PER to Host New European Conferences

For the first time, Physicians’ Education Resource (PER®) will host 2 European conferences, providing more opportunities for oncology professionals worldwide to learn and collaborate with leading experts in the fields. The conferences—one focused on immunotherapy and the other on hematology—will be hosted in conjunction with PER’s international af liate PER® Global, LLC.

“We at PER are dedicated to advancing cancer care through professional education, and we recognize the immense need for increased educational opportunities in Europe,” said Phil Talamo, CHCP, president of PER. “PER is the best at providing the most impactful oncology conferences that translate the latest clinical information into actionable patient treatment and management strategies, with the leading experts in the world. We are thrilled to bring these powerful legacy programs to European oncologists.”

PER’s European presence will kick off with the 1st Annual European Congress on Immunotherapies in Cancer, to be held September 23-24, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference will be focused exclusively on immunotherapies and their practical application to the management of cancer. An interactive program and comprehensive review of key data sets that are most relevant for the clinician who manages some of the most difficult-to-treat forms of cancer will be provided.

The co-chairs of the meeting will be Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, surgery, and molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Roman Perez-Soler, MD, chairman and chief of the department of medical oncology at Montefiore Medical Center and professor of medicine and molecular pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The meeting’s focus is particularly timely, as immunotherapies are making significant strides across multiple cancer types, said Ribas.

“Immunotherapy has changed the field of oncology,” he said. “There is a continued excitement for immunotherapy in cancer. We are seeing activity of checkpoint blockade therapy in about 15 cancers. It’s the most rapidly expanding area of medical oncology.”

The meeting will be unlike many other oncology meetings, said Ribas, as it will feature new insights from the experts that built the eld of immunotherapy, instead of information that has been previously presented at other meetings. Since immunotherapy also crosses multiple cancers, the meeting will be a great opportunity for collaboration, he said.

“Having those from multiple cancers together at the same meeting helps in understanding the mechanism beyond specific indications,” he said. “We can think about, for example, PD-1 blockade in bladder cancer versus lung cancer, but the way they work is the same. The basis of how it works and how we can move forward and expand the uses is all based on understanding the mechanism.”

Topics presented at this year’s meeting will include: updates in clinical immunotherapy across tumor types, practical challenges in expanding and commercializing immunotherapy platforms, integrating available immunotherapeutics into standard approaches, modulating the tumor-microenvironment- immune system interface, combination therapy approaches, incorporating biomarkers into trials versus practice, and overcoming resistance.

The second internationally-held PER conference, the inaugural “European Congress on Hematology: Focus on Lymphoid Malignancies,” will occur November 3-5 in Paris, France.

The conference, also known as “Paris Lymphoma,” will feature a practical and interactive program that will focus on improving patient care for the clinician who manages patients with lymphoid malignancies.

“As PER Global is expanding its oncology and hematology CME offerings, this congress will draw leading international experts and European physicians to discuss and address ongoing, worldwide advances in managing lymphoid malignancies,” said Talamo. “Given the fast pace at which practice-changing evidence continues to emerge, clinicians face the constant challenge to maintain state-of-the-art care in managing patients with these tumors. Our Paris Lymphoma congress is specifically developed to assist those physicians now and in the future.”

The conference will be chaired by Anas Younes, MD, professor and chief of the Lymphoma Service and medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Gilles A. Salles, MD, PhD, university professor, department head, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon, in Lyon, France.

Younes stressed the importance of the conferences in the rapidly changing hematology field.

“I think it is a timely update on the state of cancer treatment, mainly lymphoma malignancies, lymphomas, CLL, multiple myeloma, and Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia,” he said. “Many new agents have been approved by the FDA and EMA and busy oncologists and hematologists may not be up to speed on how to manage these agents, their side effects, and how to sequence these new treatment regimens. It’s going to be very important.”

At the event, leading international experts will participate in lectures and panels that will discuss recent data sets, allowing for interactive discussion and for participants to engage directly with faculty to share their perspectives, personal experiences, and methods to address clinical challenges in the management of lymphoid malignancies.

Topics discussed will include: current and evolving genomic and molecular biomarkers that can be used to stratify risk and inform clinical decision making in the management of hematologic malignancies, landmark clinical trial results in the context of how they impact evolving clinical practice paradigms and can be applied to personalize care and optimize outcomes, and effective strategies to proactively mitigate and manage predictable side effects related to the management of hematologic malignancies so as to maximize treatment outcomes.

“It’s a unique meeting and different from other lymphoma meetings because we invited a very selective group of speakers to give a short summary of certain disease topics and then really allow for long discussions regarding how to treat cases and how to incorporate new agents that were recently approved by regulatory agencies into current treatment strategies,” Younes said, highlighting the peer-to-peer aspect of the meeting. “The most important thing is the ability to exchange ideas and discuss new ideas and approaches to different treatments by the speakers, and also between the speakers and the audience participants.”

Both the Paris Lymphoma meeting and the immunotherapy congress are directed toward healthcare professionals based outside of the United States and are speci cally designed for medical oncologists and other healthcare professionals, including physicians, physicians-in-training, oncology nurses, pharmacists, and physicians’ assistants, involved in the treatment and management of patients with cancer.