By Marliese Alexander, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

It was my privilege to be invited by the Chilean Chapter of Oncology Pharmacists to present at the 2018 Chilean Congress of Medical Oncology, held in Vina del Mar, Chile November 19-21, 2018. The conference was an integrated symposium including streams for Oncology Pharmacy, Medical Oncology and Oncological Kinesiology. The event was held on the Chilean coast, just over an hour’s pleasant drive through wine country from Santiago.

 
The below report details day 1 of the program in the Oncology Pharmacy stream which had both local and international speakers, with two way translation between Spanish and English. 

The first speaker from was Dr. Melissa Mcdaimar from the USA speaking about the occupational health and management of cytotoxics in the USA. Her presentation was received enthusiastically by the audience, providing summary of the scientific evidence and rationale for occupational health and safety monitoring and interventions.  This presentation was followed by local presenter Dr. Claudio Müller on the experience in Latin America regarding risks associated with the handling of cytostatic drugs. The back to back presentations providing global and local experiences were informative and highlighted areas both of consistency and divergence, always with room to improve pharmacy practices.  

I then held the floor for a marathon session of three consecutive presentations for which I am very grateful to the warm and welcoming Chilean pharmacy oncology group for staying with me for the duration of the journey! 

In the first presentation I provided an update on immunotherapy – a seemingly impossible task for a single session that was tackled with a focus on the aims, rationale and place of immunotherapy in the context of disease journey. The presentation included the diversity of immune treatments from checkpoint inhibitors to adoptive T cell therapies, and in particular I was able to share my own experiences managing patients on one of the early global Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy trials in DLBCL. The second presentation was focused on lung cancer therapeutics, particularly the current and future role of immune and targeted therapies .This session was underscored by the tag-line “targeted / immunotherapy for all” with presentation of the global evidence for use of these therapies in first and subsequent lines for advanced stage NSCLC, consolidation therapy in locoregional NSCLC , as well as indications in SCLC.  The third and final presentation was on the management of adverse events in immunotherapy.  This session discussed the balance of immune stimulation and regulation that can impact both response and toxicity. This session was case based to provide practical examples of diagnostic and treatment interventions for the management of immune-related events including hypophysitis, pneumonitis, colitis, skin reaction and cytokine release syndrome. Finally, the marathon session ended with warm invitation to all the Chilean Oncology Pharmacy Practitioners to join us in ISOPP 2019 – hoping to see some familiar faces in London!
 

Photo of Marliese Alexander with local Conference Organizer

Photo of View from Conference Venue