June 18-21, 2003 Berlin, Germany
Happenings at the 15th Annual Symposium

Opening Ceremonies

Dr. Richard Gralla, MASCC President, also welcomed everyone and thanked Drs. Feyer, Steingraber, and Ortner for their work in organizing the meeting along with Kinga Tahy and Julia Boettger of EMC. Dr. Gralla thanked members of this year's Corporate Advisory Board: Aventis, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Merck & Co, Inc, MGI Pharma, and McNeil Consumer and Specialty Pharma. He also thanked Joyce Knapp for her special help with MASCC.

Greetings were given from Heidi Knake-Werner of the Senate for Health, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection and Dr. Peter Drings, Secretary-General of the German Cancer Society.

Dr. Larry Einhorn was introduced as the evenings keynote speaker. Dr. Einhorn took the group through the history of cancer treatment from Dr. Halstead to angiogenic agents and molecular targeted therapies in a talk entitled, "Curing cancer and successful supportive care: Promises fulfilled and unrealistic expectations". Breakthroughs included identifying the effects of nitrogen mustard gas in World War I; agents under study in the 70's which became available; and the contribution of cisplatin, especially initially in testicular cancer. While this disease affects only a small portion of the population, it treatment success with cisplatin had enormous implications. Along with the success of cisplatin came the evolution of antiemetic therapy beginning with high dose metoclopramide as described by Dr. Gralla in 1989 to 5HT3 receptor antagonists (1991) to adding dexamethasone (1993) to the NK1 receptor antagonists this year. Dr. Einhorn emphasized that there has been no blanket cancer cure or prevention, as seen with the polio vaccine, but that progress has been made in small steps and advances. Dr. Einhorn listed obstacles to success with many targeted therapies: single molecular abnormalities, cross talk between components of the oncogenic pathway, development of drug resistance, and the need to learn when and how to combine new and old agents. Next Dr. Einhorn mentioned quality of life issues: for pain and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, there are now rationale approaches to preventive treatment. He called dyspnea undertreated and an unmet need and fatigue the most poorly understood and poorly treated symptom.

Following Dr. Einhorn's presentation, Dr. Feyer presented Dr. Jorn Herrstedt and Dr. Edward Rubenstein with the Berlin award in honor of their work in supportive care.