Symposium Co-Chairs
George W. Sledge, Jr., MD
Ballve-Lantero Professor
of Oncology and Pathology
Co-Director, Breast Cancer Program
Indiana University Cancer Center
Co-Chair, Breast Committee,
The Eastern Oncology Cooperative Group
(ECOG)
Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD
Chief, Division of Hematology-Oncology
Professor and Executive Vice Chair, Department of Medicine
Director for Clinical Research
Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
Director, Revlon/UCLA Women’s Health Research and Cancer Research Programs
University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine
Los Angeles, CA
Carlos L. Arteaga, MD
Vice Chancellor's
Professor of Breast Cancer Research
Professor of Medicine and
Professor of Cancer Biology
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
Nashville, TN
Edi Brogi, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Associate Attending Pathologist
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
New York, NY
Powel H. Brown, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine,
Baylor College of Medicine
Associate Director of Cancer Prevention,
Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center
Director of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Program,
Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center
Associate Director of Research,
Breast Center
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX
Lisa A. Carey, MD
Medical Director, UNC Breast Center
University of North Carolina
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
Chapel Hill, NC
David Flockhart, MD, PhD
Director, Division of Endocrinology and
Clinical Pharmacology
Indiana University School of Medicine
Indianapolis, IN
Clifford A. Hudis, MD
Chief, Breast Cancer Medicine Service
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
New York, NY
Co-Chair, Breast Committee,
The Cancer and Leukemia Group B
(CALGB)
Kelly K. Hunt, MD, FACS
Professor of Surgery
Chief, Surgical Breast Section
Department of Surgical Oncology
The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX
V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc
Senior Member
Medical Science Division
Vice President and Scientific Director for Medical Science
Alfred G Knudson Jr. Chair in Cancer Research
Fox Chase Cancer Center
Philadelphia, PA
Allan Lipton, MD
Professor of Medicine and Oncology
M. S. Hershey Medical Center of
The Pennsylvania State University
Hershey, PA
Eleftherios P. Mamounas, MD, MPH, FACS
Professor of Surgery,
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Medical Director, Aultman Cancer Center
Canton, Ohio
Chairman, Breast Committee,
National Surgical Adjuvant Breast
and Bowel Project (NSABP)
Hyman Muss , MD
Professor of Medicine
Vermont Cancer Center of
Fletcher Allen Health Care
Burlington, VT
Mark Pegram, MD
Professor of Medicine and Oncology
University of Miami Cancer Center
Miami, FL
Edith A. Perez, MD
Professor of Medicine
Director, Clinical Research,
Mayo Clinic
Jacksonville, FL
Chair, Breast Committee,
The North Central Cancer Treatment Group
(NCCTG)
Charles M. Perou, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Genetics
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
Lori J. Pierce, MD
Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs Professor,
Department of Radiation Oncology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
Malcom C. Pike, PhD
Professor and Acting Chair
Flora L. Thornton Professor
USC Norris Cancer Center
Los Angeles, CA
Michael F. Press, MD, PhD
Holder of Harold E. Lee Chair in Cancer Research
Professor of Pathology
Keck School of Medicine
USC Norris Cancer Center
Los Angeles, CA
Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil
Associate Professor of Medicine
Department of Breast Medical Oncology
The University of Texas
M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX
Daniel Silver, MD PhD
Instructor,
Department of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Instructor, Cancer Biology
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, MA
W. Fraser Symmans, MD
Professor of Pathology
The University of Texas
M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX
Katherine Weilbaecher, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine,
Washington University School of Medicine
Division of Molecular Oncology
St. Louis, MO
Jeffrey N. Weitzel, MD
Professor of Medicine,
Medical Oncology
Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics and Cancer Screening and Prevention Program
City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Duarte, CA
Eric P. Winer, MD
Director, Breast Oncology Center
Thompson Investigator in Breast Cancer Research
Department of Medical Oncology
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard Cancer Center
Boston, MA
Co-Chair, Breast Committee,
The Cancer and Leukemia
Group B (CALGB)
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A 1 & 1/2 day, weekend, comprehensive course, taught by the distinguished experts in breast cancer, that is designed to help oncologists and hematologist/oncologists treat their breast cancer patients with a personalized approach, focusing on clinical therapies that can be applied today.
This symposium contains the most up-to-date clinical and scientific information on the personalized treatments of breast cancer.
Earn 13 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ while you are extensively interacting with the distinguished expert faculty through audience response selection of therapies for patient cases, voting on debates on critical topics, and involved in numerous panel discussions, consensus sessions, and asking questions of the faculty.
