By Jo Cavallo
American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

Dr. Peter Yu, physician-in-chief of the Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute, is planning a new approach at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s first international meeting, Breakthrough: A Global Summit for Oncology Innovators Oct. 11-13 in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Yu, past president of ASCO, is co-host/committee chair of the Breakthrough meeting.

The meeting is a joint effort by ASCO and the Thai Society of Clinical Oncology to bring together leaders in a variety of disparate fields, including information and computer science, artificial intelligence, basic and translational research, social media and biomedical engineering, to transform oncology care delivery and explore how technology will influence cancer care in the coming years.

“We wanted a meeting that was engaging and exciting and instead of looking back at the past year,” said Dr. Yu, “which is what a traditional medical meeting does, look forward to ask where are we going in the field of oncology? What innovation is already in development that will transform how we treat patients with cancer, how we educate our members and how we conduct research?”

Currently, topics for the Breakthrough meeting include How Technology Will Shape the Future of Cancer Care; the Next Generation of Immunotherapy; Novel and Research Strategies Through Social Networks and Telecommunications; AI in Oncology and Therapeutics; The Use of Technology and Biochemical Markers for Diagnosis and Surveillance; New Diagnostics; Microbiota, Immune-Tonus, and Cancer; The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge After the Genome; New Molecular and Immuno-Oncologic-based Therapeutics; Robotic Surgery; and Personalized Vaccines.

The meeting will feature speakers from the United States, Asia, and Europe, including Philip Greenberg, MD, Head of Immunology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle; Gilberto Lopes, MD, MBA, FASCO, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Miami, Editor-in-Chief of ASCO’s Journal of Global Oncology, and Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee for the Breakthrough meeting; Tony S.K. Mok, MD, FRCPC, FASCO, Li Shu Fan Medical Foundation Named Professor of Clinical Oncology and Chair of Clinical Oncology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Breakthrough Program Committee Chair; and Vivian Li, PhD, Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

For more information on Breakthrough: A Global Summit for Oncology Innovators Oct. 11-13 in Bangkok, Thailand, click here.

For more information on the Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute, click here.