'One of the World's Top 3 Cancer Societies' European Society for Medical Oncology
Opening on the 13th in Barcelona, Spain
Latest Research Results on Keytruda and Enhertu Revealed
Yuhan Corporation and Lunit Participate from Korea
Cancer experts and global pharmaceutical companies from around the world gather in Barcelona, Spain, to share insights on the latest cancer treatments. Our pharmaceutical and bio industries also participate to introduce cancer conquering technologies.
From the 13th to the 17th (local time), the 2024 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Annual Congress will be held in Barcelona. ESMO is a global society with over 40,000 cancer experts from 176 countries, and its annual congress is considered one of the "world's top three cancer conferences" alongside the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
This year at ESMO, major new cancer drugs such as MSD's immuno-oncology drug Keytruda, which ranked first in global sales last year, and AstraZeneca (AZ) and Daiichi Sankyo's Enhertu, leading the global trend of antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), will present treatment possibilities for hard-to-treat cancers that previously had no suitable therapies.
Among metastatic breast cancer patients, 14% develop brain metastases but had no applicable treatments. AZ will reveal clinical trial results addressing this issue with Enhertu. Although previous studies had somewhat demonstrated Enhertu's efficacy in patients with brain metastases, AZ is known to have conducted focused research on metastatic patients in this trial, firmly proving its effectiveness.
AZ will also present 5-year follow-up results from a clinical trial administering the immuno-oncology drugs Imfinzi and Imjudo to patients with advanced or unresectable liver cancer. The 5-year survival rate for patients who cannot undergo resection surgery drops to 7%, but this therapy showed that 25% of patients survived up to the 4th year. The presentation will disclose how much the 5-year survival rate has increased.
Keytruda will have research results revealed at this ESMO on triple-negative breast cancer, gastric cancer, melanoma, and others. Keytruda has been approved for 17 types of cancer in South Korea alone, proving its efficacy across various cancers. Triple-negative breast cancer is difficult to treat because the three receptors targeted by existing targeted therapies are all absent in cancer cells, but research results are expected to show that it can be treated with Keytruda.
Scenes from the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Annual Congress held last year in Madrid, Spain[Photo by Hanmi Pharmaceutical]
Meanwhile, major domestic pharmaceutical and bio companies such as Yuhan Corporation, Lunit, Hanmi Pharmaceutical, HLB, Tium Bio, and NeoImmuneTech are also participating in this ESMO to present the latest cancer treatment technologies.
HLB’s combination therapy of riboceranib and camrelizumab for liver cancer, and Yuhan Corporation’s combination therapy of Leclaza and Livrivant for lung cancer, showcased clinical trial results at ESMO in 2022 and last year respectively, rapidly emerging as treatments aiming for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Yuhan Corporation recently received FDA approval for this combination therapy and will present additional research analysis results related to the clinical trials at this ESMO. HLB will also disclose a total of nine research results related to riboceranib as it attempts a second FDA approval.
Lunit will present research results using its platform to accurately predict the effectiveness of immuno-oncology drugs. Immuno-oncology drugs like Keytruda show varying responses among patients, with some not responding well to treatment. Using its AI biomarker system, Lunit Scope IO, Lunit identified that the efficacy of immuno-oncology drugs differs depending on the patient’s immune activation level and cancer type. Seobeom Seok, CEO of Lunit, said, "This can provide an important indicator in the process of selecting the most suitable immuno-oncology treatment for patients."
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