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CO-CHAIRS
George W. Sledge, Jr., MD
Ballve-Lantero Professor of Oncology and Pathology
Co-Director, Breast Cancer Program
Indiana University Cancer Center, Indianapolis, IN
Co-Chair, Breast Committee, The Eastern Oncology Cooperative Group (ECOG)
Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD
Chief, Division of Hematology-Oncology
Professor and Executive Vice Chair, Department of Medicine
Director for Clinical Research
Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
Director, Revlon/UCLA Women’s Health Research and Cancer Research Programs
University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine
Los Angeles, CA
SESSION CHAIRS
and
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
(and who also are faculty)
Lisa A. Carey, MD
Medical Director, UNC Breast Center
University of North Carolina
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
Chapel Hill, NC
Clifford A. Hudis, MD
Chief, Breast Cancer Medicine Service
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
New York, NY
Co-Chair, Breast Committee,
The Cancer and Leukemia Group B
(CALGB)
Allan Lipton, MD
Professor of Medicine and Oncology
M. S. Hershey Medical Center of
the Pennsylvania State University
Hershey, PA
Mark Pegram, MD
Professor of Medicine and Oncology
University of Miami Cancer Center
Miami, FL
Edith A. Perez, MD
Professor of Medicine
Director, Clinical Research,
Mayo Clinic
Jacksonville, FL
Chair, Breast Committee,
The North Central Cancer Treatment Group
(NCCTG)
Lori J. Pierce, MD
Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs Professor,
Department of Radiation Oncology
University of Michigan
AnnArbor, MI
Eric P. Winer, MD
Director, Breast Oncology Center
Thompson Investigator in Breast Cancer Research
Department of Medical Oncology
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute /
Harvard Cancer Center
Boston, MA
Co-Chair, Breast Committee,
The Cancer and Leukemia Group B
(CALGB)
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| Why Attend This Symposium |
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This symposium is the second of an annual series of CME symposia designed to provide physicians involved with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer with the knowledge and competence to personalize their therapies and to improve the outcomes of their patients with this malignancy.
Unlike the other annual breast cancer symposia, meetings and congresses that are much larger and, which often present too much information on too many topics, this 1 & 1/2 day weekend symposium provides physicians with a comprehensive update on how to apply the most up-to-date therapies for breast cancer patients using what is becoming the state-of-the-art approach to treating breast cancer today: personalized therapies.
We expect the Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer will be even more successful than last year’s program. This is based upon the following: continued advances during this past year involving the science of predictive and prognostic biomarkers, and also validations and improved outcomes in the clinic, regarding the personalizing of therapies for breast cancer patients, and, because of the many agenda and format improvements we have made to an already very well attended and highly rated symposium as a result of the following important sources of information: detailed feedback contained in the nearly 200 participants' evaluations from the First Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies of Breast Cancer; many in-depth telephone and personal interviews with attendees and faculty of that symposium, and, also feedback from attendees and faculty of the First Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies of Lung Cancer and Head & Neck Cancer, which was held in Chicago, in September 2008.
This symposium is taught by the true breast cancer experts. Many of the same expert breast faculty are returning for this second annual symposium. Like last year, to help ensure this symposium’s fair balance and state-of-the-art content, all but one of the Breast Committee Chairs from all of the National Cancer Institute Cooperative Study Groups, are part of this educational activity’s distinguished faculty. And because of the relatively small size of the audience and the interactive format of this symposium, you will have a unique opportunity to ask questions from the clinical and scientific researchers who are the pioneers in personalizing therapies for breast cancer.
The high degree of success with last year’s First Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer is supported by the following metrics:
- The total number of participants was 261, enabling the participants to have considerable interaction with and direct access to the expert faculty.
- Ninety-one percent of the participants' evaluations rated the symposium as “very positive.”
- The faculty was comprised of 31 experts, including the Breast Cancer Committee Chairs from all of the National Cancer Institute Cooperative Study Groups, and other very prestigious scientific and clinical experts in the field of personalizing breast cancer therapy.
- First Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer received financial support from 13 pharmaceutical companies.
- The 45 Sessions of the First Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer can be viewed as Web casts and PowerPoint Slides and audio can be downloaded from the following Web site:
http://www.olccme.com/enduring/breast/overview.php
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| What's New This Year |
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The following improvements have been made to an already successful program. This Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer will further increase the interactivity between the audience and faculty, and, the content and format have been restructured to help make the evolving “personalizing science” more immediately applicable to physicians’ practices.
