Programma 2024

Biografie:
I am a professor in interventional pulmonology at Radboud Univeristy Medical Center in Nijmegen the Netherlands. My research is focused on early stage lung cancer, and more specifically on the diagnosis, staging and treatment of small peripheral nodules. This research is embedded in a large multidisciplinary thoracic oncology unit. I have developed cone-beamCT based navigation bronchoscopy which has now been incorporated into the national health care insurance program, and I host and chair our the national training and reference center for navigation bronchoscopy techniques.

Sessie informatie:
In this presentation the lateste developments in the field of navigation bronchoscopy will be presented and summarized and placed into the clinical need given the increased detection of (solitary) pulmonary nodules, and future societal impact of the long whished and needed start of lung cancer screening.

Biografie:
Daniel H. Sterman, M.D., is the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Departments of Medicine and Cardiothoracic Surgery at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, Director of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, and Director of the Multidisciplinary Pulmonary Oncology Program at NYU Langone Health in New York City. He was previously lead clinical investigator in the multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Research Group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Principal Investigator of the Clinical Trials Project for the Penn NCI thoracic oncology program project grant from 1997-2015.

Dr. Sterman’s research interests are related to the treatment of thoracic malignancies, specifically as they apply to the synergy of molecular medicine, tumor immunotherapy and novel technologies in Interventional Pulmonology. Over the past 25 years, he has focused on the translation of laboratory discoveries from the bench to the bedside: conducting multiple human clinical trials of gene therapy and vaccine therapy for lung cancer, mesothelioma, and other pleural malignancies.

More recently, as Director of the NYU PORT (Pulmonary Oncology Research Team), Dr. Sterman has expanded his research interests into assessment of the immune microenvironment of tumor-draining lymph nodes, as well as the development of local intra-tumoral and intra-nodal immunotherapies. He is currently co-national PI of the LuTK02 clinical trial of intratumoral CAN-2409 in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer refractory to immune checkpoint inhibition, as well as global PI of the INFINITE clinical trial, a randomized Phase III clinical trial of intrapleural adenovirus-interferon alpha 2b in combination with chemotherapy as second/third line therapy for unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Sessie informatie:
Navigational bronchoscopy as a next frontier in thoracic oncology

Biografie:
Dr. De Ruysscher earned his medical degree at the University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1986, and became Radiation Oncologist at the same university in 1991. In 1992, he obtained his PhD thesis at the University of Leuven on the influence of radiotherapy on immunity. At present, Dr. De Ruysscher is full Professor of Radiation Oncology/ Respiratory Oncology both at the Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht, and at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
He heads of the Division Maastro Clinical Research, chairs the Dutch Platform for Radiotherapy of Lung Cancer, chairs the EORTC Lung Cancer Group/ Oligometastatic and new development group and was the former chair of DUPROTON (the Dutch organization for proton therapy research).

He is the coordinator of the biobank project at Maastro Clinic that was able to include about 10000 patients for radiogenomic studies.

He was or is the study coordinator of seven phase I trials, twenty-four phase II trials, seven phase III trials and one observational study, dealing with individualized radiation-dose escalation, combining targeted agents with radiotherapy, the development of new PET tracers, molecular pathways involved in radiation damage, individualized radiotherapy, proton therapy, meta-analyses, cost-effectiveness, radiomics, prophylactic cranial irradiation, immune therapy and predictive and prognostic molecular biomarkers.

In 2019, he received the biennial ESTRO Claudius Regaud Gold Medal.
Dr. De Ruysscher published over 450 peer-reviewed Wi-1 papers and chapters in several scientific books.

Sessie informatie:
I will present the gains and the evolution in radiotherapy in relation to the expanding filed of systemic treatments.

Biografie:
I am a dedicated clinician and thoracic oncologist, currently engaged at Amsterdam UMC. At the 25th National Lung Cancer Symposium in Amsterdam, I will present on ‘IO Therapy for Sulcus Superior Tumors’, focusing on the practicalities and challenges in the field.

