Key Points
- EANO held its 18th Meeting & Educational Day September 21–24, 2023, in Rotterdam.
- On September 22, an educational session titled “Application of Focused Ultrasound in Brain Tumours” featured four expert presentations.
The European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO) held its 18th Meeting & Educational Day September 21–24, 2023, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. With the overall goal of addressing practice gaps in the management of central nervous system malignancies, the approximately 1,000 EANO attendees from 50 different countries represented many multidisciplinary fields, including neuro-oncology, neurosurgery, neuropathology, neuroradiology, and radiation oncology.
Suzanne LeBlang, MD, the Foundation’s Director of Clinical Relationships, attended EANO and shared the following key takeaway messages:
Education Day (September 21)
- In the “Where Do Drugs Go?” session, Professor Riccardo Soffietti, MD, from City of Health and Science University Hospital of Turin, included focused ultrasound as an emerging approach to drug delivery in his blood-brain barrier (BBB) and drug delivery presentation. (Dr. Soffietti also participated as a speaker in Carthera’s EANO 2022 lunch symposium).
- In the “What is Tumour Heterogeneity?” session, Chao Li, MD, PhD, group leader of intelligent neuroimaging for computational oncology & neuroscience and clinical fellow in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge, shared how artificial intelligence is being used in genomics, metabolomics, and radiomics. This information is helpful for the Foundation’s upcoming glioblastoma workshop, which is being co-sponsored by the Sontag Foundation.
Meeting Days (September 22–24)
The Brain Liquid Biopsy Consortium meeting was productive, chaired by Professor Susan Short, MBBS, MRCP, FRCR, PhD, who is also currently serving as president of EANO. Prof. Short is a professor of Clinical Oncology and Neuro Oncology in the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds and a consultant clinical oncologist at St. James’s University Hospital in Leeds. Several members of the consortium, including Natasha Sheybani, PhD, are collaborating to potentially share data and specimens.
On September 22, an educational session titled “Application of Focused Ultrasound in Brain Tumours” featured four expert presentations:
- Ultrasound-mediated drug delivery in the brain by Prof. Alexandre Carpentier, the lead neurosurgeon at Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital (AP-HP Sorbonne Université) in Paris, France, inventor of the SonoCloud device, and founder of Carthera
- Preclinical assessment of focused ultrasound BBB opening by Antonis Pouliopoulos, PhD, lecturer in therapeutic ultrasound at King’s College London, in the United Kingdom
- Focused Ultrasound in immunotherapy of glioma by Natasha Sheybani, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering, assistant professor of Neurosurgery (by courtesy), and assistant professor of Radiology & Medical Imaging (by courtesy) at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia; she is also research director of the UVA Focused Ultrasound Cancer Immunotherapy Center
- Ultrasound in Neurosurgery: from imaging to therapy by Francesco Prada, MD, a neurosurgeon at the Department of Neurosurgery at the IRCCS Foundation Istituto Neurologico C.Besta in Milan, Italy
Following these 15-minute presentations, the approximately 400 attendees asked many questions to create a lively discussion period.
During the September 22 Keynote Session titled “Antibody-drug conjugates and other advanced therapeutics in Neuro-Oncology,” Costas Arvanitis presented his work using focused ultrasound to improve BBB/BTB penetration of antibody-based therapies.
During the poster session, Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, the Fernandez Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Cancer Research and chief of medical oncology at the Miami Cancer Institute, Baptist Health South Florida, presented two posters to provide updated data from ongoing clinical trials using focused ultrasound to disrupt the BBB in patients with brain metastases from lung cancer (LIMITLESS) and for liquid biopsy in patients with glioblastoma (LIBERATE). Links to each poster can be found below.
“Beyond the great focused ultrasound content at the meeting, I also made some key contacts,” said Dr. LeBlang. “Furthermore, I learned about incorporating more precise imaging studies into focused ultrasound clinical trial protocols and how to better monitor disease progression, so the presentations were incredibly valuable for our field.”
The EANO abstracts and poster presentations are published in the journal Neuro-Oncology.
P07.13.B A Randomized Study of Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound for Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption for Brain Metastasis from Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (Limitless) by M S Ahluwalia, M McDermott, A Ozair, A A Khosla, A Sahgal, M Mishra, A Achrol, G Woodworth, and N Lipsman
P14.11.B A Multicenter Study of Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound with Systemic Microbubble Oscillators for Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption for Liquid Biopsy in Glioblastoma (LIBERATE) by M S Ahluwalia, J DeGroot, J Lee, A Mogilner, T Schwartz, T Burns, B Shah, M McDermott, C Bettegowda, A Ozair, A A Khosla, A Sahgal, M Mishra, A Achrol, N Lipsman, and G Woodworth
EANO 2024 will be held October 17–20 in Glasgow, Scotland. Abstracts are due April 30, 2024.