Three points that I would make, the first of which reflects on many of the themes of the talk today. Number one, endometrial cancer, and I’m borrowing the words of one of my colleagues, endometrial cancer, which is actually the most common gynecologic cancer, and now, unfortunately, in 2025, is the most lethal gynecologic cancer. That position of honor had previously been reserved for ovarian cancer, but no more...
Three points that I would make, the first of which reflects on many of the themes of the talk today. Number one, endometrial cancer, and I’m borrowing the words of one of my colleagues, endometrial cancer, which is actually the most common gynecologic cancer, and now, unfortunately, in 2025, is the most lethal gynecologic cancer. That position of honor had previously been reserved for ovarian cancer, but no more. We now see that uterine cancer has the highest number of deaths. And this has really been the sort of Cinderella story when we look at endometrial cancer in which we have for a decade, really decades, that we’ve been treating this. We’ve relied on one classification system, namely what does the tumor look like under the microscope? So I would say we’ve now really evolved into a place where we understand that the molecular characterization, the actual genetics of the cancer are in fact equally, and some would argue perhaps more important in allowing us to tailor therapy and specifically personalized treatment to really figure out who will benefit from which treatments, in whom can we actually recommend very confidently you don’t need any additional treatment at all, And in whom can we sort of then even sequence one therapy after another as we have more and more novel treatments? This is really important because as we talk about personalized medicine, it moves from a universe of things are black or white to really a much more representative options to design personalized treatments for which the patient really will derive the most benefit and suffer the least harm. I think the other thing that we’ve seen with this meeting is some very provocative questions, which is, is less actually more when it comes to the treatments. So even with the therapy, the trial that we discussed with dostarlimab, and I’d indicate that that’s up to three years of dostarlimab maintenance treatment. And again, that’s a very big ask for patients and their families. There is really an emerging field of can we de-escalate therapies? Can we perhaps shorten the duration? Can we perhaps omit some of the chemotherapy? And especially as we understand the molecular drivers of cancer, can we actually treat those molecular alterations and remove or unburden patients from also requiring really cumbersome and very toxic chemotherapy? Well, that’s a whole new world, right? Because if we can actually figure out how to de-escalate treatment, we really can improve that sort of risk-benefit ratio for patients and their families. So I would say those were a couple of the incredibly, I think, thought-provoking conversations, especially as we look at other solid cancers and try to copy or emulate some of their findings in gynecologic cancers.
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