ALEXANDRIA, Va. – More than 150 members of the Association of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the leading professional organization for oncology professionals, will meet with Members of Congress on Tuesday urging them to make cancer care a top priority.

“Lawmakers have a profound effect on cancer patients and their doctors. From funding the research that leads to new groundbreaking treatments, to ensuring those treatments are covered by insurance and accessible and affordable to patients; lawmakers play a pivotal role,” said ASCO Board Chair Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO.

Adding toripalimab to perioperative chemotherapy led to an improvement in event-free survival for patients with stage III resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to research that will be presented during the April 2023 session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Plenary Series.  

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Today the National Cancer Institute (NCI) released an ambitious National Cancer Plan designed to accelerate scientific progress against the disease, maximize the potential of discovery and achieve the goal of the Cancer Moonshot initiative to “end cancer as we know it.”

Dr. Brian Persing, a medical oncologist and hematologist in Mobile, Alabama and member of the Association of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the world’s leading professional organization representing nearly 45,000 oncology professionals, will testify before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor Health and Human Services and Education today in support of increased federal funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Cancer Prevention and Control. He will also advocate for robust funding of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). 

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – In a study of more than 1,100 people with COVID-19 undergoing treatment for cancer, researchers found lower COVID-19 vaccination rates among patients with comorbidities, metastatic solid tumors or non-B-cell hematologic malignancies, and those living in areas with lower education attainment and higher levels of unemployment. The study, funded by Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation, was published today in Cancer. 

Eight notable studies exploring new approaches in the treatment and management of genitourinary cancers will be presented at the 2023 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, taking place February 16-18, 2023, at the Moscone West Building in San Francisco, California.  

The TALAPRO-2 phase III clinical trial found that a polymerase inhibitor combined with an androgen receptor inhibitor had significantly better progression-free survival (PFS) versus the current standard of care for people with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), regardless of homologous recombination repair pathway status. Homologous recombination repair involves a pathway that can help fix DNA double-strand breaks and cross-links between DNA strands.