Martine Piccart, MD, PhD: Preview IMPAKT Meeting 2012
Dr. Martine Piccart, the current president of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), talks about the upcoming IMPAKT breast cancer meeting being held in Brussels, Belgium May 3-5, 2012.
Dr. Piccart is Professor of Oncology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Director of the Medicine Department at the Institut Jules Bordet, in Brussels, Belgium.
The Group Room at the 34th Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was made possible by support from:
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Selma Schimmel, Founder & CEO, Vital Options International:
Hello and welcome to the Group Room where we’re at the 34th Annual CTRC – AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. We are now joined by Professor-Doctor Martine Piccart, who is the Director of Medicine at the Institute of Jules Bordet, she is Professor of Oncology at the Free University of Brussels and also the incoming president of the European Society of Medical Oncology known as ESMO.
Professor Piccart, the next IMPAKT meeting is being planned, which is the most important breast cancer meeting in Europe. When is that meeting actually, and what is the focus this year? Where are we going with IMPAKT?
Martine Piccart, MD, PhD, Current President, European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO):
The IMPAKT conference takes place in Brussels every year at the beginning of the May, and it’s really targeting young doctors, young basic scientists, people from the industry developing new drugs and we try to get all these people together to really have opportunity to learn first of all, what have been new developments in our understanding of the biology of the disease and what we could do to explore these new discoveries in order to improve the treatments of patients. So it’s a very translational conference with a dialogue that we want to encourage between clinicians and researchers, and we also try to attract pathologists because we think pathologists play a very important role today.
It’s not a huge conference, we have seven to eight hundred attendees and that is nice because that gives more opportunities for exchanges.
Selma Schimmel:
I’m so glad you brought up the role of pathologists because it’s something that I’m so passionate about because of my own life story and where there was a time where you set your pathology and we looked under a microscope but today we have molecular pathology, and again, it comes back to even here, patients needing to ask for molecular screening and genotyping of their tissue. And it begins the role of the pathologists now. It’s time to get them out of their laboratories and really seeing and talking to patients because most of us most of us, they are these elusive doctors that we hear about but we never see. And the language and the report between the pathologist and the patient have never been as important as it is now. And I don’t know if patients are even aware of the importance of molecular pathology beyond the microscope.
Martine Piccart, MD, PhD:
You are right. I think we need to educate patients there because this initial diagnosis based on what the pathologist is doing with the tumor is so important….
Selma Schimmel:
It’s where the new compound, that’s where personalized medicine is rooted. And that’s how you’re going to find the drugs that coincide with the different pathways and the biology of the cancer cell to create targeted therapies.
Martine Piccart, MD, PhD:
Exactly. So we really hope to attract pathologists to this conference to involve them, and so typically in these conferences we select one or two key pathways, the ones where we think most progress has been done in the last year. We have some basic scientists coming and explaining the pathway, and we have developers talking about new drugs and then we challenge one another and that’s what I like about this conference.
Somebody told me that IMPAKT looks like San Antonio thirty years ago at the beginning because San Antonio is a very translational conference. It’s a wonderful conference but it’s become huge, and so IMPAKT is kind of a small San Antonio meeting.
Selma Schimmel:
I’m very excited for the time I spent with you. Truly I have had the pleasure of observing your work and seeing your work over the last decade and you’re a very inspirational woman and doctor. Professor-Doctor Martine Piccart, Professor of Oncology at the Free University at Brussels, the Director of Medicine at the Institute of Jules Bordet, and the incoming president of the European Society of Medical Oncology, ESMO. Thank you very, very much, Professor Piccart.
Martine Piccart, MD, PhD:
Thank you.
END OF VIDEO