ESTRO 2010, 12-16 September, Barcelona

Professor Vincent Gregoire - Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium

What are the things that I should take home as the memories?

If you have seen every day a gem of the day there will be one session that will try to summarise all the recent, sometimes not yet published, randomised trials. Obviously yesterday I have been to the first one. You can get a survey within an hour of all the new trends, all the new very important ideas in the field of clinical research at least. That’s something really different to get in a few minutes – a glance of what is going on in the field of radiation oncology or oncology at large because typically it’s a multi-disciplinary oncology. These are the sessions to which you have to go, that’s for sure.

What did it say yesterday?

Yesterday it was mainly on breast, prostate and there was also one on head and neck, which was an American study. There were two UK studies on breast and an update of the Dutch study on breast, also typically focussing on the parameters to select which type of adjuvant treatment, mainly with radiation, for young women which seems to be a specific category of women. I’m not an expert in breast so don’t ask me to go into too many details. Then we’ve got two American studies on prostate, adjuvant treatment or no adjuvant treatment.

Obviously these are questions that are relevant for the daily clinical life in the field of radiation oncology – hormones, no hormones, how much time, when, for old patients depending on tumour grade, yes or no? So I found it very interesting.

There are also, as you said, plenty of different sessions and it would be hard to cover everything. I’ve also been to some imaging sessions, as you know. The involvement of functional imaging with PET but also with FMI, depending on the locations, is obviously something that we, as oncologists, radiation oncologists in particular, have to keep an eye on because the better you can delineate your target, individualise first and second delineate your target volumes, the better treatment, in a sense, in that you will be more focussed, you’ll avoid toxicity but for sure you will not miss the target. You may go for dose escalation and, for some disease sites, local control is still a major issue. Prostate it is, head and neck is obviously one, brain is obviously another one; lung it’s not the major focus but still even if you have metastatic disease you would like at least to have control of the disease locally so that patients do not suffer from the burden of the local, primary tumour. So obviously these were also some interesting sessions.

Another one that I think will be for this morning is that, more and more within ESTRO, we try to give some freedom to the young radiation oncologists because obviously these people are the future of the society, the scientific society but it’s also society in general. So they have a path where they have individualised a few issues that for them are of interest; it can be scientific issues but it’s also issues regarding their training or should they get in contact with the big guys to have fellowship – all practical aspects. It’s not really of interest for me but I think it’s also something that I would like to highlight because it also illustrates the willingness of our society to involve the young people in the life of the society, which I believe is something important.

The education programme from ESTRO is most impressive.

I think you’re right. I think you’re right because at the end of this year, 2010, we’ll have run 32 or 34 courses.

In one year.

In one year, in Europe but also outside Europe. So we try to make collaborations on request or sometimes we do ask them in China, in India, in South America, we’ve even been to  Australia. So that’s only for four or five courses a year, the majority of the courses are throughout Europe. Basically we have the foundation course, if I may use it: radiation biology, radiation physics, one or two courses, and then evidence based. On average there is 100 – 110 participants per course. Obviously if you ask me just to name one success story, quote-unquote, of ESTRO I would probably mention that one, although there are others but I’m probably biased. They are all success stories but obviously this one is the best because it fulfils one of the missions of ESTRO which was created thirty years ago.

In two years’ time at ESTRO, what are you expecting to see? At the next one?

That’s a good question. Probably even more multi-disciplinarity because it’s hopefully a trend in the different oncological societies in Europe. We can debate between ourselves which is wonderful, of course, and we need to do that but we obviously have to open because we don’t treat a patient with a single modality these days. Obviously multi-disciplinarity and interaction between the surgeons, the medical oncologists, all the different disease side oncologists –hematologist, gastro-oncologists, whatever you name them, it’s obviously the future. So this is a key word for me and, as I mentioned earlier in this interview, the trials because I cannot see progress without trials and I think a message to the young oncologists to put as many patients as possible into trials because it’s, for me, the only way to try to learn something. And of course then devote the rest of your time into translational research to make the bridge with the basic scientists because plenty of things are going on over there. It’s difficult for us to understand because we don’t have basic training but at least we need to bridge what they know, what they do, with what we are expecting. Then maybe we’ll come out with better treatment in future.

The next Professor Gregoire, for instance, the next President of ESTRO. Thank you very much indeed for helping us, it was really interesting.