Our Chair of Trustees, Maisie, attended the British Sarcoma Group annual conference held in Oxford earlier this year
It was an insightful day, filled with presentations and discussions covering clinical practices, such as latest trials, therapies and approaches to support patients.
Key highlights included Dr Scott Arthur’s Rare Cancers Bill discussion and also the diagnostics, Immunotherapy and targeted therapies sessions highlighted some relevant findings for Leiomyosarcoma.
Dr Scott Arthur highlighted his aims and motivations behind the bill and what his longer-term objectives are. This was supported by the wider public community and received positively by the BSG.
Some examples of LMS related studies noted from the conference include:
– Imaging heterogeneity and radiotherapy response in pre-clinical models of soft-tissue sarcoma with multi-parametric MRI
– Demonstrating the sensitivity of mpMRI-derived biomarkers to therapy-induced structural changes in STS models, supporting their potential for early-response assessment, treatment prediction and improved characterisation of STS heterogeneity.
– Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICIs) in Advanced Soft-tissue Sarcoma (STS), concluding for their study that ICIs are effective in selected sarcoma subtypes, including ASPS, head and neck sarcomas and sarcomas with high Tumour Mutational Burden (TMB) or Mismatch Repair Deficiency (MMRd).
– Also that Genomic profiling may guide precision immunotherapy and help identify patients most likely to benefit.
There were also some deeper dive conversations with our principal investigators regarding our supported projects, and discussions on further collaboration between those interested in working on Leiomyosarcoma in our community.