The 7th International Symposium on Targeted Anticancer Therapies (TAT 2009) can be classified as one of the best meetings in this congress series on innovative anticancer agents thus far. TAT 2009 attracted well over 400 delegates from over 40 different countries for a high-quality program with broad international participation. About two thirds of delegates were from Europe and one third from other parts of the world, underlining the increasingly global character of this series on new drug development in oncology.

The meeting featured over 40 plenary lectures, including the NDDO Honorary Award Lecture 2009 by Dr. Napoleone Ferrara (Genentech Inc, South San Francisco, USA) whose pioneering work on Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) has laid the basis for the successful development of VEGF-targeting anti-angiogenic agents which have now entered daily clinical practice. Other Keynotes addressed the role of chemokines and inflammation in cancer (Dr. Frances Balkwill, Barts & The London School of Medicine & Dentistry, London, UK) and insulin-like growth factors as a promising drug target in cancer (Dr. Michael Pollak, McGill University, Montreal, Canada).
It was apparent from the data presented at this meeting that early-phase clinical development of targeted anticancer agents is in full swing with many different targets being explored and hundreds of new agents being studied. Among the targets for which promising data were presented were insulin-like growth factor receptor inhibitors, drugs targeting cancer stem cells in various ways, inhibitors of DNA repair, and others. Another area of extensive research is looking at combinations of targeted agents with each other and combinations of targeted agents and conventional chemotherapy. Some of these studies have yielded untoward outcomes, such as the CAIRO study, the final data of which were presented at TAT 2009.

Conference program Presentations Abstract book Scientific meeting report