28th NOV, 2007
Abstract Submission Deadline Nurses Group.
Abstract Submission Deadline Physicians & Data Management Group.
Deadline for early registration (reduced fee) and Hotel reservation.
Notification for acceptance of abstracts.
Final Programme available on the Internet.
Deadline for intermediate registration fee.
2nd Patient & Family Day, Florence, Italy.
EBMT 2008 congress in progress, Florence, Italy.
Please for more information about a specific meeting refer to:
30th MAR–2nd APR, 2008
EBMT 2008
Working Party Report: Solid Tumours Working Party
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Since my election at the EBMT 2007 Lyon meeting as the new Chairperson of the STWP it has been an immense pleasure for me to continue the endeavour of Prof. Taner Demirer, who should be thanked for his hard work over the last six years. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Lisbeth Barkholt who participated in the ballot with me, and to Dr. Jacques-Olivier Bay from Hôtel-Dieu in Clermont Ferrand, France, who has since been appointed as the Secretary of the Solid Tumours Working Party (STWP).
In the five months since my election the Working Party has been extremely busy with the following projects:
Seventh Framework Programme
We have submitted a proposal entitled 'Innovative Radiotherapy and Stem Cell Transplantation' to the second call (deadline 18th September) of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission under the following topic:
“HEALTH-2007-2.4.1-9: Innovative combination clinical trials for multimodal cancer therapy. Collaborative efforts combining novel radiation therapy strategies with either chemotherapy, immunotherapy and/or other biologically-based therapeutic strategies in a phase I or II setting should result in improving quality of life and/or survival of patients suffering from cancer”.
A consortium of 13 transplant centres from six different countries (France, Italy, Germany, UK, Spain, Australia) and two biotech companies has been implemented under the co-ordination of Dr. Michael Flentje, Director of the Radiation Therapy Department at Würzburg University. The basic concept underlying this project is to exploit the synergistic effect of highly focussed radiation treatment and systemic immunotherapy delivered by allogeneic stem cell transplantation in solid tumours. Radiotherapy will be utilised in the conditioning regimen as low-dose total lymphoid irradiation plus anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) (Lowsky et al, N Engl J Med 2005; 353:1321-31) for reducing graft-versus-host-disease and associated transplant related mortality (TRM), and after transplant as a local-regional modality to control disease progression and to increase tumour-specific immunity.
Indeed, considerable evidence indicates that radiotherapy (RT) generates inflammatory signals that can modify the tumour micro-environment, and provide both tumor-associated antigens from dying cells and maturation stimuli for dendritic cell activation and presentation to T-cells (Int J Radation Onc Biol Phys 2005; 63:655). RT increases cell surface expression of MHC Class I molecules in a dose-dependent manner, and the presentation of new peptides to cytotoxic T cells (J Exp Med 2006; 203:1259), enhances expression of Fas (CD95) in murine tumour cells, thus increasing tumour cells’ susceptibility to T-cell mediated immune attack. Taken together, this data indicates that radiotherapy should not be considered merely as immuno-suppressive but rather immuno-modulating, setting the stage for developing rational protocols of radiotherapy in combination with adoptive T-cell therapy. We have proposed three Phase II studies of allogeneic transplantation in advanced renal cell cancer, ovarian cancer, and soft-tissue sarcoma.
The clinical studies will be associated with preclinical and immune monitoring studies. This novel co-operation between radiotherapists and transplant specialists in allografting for solid tumours holds promise for future collaborative research and clinical studies.
Meta-Analysis Project
We have been continuing with our work on the Meta-Analysis Project for Bone Marrow Transplant Randomised Trials of High-Dose Chemotherapy in Primary and Metastatic Breast Cancer. This joint project between EBMT and CIBMTR, headed by Donald Berry at MD Anderson Cancer Center, aims to analyse the effects of autologous transplant in early and advanced breast cancer (disease-free survival, breast cancer survival and overall survival) by pooling together the data of all randomised trials performed worldwide. The first study of this project has been the meta-analysis of individual patient data from 15 randomised adjuvant breast cancer trials. The data is intriguing, and an abstract with the preliminary results has been accepted as an oral presentation at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2007 (SABCS). An international prospective randomised study of tandem high-dose chemotherapy with autografting versus conventional-dose chemotherapy as adjuvant treatment in high-risk breast cancer is currently in preparation by Ulrike Nitz and Naoto Ueno.
Meetings
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Participants at last year's ATST Meeting |
The STWP in collaboration with Richard Childs and Naoto Ueno will be organising the Third Allogeneic Transplan-tation in Solid Tumours (ATST) meeting. This one-day meeting, that follows the successful Milan (2002) and Stresa (2006) meetings, will be held on 28th March, 2008 at the charming mediaeval Santa Maria della Scala Museum, one of Europe’s oldest hospitals. The town of Siena is approximately a 40-minute car drive from Florence, where the 34th annual EBMT meeting will commence on 30th March. The 3rd ATST meeting will update results on allogeneic transplantation for solid tumours, highlighting the collective experience with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, breast carcinoma, and colon cancer.
The topics of the meeting will be: Methods to Enhance Graft-vs-tumour effects utilising Tumour Antigen Specific T-cells; Alloreactive NK Cells; Post-transplant Tumour Vaccine Approaches; Bench-to-bedside Studies Investigating Adoptive Donor NK Cells Infusions; and The Recent Discovery of Several New Tumour Antigens Over-expressed on Cancer Cells Identified using T-cells from Responding Transplant Patients. Pre-clinical data evaluating transplant approaches that incorporate drugs inhibiting tumour angiogenesis and tyrosine kinases with activity against renal cancer and breast carcinoma will also be reviewed. The final section of the programme will be dedicated to constructing an international solid tumour transplant consortium to pursue multi-centre studies investigating novel allogeneic immunotherapy protocols for solid tumours. The final programme of the meeting will be available on the EBMT website later this month.
Marco Bregni
Chair Solid Tumours Working Party
