The highly successful International Symposium on Targeted Anticancer Therapies (TAT) was continued in Paris, France, March 7-9, 2011, under the presidency of Professor Jean-Charles Soria, Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif. TAT meetings provide a forum for in-depth discussion of new targets and emerging targeted agents for the treatment of cancer. The focus of the TAT congress is always on innovative agents with a cancer-specific molecular target, in particular the most promising ones in early-phase clinical development.
Among the new targets discussed this time were e.g. BRAF,KRAS, DNA damage repair, various metabolic and immunological targets, Hsp90, and the PI3K-Akt-mTOR pathway. In addition, the program addressed possibilities for refining anti-angiogenic therapy and the emerging use of whole genome data in drug discovery and development. New, not previously reported data from phase 1 clinical trials were presented by several lecturers.
A definite highlight was the NDDO Honorary Award Lecture 2011, presented by Dr. Giuseppe Giaccone, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD. He reviewed the changing landscape lung cancer and its treatment in the era of targeted agents. Dr. Giaccone has been the President of most previous TAT meetings and is chairman of the TAT Scientific Advisory Board.
Well over 40 oral papers and about 60 posters were presented by the world’s leading experts in the development of targeted therapies. Abstracts and many presentations can be viewed elsewehere on this website. The meeting was attended by close to 500 delegates, which was in middle of the range we were aiming at. Delegates represented well over 40 countries and they were roughly equally distributed in terms of academic and corporate affiliation. Delegates’ appreciation, as evidenced by their ratings in the online meeting evaluation, was generally high. Most aspects of TAT 2011 received an average rating above 4.0 on a 1 to 5 rating scale.
The TAT congress series is offered by the NDDO Education Foundation, in a partnership with the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) andco-sponored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the USA. The next congress, TAT 2012, will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, March 8-10, 2012.