- Ten new expert faculty members (nearly half of the entire faculty) have been invited, including Drs. Carlos Arteaga, Allan Lipton, Hyman Muss, W. Fraser Symmans, David Flockhart, V. Craig Jordan, David Silver, Edi Brogi, and Kelly Hunt.
- Added at the conclusion of each of the seven symposium Sessions is a special 15-minute “Consensus Period” where the Session’s expert faculty and the audience further interact using the audience response system (ARS) to review the data from each of the Session’s presentations, the Point–CounterPoint debate of that Session, and several patient case studies of that Session, and, address how the new science and data presented can be applied to physicians’ practices today. This “Consensus” is achieved with each of the following three questions designed as a filter to determine a consensus: 1) Is this a new standard of care? 2) Should it be discussed with your patients? and 3) How can you use it today in your practice? Each of the Session’s faculty will help determine a "consensus", and the audience will again vote with ARS to either agree or disagree with the experts. And there will be an opportunity for further questions of the faculty during this period.
- More Point-CounterPoint debates (a total of eight) have been included in to this symposium on very carefully selected topics of immediate relevance to the practice of personalized medicine for treating breast cancer. There is one debate in each of the seven sessions on which the audience votes with ARS before and after each debate. These debates have been continually refined by the OLC and faculty during the past year and have been rated by the audience as even more helpful to learning than the interactive patient case studies.
- More interactive patient case studies have been also added (a total of seven major case studies). There is at least one, major patient case study in each of the seven sessions whereby the audience votes with ARS. Additionally, each faculty presenter is requested to include in his/her presentation either a very brief case study with one question, or at least one clinical question for the audience to vote upon with ARS.
- A new, one-hour “Lunch with the Professors” session has been added for both days to enable the audience to further interact with the faculty. Each faculty member is assigned one table for lunch and attendees are invited on a first-come basis to sit and converse with the faculty of their choice. This new lunch session was rated as being highly successful by the participants of the recent, personalized lung cancer and head and neck cancer symposium conducted in Chicago in September 2008.
- A totally new Session has been added on bone metastases and related areas of interest to physicians treating breast cancer: “New developments in the treatment of bone metastases and the management of bone health and bone integrity.” Our needs assessment revealed this Session’s importance because of the new clinical data with drugs that have traditionally treated bone metastases and that are now showing therapeutic efficacy in the adjuvant breast cancer setting, and, the emergence of newer targeted agents for treating bone metastases and helping maintain bone integrity in patients with breast cancer.
- A new hotel was selected, the Intercontinental Miami Hotel in downtown Miami, with twice the size and capacity of the symposium room that was used last year, and more conveniently located to the Miami airport and cultural evening events.
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| Educational Statement of Need |
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Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women in the United States. In 2007, an estimated 180,510 new cases were diagnosed and 40,910 deaths were attributed to breast cancer. Approximately 30% of women diagnosed with early breast cancer will eventually die of their disease. Metastatic breast cancer is incurable and often difficult to treat. Few patients will be long-term survivors. As more is learned about the molecular biology of breast cancer and newer therapies, the evolving personalized approach to treating this malignancy should help physicians improve clinical outcomes and decrease the mortality rate.
Breast cancer risk can today be further characterized using genetic markers. Molecular biology techniques such as genome-wide linkage analysis and positional cloning have led to the identification of and tests for breast cancer susceptibility genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2. Women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations have a lifetime risk of developing breast cancer of between 50% and 80%.
The diagnosis and molecular classifications of breast cancer sub types continue to advance with the commercial availability of more tests, and further developments in molecular testing emerging. All of these tests need to be reviewed, and their specific clinical applications carefully understood.
Personalizing radiation therapy, surgical therapy, and local-regional control, including approaches with neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, are also areas of breast cancer treatment where physicians will benefit from the newest information on these topics.
HER2 remains both a vitally important target for some breast cancer therapies, and, a biomarker for poor prognosis. The identification and understanding of novel methodologies used as prognostic factors, or predictive factors for therapies against HER2 is an ongoing need. And the expanding clinical role of anti-HER2 therapy warrants a thorough review and update.