In my role as a researcher, I’ve had the opportunity to be part of several multimodality therapy studies, with a focus on immunotherapy. This work forms a part of my ongoing journey of learning and collaboration within the thoracic oncology group at Amsterdam UMC.

Sessie informatie:
Immunotherapy (IO) represents a pivotal development in the treatment of superior sulcus tumors (SSTs), a unique subset of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Standard SST management involves concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CRT), followed by surgical resection in the absence of metastasis or progression post-CRT.

The INCREASE study is a highly interesting exploration into adding dual immunotherapy to high-dose CRT in the neoadjuvant setting for locally advanced NSCLC. This trial demonstrated an approximate doubling of the pathologic complete response (pCR) as compared to historical pCR rates achieved with CRT alone. The combination of a PD-1 and a CTLA4 blocker significantly enhanced pCR rates, indicating improved treatment efficacy over traditional approaches.

These results align with other trials like NEOSTAR, emphasizing increased pathological responses when combining immunotherapy with chemotherapy in resectable NSCLC. While MPR and pCR are not direct survival endpoints, they are indicative of potential improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival. The study also highlighted that genomic features might affect the efficacy of the IPI-NIVO-CRT combination, as some patients with specific mutations had residual viable tumor cells after treatment.

While INCREASE’s findings may advocate for integrating dual immunotherapy into SST treatment, potentially boosting survival rates, the study also reported a higher incidence of treatment-related adverse effects, suggesting the need for careful patient selection and optimized therapy approaches. This study marks a significant step in refining IO strategies for SST, aiming to maximize efficacy while reducing toxicity, and underscores the importance of continued research in this area.

Biografie:

Paul Van Schil was born on July 7, 1957 in Antwerp, Belgium. He graduated from medical school with great honour in 1982 at the Antwerp University in Belgium. After completing his training in general surgery, he became a fellow in the department of cardiothoracic surgery at the Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Bronchial sleeve resection for lung cancer: long-term results” (University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1992).
In 1990 he became a staff member at the department of surgery of the Antwerp University Hospital. Currently, he is professor emeritus in thoracic and vascular surgery at the Faculty of Medicine of the Antwerp University, member of the Antwerp Surgical Training and Research Center (ASTARC) and consultant surgeon at the department of thoracic and vascular surgery of the Antwerp University Hospital.

From October 2013 till October 2014 he was president of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery (EACTS). In 2017 he became member of Board of Directors of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and chair of the lung cancer domain of its Staging and Prognostic Factors Committee (SPFC). In September 2023 he became president of IASLC for a period of 2 years. Currently, he is an associate editor of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Pulmonology and Acta Chirurgica Belgica.

His main interests are thoracic and vascular surgery with a special emphasis on lung cancer staging and therapy, lung metastases, thymoma and mesothelioma.

Sessie informatie:
Thymic epithelial tumours: care for the rare

Thymic epithelial tumors (TET) are rare neoplasms of the prevascular (anterior) mediastinum. This heterogeneous group of lesions consists of thymomas and thymic carcinomas. They are classified according to the WHO (histology), Masaoka-Koga and TNM classifications. In the new, 9th edition of the TNM classification a distinction is made between tumours until 5 cm (T1a) and tumours larger than 5 cm (T1b). T2 tumours comprise not only invasion of pericardium, but also ingrowth into lung parenchyma and phrenic nerve.

Every patient should be discussed in a dedicated multidisciplinary team. Surgery is the mainstay of treatment of tumors that are judged to be resectable. However, up till now, optimal surgical access has been a subject of debate. The advent of new techniques, especially in the field of minimally invasive surgery, such as video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and robotic-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (RATS), challenged the classical median sternotomy. For tumours that are considered to be initially unresectable, combined modality treatment is recommended with neoadjuvant treatment consisting of chemotherapy, sometimes in combination with radiotherapy, followed by restaging to determine resectability.