Overview of Key Developments in the Field of Gynecologic Oncology at the SGO Annual Meeting

Pharmacy Times interviewed S. Diane Yamada, MD, 53rd president of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO), Joseph Bolivar DeLee professor of obstetrics and gynecology, the chief of the section of gynecologic oncology at the University of Chicago, and inaugural gynecologic oncology fellowship director, on some key developments in the field of gynecologic oncology in the agenda at the SGO annual conference this year.

S. Diane Yamada: Well, certainly one of the key areas has been the area of health disparities. So, we know that while we have made great strides in the treatment of ovarian cancer, there are many more targeted therapies.

In the ability to care for patients with ovarian cancer, the fact of the matter is that mortality for endometrial cancer and for cervical cancer are going up. They're 1 of the 2 cancers of all the cancers where the mortality is going up.

In particular, for endometrial cancer, some of that has to do around health disparities and lack of access to care and difficulties with social determinants of health that could impact on optimal outcomes. So, one of the themes for this year and one of the areas that we've been focusing on is trying to address some of those health disparities and what we can do to actually impact some of the aspects of health disparities that will lead to better outcomes.

So, we have a couple of fantastic master sessions at the annual meeting looking at what some of the barriers are to pay for patients in terms of access to care, how we can help improve clinical trial enrollment, for instance, for patients that are underrepresented in clinical trials, because we believe that the ability of clinical trials to be applicable to our community, and the representation within our community is going to be very important. So that's one area that we're focusing on.

Certainly, there is tremendous interest in the molecular landscape of cancers. Never before have we had such a burgeoning area of targeted therapies and antibody drug conjugates that are really exciting in the treatment of gynecologic cancers, so further understanding the molecular landscape of some of these cancers and how that understanding can help drive clinical trial development and use of targeted therapies is another area that is going to be a big area of focus for the meeting.

Then we'll have a series of exciting late breaking abstracts that will report out at the meeting. And then the other area, of course, of interest to us is gender equity. It's certainly a big area of concern within surgical fields. And our membership is now a little bit over 50% women, so attention to what we can do to address gender equity within our workforce and enhance the stability of our workforce is going to be very important.