Because estrogen plays a key role in the growth and proliferation in some breast cancers, endocrine therapy is standard treatment in post-menopausal women who are hormone receptor-positive. One of the most challenging aspects of using endocrine therapy is personalizing therapy---determining which patients should receive which therapy and how long should endocrine therapy be used in a specific patient. Another is the challenge in treating patients who may have resistance to endocrine treatment. The use of molecular biomarkers, predictive factors and gene expression profile assays in a personalized approach to breast cancer treatment needs to be further reviewed.
Triple-negative breast cancer is a sub type of breast malignancy that remains very challenging for clinicians. With increased understanding of the biology of triple-negative tumors, improvements in clinical outcome may be possible. Because patients with this breast cancer classification do not have good prognosis, an in depth review of how these patients can be optimally treated utilizing the latest results of clinical trials is warranted.
The bone is the most common site of distant metastasis in breast cancer. This past year, new clinical data has emerged with the usage of bisphosphonates to treat bone metastases resulting in an adjuvant treatment of breast cancer itself. And there are several therapeutics in late-stage clinical development to further reduce the risk of skeletal related events. These include strategies to inhibit the RANK Ligand, TGF-beta, cathepsin-K and src. A review of these new strategies and a discussion on how to personalize therapies using these strategies needs to be discussed.
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| Overview |
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The Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer is:
- a 1 and 1/2 day live, weekend symposium with a distinguished faculty of 26 clinical and scientific experts involved in the development of personalized therapies for breast cancer and focusing on what new treatment strategies oncologists and hematologists can apply today.
- planned to be funded by multiple commercial supporters (last year's symposium was funded largely by educational grants from 13 different pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies).
- co-sponsored by The Indiana University School of Medicine, Division of Continuing Medical Education, and the Oncology Learning Center™, both ACCME-accredited CME providers.
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| Description and Format |
CME Pre-Test. Before the symposium begins, a baseline of current physicians ’ practices, a pre-activity educational test consisting of 10 patient care, treatment strategy questions and multiple-choice answers, will be conducted with the audience to determine how they currently treat their breast cancer patients. This will be accomplished using the audience response system (ARS) handsets with a displaying of all audience voting results on the screen for additional comments, questions and answers.
The format the symposium is that all seven Sessions will contain at least one major interactive patient case study with multiple-choice treatment care ARS questions, and at least one Point-CounterPoint debate whereby the audience votes via ARS. The faculty of the didactic presentations will include at least one brief patient case study or one clinical question for the audience to vote upon via ARS. And, finally each Session concludes with a 15-minute “consensus” period where each of the following three questions are asked of the Session’s faculty and audience regarding the particular Session’s content to help ensure that they can be applied to practice today: 1) Is this a new standard of care? 2) Should it be discussed with your patients? and 3) How can you use it today in your practice?
Session 1, “Personalizing Therapies for the Prevention of Breast Cancer,” will be chaired by Mark Pegram, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Program of the University of Miami Cancer Center. This Session addresses the following: predicting who may develop breast cancer; the use of genetic testing for breast cancer prevention; and the clinical use of SERMS and other agents to prevent breast cancer will also be reviewed.
Session 2, “Diagnosis and Molecular Classifications of Breast Cancer for Personalizing Therapies,” will be chaired by Eric Winer, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Medical Oncology Program of the Dana Farber Cancer Center of Harvard University and Co-Chair of the Breast Committee of The Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB), an NCI Cooperative Study Group. This Session addresses several types of molecular testing and their clinical applications, including multi-gene assays and gene expression profiling to help personalize the selection of therapy for breast cancer patients via predictive and prognostic outcomes.
Session 3, “Personalized Approaches to Early Therapy of Breast Cancer,” will be chaired by Lori Pierce, MD, Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs, and Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology, of the University of Michigan. This Session address the personalizing of radiation therapy, surgical therapy, and local-regional control with neo-adjuvant chemotherapy.
Session 4, “Clinical Applications of Personalized Therapies for HER2+ Breast Cancers,” will be chaired by Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD, Chief, Division of Hematology-Oncology, and Director for Clinical Research of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center of UCLA. This Session reviews the most current scientific data on new uses of HER2 data, and advances in personalizing clinical anti-HER2 strategies in both the adjuvant and metastatic breast cancer settings.
“Lunch with the Professors” follows Session 4. This new lunch hour program has been added to enable the audience to further interact with the faculty. Each faculty member is assigned to one table for lunch, and the symposium attendees are invited on a first-come basis to sit and converse with the faculty of their choice for further questions and answers. This new program was rated as being highly successful and desirable by the participants at the recent personalized therapies for lung cancer and head and neck cancer symposium in Chicago, September 19-20, 2008. It also provides an additional hour of CME credit.
