MPNE2018 conference report short

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Melanoma at the Edge. Knowledge protects. 16th- 18th March 2018 Brussels

MPNE2018 Last weekend, over 100 Melanoma patients, carers and advocates met in Brussels for MPNE2018, the 5th annual conference of the Melanoma Patient Network Europe, MPNE. This year’s ambition was to make the latest scientific and clinical developments in Melanoma accessible to a growing and increasingly diverse audience. Up to 4 parallel tracks offered sessions for various level of expertise and interest, with one track being solely dedicated to Ocular Melanoma, a rare Melanoma that starts in the eye.

Content

Friday started with a QuickStart for first-time participants and overall focused on introductory sessions to Melanoma, the latest and 8th AJCC staging classification and Melanoma therapies with EU market authorization, complemented by two level of statistics for clinical trials and sessions on liquid biopsies and pharmacogenomics as well as coping mechanisms and side effect management. Building on that, Saturday morning was reserved for a hands-on session in which conference participants read a clinical research publication and graded the findings according to the ESMO Magnitude for clinical benefit scale. The afternoon was reserved for updates on three of the most relevant areas of development in advanced Melanoma, namely therapy options and therapeutical decisions for Stage 3 patients, re-challenges with immune therapy in Stage 4 and highly relevant, the question of when it is possible to actually stop treatment for Stage 4 patients with a complete or a stable partial response. The program was completed by an introduction into the Molecular Biology of Melanoma, focusing on potential mechanism to overcome acquired resistance to targeted therapy as well as the problem of tumour heterogeneity and cancer cells persisting under

MPNE2018 Melanoma at the Edge. Knowledge protects.

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