AACR convenes SARS-cancelled meeting

Even as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) convenes its rescheduled 2003 meeting, the group is still trying to secure a refund of monies spent on its planned April conference. AACR canceled its meeting in Toronto just days before it was scheduled start because of concerns over severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Organizers did so at a cost of $7.5 million, which they have yet to recoup.The group's insurance company has refused to reimburse the loss, and the association is considering legal action. "It's an enormous portion of our reserve, and we really can't afford to lose that," said AACR Chief Executive Officer Margaret Foti, "so we're going to fight this in some way." AACR members, concerned about SARS, began calling "one per minute" 2 days before the April meeting's scheduled start, according to Foti. Although Toronto public health officials assured organizers that there was no real threat, countries including Spain and Australia decided not to send representatives, and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York advised its clinicians that if they attended the meeting, they would not have access to patients for 10 days after their return. Some 200 other registrants from SARS-affected countries were also scheduled to attend the Toronto meeting. With so many participants—clinicians, in particular—threatening to stay home, Foti said that the meeting would not only have been sparsely attended, but would also have been lacking its usual interdisciplinary interaction. The AACR board, taking into consideration advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute, decided to cancel and reschedule. "The important thing in my mind at that time was that the information had to be disseminated," said Foti. Money concerns aside, AACR is now preparing to put on a nearly full-scale meeting starting today (July 11) at the new Washington Convention Center. According to Foti, three of the original 31 scheduled symposia have been canceled, and several additional speakers who canceled were replaced—for example, a plenary slot for National Human Genome Research Institute Director Francis Collins will now be filled by National Cancer Institute Director Andrew C. von Eschenbach. AACR organizers expected 16,000 attendees for the April meeting; as of Wednesday, 10,300 were registered for the rescheduled meeting, but organizers expect about 12,000 to attend. Of 500 exhibitors originally scheduled to be present in April, 400 are now expected. The meeting's planned content hasn't changed and will focus more than ever on translational aspects of research, according to William Hait, head of the AACR's clinical and translational research committee.Hait, director of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, noted that the number of validated targets has skyrocketed in recent years—where once there were a handful of targets including DNA, microtubules, and steroid receptors, today's targets also include hundreds of oncogenes and proteins that are downstream of these oncogenes. Investigators likewise have had some success devising small molecules to inhibit those targets. The more immediate aim now, and where research has stalled, is getting treatments into the clinic, he said.Several lines of promising translational research will be featured at the meeting, according to Hait, including a target called FLT-3 kinase, which is overexpressed in many acute myelogenous leukemias; a well researched pathway mediated by NF-κB that is involved in protein degradation and apoptosis; and a drug from Millenium Pharmaceuticals called Velcade that was recently approved for use against multiple myelomas and is now being tested in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and in prostate cancer. Also of interest: further results from angiogenesis inhibitors including Genentech's current project, a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor kinase inhibitor called Avastin.Foti emphasized that basic science is still a major focus of the AACR, and about 40% of the research presented at the annual meeting will be basic research; the other 60% is a combination of clinical and translational research. What's more, she said, several of the 8 to10 additional meetings that AACR holds each year focus on basic research topics such as the cell cycle, epigenetics, or DNA methylation. "The bedrock of the organization is basic science," Hait agreed, "but what's happening is a natural evolution where, as the science of medicine becomes more rigorous, it's just natural for AACR to take on a clinical focus as well."

AACR convenes SARS-cancelled meeting

Cancer researchers hold slimmed-down annual gathering as money issues linger

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