CTOS 2013 NEW YORK

SARC 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATED

Meeting summary from Scott Okuno, MD, SARC Medical Officer. What better place to celebrate our 10th anniversary of SARC than in New York. Hope all had a great time and enjoyed the sites and stimulating meetings of SARC and CTOS. How fitting that CTOS now incorporates the SARC meeting into their meeting because the inception of SARC started with CTOS members over 10 years ago. We would like to thank those founding members for having the courage and vision to start SARC and nurture it to what it is today. Today SARC is vibrant and strong and we encourage all that are interested in sarcoma to become members.

For those not able to attend the SARC meeting or want a refresher, this is a summary for you.

Denise Reinke welcomed the group to New York and the SARC meeting and played a short montage of videos from the founding members of SARC.

Dr. Khanna reviewed how the Developmental Therapeutics group is organized and how they provide support for SARC’s mission. We then had 3 excellent talks from the Chawla Rosenfeld Symposium by Drs. Bradner, Bid, and Keats. This symposium over the years has been successful at bringing topics that stretch our understanding of sarcoma and yet make it practical. This year succeeded again.

Dr. Gorlick reviewed the Career Development 2014 program and introduced Drs. Marino-Enriquez and VanTine who presented their work based on their Career Development Awards. What amazing work the awardees of SARC Career Development have done.

I led the session on actively accruing SARC studies and 2 studies that are almost ready to activate. I am impressed by the variety of clinical trials that SARC has opened and is ready to open. We are receptive to new concepts, so please let us know of new ideas that you might have.

Dr. Pollock updated us on the SARC spore and all the activity around it.

Denise ended the session describing the SARC Participant Policy that allows all investigators regardless of the size of their sarcoma program to become a member of SARC. Please take time to review the policy and become a member. We have plans to better engage and inform our SARC membership in 2014 so we can improve access to clinical trials for our patients.

So long New York and congratulations to SARC on your 10th Anniversary! Our next meeting will be at ASCO in May 2014 and I hope to see you all there. Please view the SARC 10th Anniversary video.