News in orthopaedics and traumatology – 17th EFORT Congress: 1–3 June 2016, Geneva

The 17th EFORT Congress that will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1–3 June 2016 as a combined programme in partnership with swiss orthopaedics.

“Maintaining activity through life” is the main theme of this major scientific event which will attract more than 6,000 participants. Around 2,000 international experts will present the latest and most important trends and highlights in the field of orthopaedics and traumatology – from basic research to new trends in prevention, therapy or rehabilitation. Latest scientific findings will be reported in more than 200 scientific sessions.

Some of the topical highlights of the Congress:
- Mobility in ageing societies
- Polytrauma in the elderly
- Registry studies promote quality treatments
- Obesity in orthopaedic surgery

The 17th EFORT Congress provides an opportunity for medical and general interest media to report about latest and most relevant developments in this field.
Information on the programme can be found at https://www.efort.org/geneva2016/scientific-content

About EFORT

The European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (EFORT) is the umbrella organisation linking Europe´s national orthopaedic societies. EFORT was founded in 1991 in the Italian Marentino. Today it has 41 national member societies and 13 associate scientific members.

EFORT is a non-profit organisation. The participating societies aim at promoting the exchange of scientific knowledge and experience in the prevention and treatment of diseases and injuries of the musculoskeletal system. EFORT organises an annual congress, seminars, courses, forums and conferences within Europe. It also initiates and supports basic and clinical research.

Possibilities for personalised vaccines revealed at ESMO Symposium

The possibilities for personalised vaccines in all types of cancer are revealed today in a lecture from Dr Harpreet Singh at the ESMO Symposium on Immuno-Oncology 2014 in Geneva, Switzerland.
“One of the biggest hurdles in cancer immunotherapy is the discovery of appropriate cancer targets that can be recognised by T-cells,” said Singh, who is scientific coordinator of the EU-funded GAPVAC phase I trial which is testing personalised vaccines in glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive brain cancer. “In the GAPVAC trial we will treat glioblastoma patients with vaccines that are ideal for each patient because they contain personalised antigens.”
For all patients in the GAPVAC study, researchers will identify genes expressed in the tumour, peptides presented on the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) receptor (i.e. peptides which will be seen by T-cells), cancer specific mutations, and the ability of the immune system to mount a response to certain antigens. Based on this information, two vaccines, called actively personalised vaccines (APVACs), will be constructed and administered following conventional surgery.
The first vaccine will be prepared from a warehouse of 72 targets previously identified by the researchers as relevant for treatment in glioblastoma. These peptides have been manufactured and put on the shelf ready to be vaccinated in patients. Patients will be given a cocktail of the peptides they express and which their immune system can mount a response to.
Singh said: “A patient may express 20 of these 72 targets on their tumour, for example. If we find that the patient’s immune system can mount responses to 5 of the 20 targets, we mix the 5 peptides and give them to the patient. We mix the peptides off the shelf but the cocktail is changed for each patient because it is matched to their biomarkers.”
The second vaccine is synthesised de novo based on a mutated peptide expressed in the tumour of the patient. Singh said: “That peptide is not in our warehouse because it just occurs in this one single patient. The patient receives APVAC-1 and APVAC-2 in a highly personalised fashion in a way that I think has never been done for any patient.”
He added: “GAPVAC has two major goals. One is to show that personalised vaccines are feasible, since this is one of the most complicated trials ever done in cancer immunotherapy. The second is to show that we can mount far better biological responses in these patients compared to vaccination with non-personalised antigens.”
Singh’s previous research has shown that vaccination with non-personalised antigens leads to better disease control and longer overall survival in phase I and phase II clinical studies in patients with renal cell cancer.²
Singh said: “For the non-personalised vaccines we used off-the-shelf peptide targets that were shared by many patients with a particular cancer. Using this approach we have successfully vaccinated patients with renal cell cancer, colorectal cancer and glioblastoma.”
He added: “During this research we identified other targets that appeared in very few patients or even, in extreme cases, in a single patient. Often these rarer peptides are of better quality, meaning they are more specifically seen in cancer cells and occur at higher levels. This led us to start developing personalised cancer vaccines which contain the ideal set of targets for one particular patient. We hope they will be even more effective than the off-the-shelf vaccines.”
Singh continued: “A very simple example from something established is trastuzumab in breast cancer. Trastuzumab was originally given to every breast cancer patient and the efficacy was just seen in a subset. Now only about 20% of breast cancer patients receive trastuzumab and the personalised aspect is just based on the low abundance of Her2, the target.”