Session 5, “Clinical Applications of Personalized Therapies for ER+ Breast Cancers,” will be chaired by Edith Perez, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director, Clinical Research, the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL and Chair of the Breast Committee of the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG), an NCI Cooperative Study Group. This Session addresses many new topics including the personalizing or predicting of response to adjuvant endocrine therapy, overcoming resistance to endocrine therapy, the use of SNPs to help personalize the selection of endocrine therapies, and the issue of how elderly patients with breast cancer should be treated.
Session 6, “Clinical Applications of Personalized Therapies for Triple-Negative Disease,” will be co-chaired by two leading experts on this sub-type of breast cancer, Lisa A. Carey, MD, Medical Director, UNC Breast Center, University of North Carolina, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and, Clifford A. Hudis, MD Chief, Breast Cancer Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, and Co-Chair of the Breast Committee of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) an NCI Cooperative Study Group. The scientific community is gaining a better understanding of the biologic underpinnings of triple-negative breast cancer. So this Session will provide an update on the pathology and biology of this sub-type, and review personalizing therapies with anti-angiogenic and chemotherapeutic treatment strategies.
“Lunch with the Professors” also follows Session 6 to further enable the audience to interact with the faculty. Each faculty member is assigned one table for lunch, and attendees are invited on a first-come basis to sit and converse with the faculty of their choice. It also provides an additional hour of CME credit.
Session 7, “New Developments in the Treatment of Bone Metastases, and the Management of Bone Health and Bone Integrity,” will be chaired by Allan Lipton, MD, Professor of Medicine & Oncology, M. S. Hershey Medical Center of the Pennsylvania State University, Hershey, PA. This Session is an entirely new session for this year’s symposium because of the significant potential for adjuvant therapeutic applications of drugs that traditionally treated bone metastases, and, the emergence of newer, “targeted” biological approaches to the treatment of bone metastases, and the management of bone integrity and bone health.
CME Post-Test. The symposium concludes with the re-asking of the 10 pre-test questions, but this time the questions are rephrased into the future tense to determine if the learners are likely to change their practices based upon the knowledge and competence they have acquired during the symposium. This will be accomplished using the ARS. The pre-and post-test answers will be compared and reviewed by the faculty and the audience will be afforded one final opportunity for questions and answers to understand any differences.
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This symposium is designed to meet the educational needs of physicians who are involved with the diagnosis and treatment of patients with breast cancer. This includes medical oncologists and hematologist/oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgical oncologists and pathologists. There are neither prerequisites nor relevant system barriers to these activities.
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The following learning objectives were derived from our physician practice gap analysis and needs assessment. At the conclusion of this symposium, and/or after reviewing the enduring materials, participants will be able to:
- Evaluate the personalized therapeutic approach for the prevention of breast cancer and to help patients prevent the development of breast cancer or breast cancer recurrence.
- Evaluate the effect of new technologies on the classification and staging of breast cancer and to utilize this new information in the planning of breast cancer treatment.
- Devise strategies to improve local-regional control of breast cancer through a personalized approach to breast cancer treatment.
- Assess clinical data regarding the selection of adjuvant treatments of breast cancer and devise treatment strategies utilizing a personalized approach to therapy in patients with early-stage breast cancer to prevent disease recurrence
- Analyze the data supporting the use of chemotherapies, targeted therapies, endocrine therapies and radiation therapy in the personalized treatment of patients with advanced disease.
- Understand new clinical data regarding new approaches to maintaining bone health and to utilize new approaches to prevent skeletal-related events in patients with early-stage breast cancer and in patients with metastatic disease.
- Evaluate new approaches in identifying patients with triple-negative disease and utilize a personalized approach in the selection of therapies for patients with triple negative breast cancer.
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The Oncology Learning Center is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The Oncology Learning Center™ designates this educational activity for a maximum of 13 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
The Indiana University School of Medicine, Division of Continuing Medical Education and the Oncology Learning Center are Co-Sponsors of this CME activity. The Indiana University School of Medicine, Division of Continuing Medical Education, the Oncology Learning Center, and the symposium's Co-Chairs, Drs. George Sledge and Dennis Slamon have agreed that the Oncology Learning Center will be the official CME provider of this activity although all parties involved have developed the activity's content and faculty.
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The Indiana University School of Medicine, Division of Continuing Medical Education and the Oncology Learning Center are requesting educational grants from commercial supporters to help offset the tuition for this symposium.
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