It was great to be back in Chicago for this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. A highlight of these meetings is always the opportunity to meet with leaders in the global cancer advocacy movement and 2025 did not disappoint! I was able to catch up with colleagues from the Global Cancer Coalitions Network (GCCN) to work on our plans for the coming year. And it was especially good to meet up with cancer advocates Runcie Chidebe, Eva Schumacher-Wulf, Bar Levy, Shabnam Gujadhur, Irene Benson, Aleksandras Filicevas, Nicole Sheahan, Andrew Spiegel, and Roberta Ventura.
This year’s program had some exciting ovarian cancer developments. This included encouraging results from a Phase 3 trial (ROSELLA) for treatment of women whose ovarian cancer becomes resistant to platinum-based treatments, referred to as platinum resistant ovarian cancer, or PROC. With so many women eventually developing PROC and with so few existing treatment options, it is genuinely wonderful that there is hope for a treatment that could help these women live longer and better with their disease.
There was more good news from a Phase 2 trial (IMNN-001) for a potential new treatment for those diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. This research is still early stage, but the results show that women in the trial receiving this treatment had better survival and longer periods of time before their ovarian cancer progressed.
There was continued excitement at ASCO about the first ever approval of a treatment for low-grade-serous ovarian cancer (LGSOC) – with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) giving accelerated approval for AVMAPKI FAKZYNJA CO-PACK on May 8th – World Ovarian Cancer Day! Another historic moment giving new options to women who previously had very few.
It was an honour to have our World Ovarian Cancer Coalition abstract “The socioeconomic burden of ovarian cancer in 11 countries” accepted for publication by ASCO. I also attended some excellent gynecologic cancer track poster sessions, including a proof-of-concept study on Nurse Led Genetic Counselling and Awareness presented by Asima Mukhopadhyay, a member of the Coalition’s Global Expert Advisory Group on Ovarian Cancer.
There is so much more work to tackle this disease, but these advances tell us that we are starting to make proper treatment inroads, especially for women with hard to treat or rarer subtypes. For those living with an ovarian cancer diagnosis, caregivers, families, and advocates, this year’s ASCO meeting offered a strong message of hope: progress is being made, and more options are becoming available to help women live longer, better lives.