Singh believes that personalised vaccines hold promise for all types of cancer, and that personalisation could also be applied to adoptive cell therapy.

Immunotherapy set to revolutionise cancer treatment - ESMO Immuno-oncology Symposium PR

 Immunotherapy is set to revolutionise the treatment of cancer, according to ESMO President Professor Rolf A. Stahel. His comments come as the ESMO Symposium on Immuno-Oncology 2014  is about to open in Geneva, Switzerland (21-22 November).
“We expect that the new possibilities of immunotherapy will substantially change the treatment of cancer,” said Stahel, who is also Scientific Co-Chair of the meeting. “And this is not just in one disease, but across the board in many types of cancer. The ESMO Symposium on Immuno-Oncology will highlight all exciting immunotherapy topics which are now on the verge of entering clinical practice or are already practiced in some of the leading centres.”
Professor George Coukos, also Scientific Co-Chair of the meeting, director of the Department of Oncology at the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) and the Ludwig Cancer Research Centre, Lausanne, Switzerland, said: “There is no doubt that immunotherapy is rapidly emerging as a self-standing therapeutic domain in oncology. This is in the same way that chemotherapy, molecular targeted therapies, radiation therapy or surgery have made a very significant contribution to the treatment of cancer patients.”
The latest developments in immunotherapy will be presented by international experts from Europe and beyond on topics including checkpoint blockade, T cell therapies and vaccine development.
Commenting on the promise for checkpoint blockade, Coukos said: “There are very important developments now in many disease types. The unexpected news is that checkpoint blockade works not just in tumours that were considered to be responsive to immunotherapy, such as melanoma or renal cell cancer. It is also effective in patients who have not previously responded to immunotherapy, including those with lung cancer, gastrointestinal tumours and genitourinary tumours. Medical oncologists have another tool to treat patients, and this ESMO meeting will help them increase their understanding on the potential of this therapy and what it means for clinical practice in the future.”
T-cell therapies and T-cell engineering are another rapidly emerging area that will be explored at the meeting. Responses have been seen with adoptive T-cell therapy in haematological malignancies, lymphoma and leukaemia, but also in solid tumours such as melanoma and sarcoma. Research is ongoing in various disease areas such as prostate and breast cancer and the most recent findings will be presented.
Vaccine development and cancer antigens are another hot topic at the ESMO symposium. Coukos said: “We have invited top experts in the field to discuss which antigens should be pursued, whether they should be mutated antigens, and how the field is progressing on this fast moving treatment.”
Commenting on the growing importance of immunotherapy in oncology today, Coukos said: “Immunotherapy capitalises on the ability to activate the immune system in a robust way. That has paid off, demonstrating that in fact there is a very vigorous immune response against tumours that can be activated using antibodies that block immune checkpoints, or using combinations with vaccines, or taking this response out of the body and re-educating and re-engineering it with T-cells in the adoptive T-cell transfer approach.”
He concluded: “All of these areas are rapidly evolving and we are seeing responses and success stories in various areas of oncology, to the point that now I think there is no doubt in the oncology community that immunotherapy is here to stay. Immunotherapy will continue to make a significant impact as we optimise the technology and the medical science behind it.”


After a very successful first edition in 2013 and in light of the growing importance of immune therapies in oncology, the second “ESMO Symposium on Immuno-oncology – Advances in cancer immunotherapy: from vaccines to antibodies and cell therapies” is expected to welcome over 400 participants from all over the world: medical oncologists from all areas of specialisation as well as other oncology specialists interested in learning the basics of immunotherapies, hearing the latest research results, understanding how to deal with treatment options and toxicities and interpret the new wave of data.