CONGRESS NEWS

Highlights of the ENETS (European Neuroendocrine Tumour Society) congress 2025

SUMMARY

During the ENETS Conference, the long-awaited results of the phase 3 COMPETE trial were presented, with the comparison of [177Lu]Lu-edotreotide (Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy = PRRT) vs. everolimus in patients with grade 1–2 gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (GEP NET): PRRT outperformed everolimus in terms of objective response rate and also progression-free survival. Also, an update of the phase 2 OCCLURANDOM trial showed the superiority of PRRT vs. sunitinib in a direct comparison between these two treatment modalities. Alpha-PRRT is advancing in the field of NET as a promising treatment option, with the ACTION-1 trial actively recruiting now in Belgium. NET-IMPRESS, a novel methylation-based assay to diagnose and monitor NET patients using liquid biopsies, was rewarded as the most promising basic research project during the conference and will be tested in broader patient populations. Also, the prominent presence of the patient organisations INCA/VZW NET & MEN at ENETS coincides with the rapidly growing field of treatment options in recent years for our patients with NET.

In this report, the most important headlines will be discussed, with comments on the clinical relevance of the different studies.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2025;19(4):166–184)

EMUC24 report: Highlights and key takeaways at the multidisciplinary congress

SUMMARY

The 16th European Multidisciplinary Congress on Urological Cancers (EMUC24) served as a pivotal meeting point for the onco-urology community, highlighting the latest scientific discoveries and their potential to transform clinical practice. Topics such as novel therapeutic combinations, advances in molecular diagnostics, and real-world data from European studies took centre stage. This article provides some of the most relevant takeaways from the congress, emphasising their impact on daily practice, ongoing research efforts, and the future of personalised treatment.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2025;19(4):185–189)

Refining Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy for Oligometastatic Gynaecologic Tumours: Key Insights from 2024

SUMMARY

The management of relapsing gynaecologic cancers depends on whether the relapse is oligometastatic (OMD) or polymetastatic (PMD). Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is rapidly emerging as an additional treatment option for OMD, defined as a limited and treatable amount of metastases, due to its ability to deliver high radiation doses to small tumour volumes in a short time frame.^1–5 SBRT is minimally invasive, cost-effective, and offers high local control rates with minimal toxicity. It has shown activity in chemo-resistant disease and may also act as an immune response activator or synergise with PARP inhibitors (PARPi).

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2025;19(4):190–193)

Highlights of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium 2025

SUMMARY

This year’s conference was organised in San Francisco from 23 till 25 January 2025, again as a hybrid event. Pan-RAS inhibition shows early, deep molecular responses in RAS-mutant pancreatic adenocarcinoma and looks very promising regarding PFS and OS in a phase 1 study. Adjuvant treatment with aspirin daily for three years reduced the recurrence rate in colorectal cancer patients with somatic alterations in the PI3K signalling pathway. Two other top stories of ASCO GI 2025 are nivolumab + ipilimumab beating nivolumab monotherapy across treatment lines in MSI-high/deficient mismatch repair (MMR) metastatic colorectal cancer and encorafenib + cetuximab + mFOLFOX6 as the new standard of care for first-line treatment of BRAF V600E-mutant colorectal cancer. The prognostic role of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) in colorectal cancer stage II-III is consistent between different trials and under active investigation in randomised trials. The combination of everolimus and lanreotide significantly prolonged progression-free survival compared to everolimus monotherapy as first-line treatment for grade 1 or 2 gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours with poor prognostic features. In this report, the most important headlines will be discussed, with comments on the clinical relevance of the different studies.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2025;19(3): 114–128)

SABCS 2024: Highlights of new data on systemic therapy for breast cancer

SUMMARY

As a yearly tradition, the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium provided us with important updates regarding the systemic treatment approaches of breast cancer. In the early breast cancer landscape, probably the most awaited data release at SABCS 2024 was the primary analysis of GeparDouze investigating atezolizumab in early triple-negative breast cancer. In the advanced breast cancer, results from EMBER-3 investigating imlunestrant as a single agent and in combination with abemaciclib were eagerly awaited. In addition, the PATINA trial provided an unexpected late-breaking abstract reporting on the addition of palbociclib to maintenance treatment with endocrine and anti-HER2 therapy in advanced hormone receptor positive/HER2-positive breast cancer. Next to many systemic therapy updates, important data has been presented on local therapy for breast cancer and will be discussed in another issue, mostly focusing on de-escalation concepts such as surgery deferral for ductal carcinoma in situ, abstinence of sentinel lymph node procedure in low-risk disease or postmastectomy radiotherapy in pN0/pN1 disease. On the intersection between radiotherapy and systemic therapy, the innovative EUROPA trial reported an early interim analysis of a study investigating either radiotherapy or endocrine therapy as a single modality for stage 1 hormone receptor positive, HER2-negative breast cancer in patients aged ≥70 years.² Without ipsilateral breast tumour recurrences (IBTR) at the data cut-off, further follow-up is required for comparative efficacy analysis as defined by five-year IBTR. However, the presented co-primary endpoint of health-related quality-of-life at two years showed a significant reduction in quality-of-life associated with endocrine therapy compared to baseline and to patients receiving only radiation therapy during the first two years of treatment, with at least 22.5% of patients requiring a switch of endocrine therapy and 12.4% discontinuing endocrine therapy during the follow-up. These data are very encouraging and can gradually be implemented in clinical practice in selection based on life expectancy, patient preference and further study follow-up. Below, we summarise the most important data releases regarding systemic breast cancer treatment presented at SABCS 2024.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2025;19(3):129–136)

ESMO NET (Neuroendocrine Tumours) Report 2024: Two breakthrough studies changing the future treatment algorithm of NET

SUMMARY

During the ESMO Conference in Barcelona in 2024, two important phase 3 studies in the field of neuro-endocrine tumours (NET) that were presented earlier this year were updated and also published subsequently. The NETTER-2 trial is shifting [177Lu]Lu-DOTATATE Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT) to the first-line treatment setting of patients with advanced, well-differentiated grade 2 and grade 3 gastro-enteropancreatic (GEP) NET; the CABINET trial is adding cabozantinib as targeted systemic therapy for previously treated, progressive advanced extrapancreatic and pancreatic NET.

In this report, these two practice-changing NET trials will be discussed in depth, with comments on the clinical relevance and the outstanding questions.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2025;19(2):78–82)

Oncological highlights from the World Conference on Lung Cancer 2024

SUMMARY

The annual World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) once again brought together the latest information for the field of lung cancer in September 2024. Research into non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was of special interest at this meeting, with various treatment regimens having being trialled. Here, some of the highlights of NSCLC from this meeting are summarised.

(BELG J MED ONCOL 2024;18(7):282–286)