of safety or effectiveness issues. The three abstracts look at data from three different trials -- one comparing Odronextamab + chemo with Rituxan + chemo in previously untreated FL; another that looks at Odronextamab on its own in previously untreated FL; and a third that looks at Odronextamab + Lenalidomide compared to Rituxan + Lenalidomide (R-Squared) in refractory/relapsed FL. They're certainly testing it in lots of different situations.

Similarly, there are several abstracts for Epcoritamab, another bispecific. It has already been approved in the U.S. and Europe for aggressive lymphomas, and it got quite a bit of attention at the ASH conference in December.  Same with ASCO, with several more abstracts looking at its effectiveness in combination with other treatments for FL.

Finally, one more trend -- a bunch of "real world" studies. These are research studies, usually from just one cancer center, that happen after a treatment has been approved. The idea is that a clinical trial usually limits who can participate. For example, it might not allow patients with heart disease in the trial, since that would make it harder to tell if the treatment being tested has caused heart damage. It makes sense. But a "real world" trial doesn't have so many restrictions. The researchers want to know what happens to everyone who has the treatment, not just the group that was allowed in the trial. There seem to be a larger-than-usual number of presentations with "real world" in their titles. That could be that there are fewer overall, so they stand out more. Or it could be that there are more treatments being approved that can now be studies outside of trials. Either way, real world studies tell us more about how a treatment actually works.

One thing that also stands out is how few CAR-T presentations there are. We may see more of them in the next week, as the rest of the abstracts come in. It's important to keep in mind that what's available so far isn't what's hot or popular; if anything, it means the people reporting on the research are earlier. (Presentations about active trials, for example, might wait until the last minute to make sure they have as much data as possible. Real world studies don't have the same urgency, since they're reporting on a treatment that has already been approved. They don't need up-to-the-minute data.)

In addition to FL presentations, I'll look at some of the other research out there, especially things dealing with survivorship and quality of life, which have become more important to me lately.

Check back soon. And if there's something super-exciting that has the whole meeting abuzz, I'll get that out right away.