Updates from ASCO's Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium

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Updates from ASCO’s Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium

Meeting Highlights and More

In this month’s issue of Oncology & Biotech News, our editors highlight the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s 2008 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium held in January. Researchers, clinicians, and other gastrointestinal specialists from around the world attended this year’s conference. As with most aspects of our publication, our meeting highlights focus on information that physicians and other health care providers can implement in the practice setting. Our objective is to provide practical information for the community-based oncologist.

Reimbursement and Managed Care

Our departments provide a range of perspectives for the oncology professional. Our aim is to offer not only a global view of our industry, but also practice management topics. In this month’s department, you’ll read about recently updated breast cancer guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). As newer approaches to oncology therapy and management continue to reach the market, professional organizations try to keep up with the pace of advances. One important aspect of the new guidelines recommend that inflammatory breast cancer without metastases be treated initially using anthracycline therapy with or without a taxane. If the patient responds to the chemotherapy, the patient should undergo total mastectomy followed by radiation therapy.

In each issue of our publication, we focus on a pharmaceutical or biotech company’s oncology division. In this month’s Physicians’ Financial News department, you can read about Sanofi-Aventis’ oncology pipeline.

Our other monthly columns—Global Reports, and Clinical Trial Reports—which appear in this issue, are meant to provide you with information to keep abreast of our industry. We hope you find our publication informative and look forward to your feedback.