ANZSA Newsletter - July 2022

Australia and New Zealand Sarcoma Association July 2022 Newsletter

Dear ANZSA members,

In this edition, we share with you some exciting updates on our ANZSA Annual Scientific Meeting 2022 | Sarcoma Awareness Month 2022 | New ANZSA Sarcoma Guidelines | Research Updates 

Message from the Chair of ANZSA

Read updates on the ANZSA Board and activities from Adrian Cosenza, Chair of ANZSA here. 

Message from the CEO of ANZSA

At ANZSA, improving outcomes for sarcoma patients through research, education and awareness of sarcomas and related tumours is always our priority. 

So far this year, we have seen many great achievements in the advancement of sarcoma research and awareness in the greater community. 

One of the highlights of our year so far has been the recognition of ANZSA research at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting. ANZSA partnered with other cancer associations around the world to conduct this research study — with board member Prof. Marianne Phillips as National Principal Investigator was a co-author on the project. Dr Susie Bae is the lead for adult patients for this study.  This study was funded through Canteen, The GPA Andrew Ursisni Charitable fund and by our collaborators ANZCHOG. This is a major achievement for the sarcoma community and for ANZSA on an international stage which you can read more about below.

With this year’s Sarcoma Awareness Month just wrapping up, I am happy to say that we were able to see some great results in raising awareness for sarcoma. We would like to thank all the ANZSA members and consumers that agreed to give interviews on the radio and TV which helped us reach over 25 million people worldwide thanks to their public relations campaign. This is an amazing result and has helped spread our message like never before. 

Our most recent Scientific Advisory Committee meeting gave us a promising insight into the ongoing sarcoma trials being held in Australia as well as new emerging trials which will provide more treatment options for our patients as they develop and progress. 

I would also like to take the time to remind you that registrations for our 2022 Annual Scientific Meeting have now opened. This year, I am excited to say that we are offering a hybrid ASM, with the possibility of attending in-person or online. This year will also mark the first time in which the ASM will be held in both Australia and New Zealand, with Sydney and Queenstown hosting the event this year. You will find more details and the registration link in the ASM section of this newsletter. 

I would also like to take the time to welcome two new additions to the ANZSA team. Fiona Ng who is taking over the position of Administration Officer and Harrison Colwell who is taking over the position of Communications Officer. Some of you may have already met our new members through email but if you haven’t then please join me in welcoming them to our team. 

We thank you for your ongoing support of all the work we are doing at ANZSA, we couldn’t achieve these goals without the support from the Board, ANZSA members, and the wider sarcoma consumer community.  Lastly we hope to see you all in person at our ASM later this year.

Warm Regards

Dr Denise Caruso | CEO of ANZSA

2022 ANZSA Annual Scientific Meeting

Registrations for the 2022 ANZSA Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) Optimal Sarcoma Care for Everyone Everywhere have now opened! This year’s ASM will be held as a hybrid event — with both in person and online attendance made available to all who wish to attend. The event will be held simultaneously in both Australia and New Zealand, marking the first time that the event will be held outside of Australia.

This event runs from the 4th - 5th of November 2022 at the following locations:

• Sofitel Darling Harbour, Sydney, NSW, 2000 
• Hotel St. Mortiz, Queenstown, NZ, 9300
• Online via Zoom

This is a chance to hear from researchers and sarcoma specialists — from both Australia and New Zealand as well as from around the world — present their research and join in a lively debate.

We are delighted to announce the following local speakers who will be in attendance at the event:

• Prof. Dorothy Keefe – CEO of Cancer Australia 
• Richard Vines – Founder of Rare Cancers Australia
• Prof. David Currow – Vice Chancellor of University of Wollongong

We are also excited to announce that the following international guest speakers will be presenting in person at the event:

• Dr. Alessandro Gronchi – Surgical Oncologist (Milan, Italy) 
• Dr. Silvia Stacchiotti – Medical Oncologist (Milan, Italy) 
• Dr. Peter Ferguson – Orthopaedic Oncologist (Toronto, Canada)

You can register for the event here.

Calls for Abstracts and ePosters are now open

Submissions for abstracts and ePosters for the event are now open. All abstract/ePoster submissions must be submitted by midnight on Friday, 16th of September. There are important guidelines as to what you can and cannot use in your slides so it is imperative to read these carefully before submitting your entry.

You can submit your abstracts via following the link here.

We look forward to seeing you in attendance.

Sarcoma Awareness Month 2022

July was Sarcoma Awareness Month, a chance for us to highlight all the amazing research being conducted and raise awareness about sarcoma. This year, ANZSA saw some major successes in terms of conveying our message to the public about who we are and what we do.

For this Sarcoma Awareness Month, we partnered with a public relations firm, to help create a media campaign that would run for the duration of the month. This campaign was a successful endeavour. Overall, we secured 419 items of coverage with an estimated reach of over 25.6 million people with an Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) of more than $635,000 – an incredible result for our organisation. 

We were lucky to have two of our case studies' stories picked up by major Australian media outlets. Kaela Graham-Bowman participated in a live television interview with ABC News Breakfast – which aired nationally. Jess Slee took part in two interviews with ABC Riverland and Kidspot.com.au – Australia’s top parenting site. This article generated interest from other journalists, resulting in coverage with 7News Digital and international news site, The Sun UK. We also had Prof. Angela Hong, Dr. Denise Caruso and Dr. Andrew Johnston featuring in interviews across Australia and New Zealand. 

In addition to this, we held two online Sarcoma Awareness Month webinars to showcase some of the research and trials being conducted in Australia. The first webinar focused on Functional Outcomes and Rehabilitation for sarcoma patients which saw 82 people in attendance.  The second shone a light on the STRASS-2 trial in Australia. You can watch the recordings of these events here.

We have also seen some great engagement and interaction on our social media platforms this month. Across our four social media profiles, we reached over 40,000 people with our posts. Thank you to all who reposted, retweeted or shared our content to help reach a wider audience. 

With this year’s Sarcoma Awareness Month now wrapped up, we will continue to work hard to raise awareness for sarcoma within the community.

ANZSA Sarcoma Guidelines

For the past two years, ANZSA has engaged a multidisciplinary working party to perform rigorous review of scientific evidence to develop specific recommendations for different aspects of sarcoma care.  The working party has been led by ANZSA Director Prof. Angela Hong, consists of independent experts include doctors, and researchers — and consumer representatives — such as patients who have had sarcoma treatment and their carers.

As each sarcoma treatment differs between each patient, the working party has worked hard to ensure the guidelines reflect issues that are relevant to patients. From their research, the working party were able to identify three broad topics for the guidelines:

• Topic 1: Management at specialised sarcoma centre
• Topic 2: Retroperitoneal sarcoma
• Topic 3: Paediatric/adolescent young adult (AYA) sarcoma

From these topics, there are three clinical questions that have already been addressed in this series 1 of new guidelines:

• Clinical Question 1: Does radiotherapy at a specialised sarcoma centre improve outcomes?
• Clinical Question 2: Does surgery at a specialised sarcoma centre improve outcomes?
• Clinical Question 3: Does delayed surgical resection of the primary tumour impact on outcome for pelvic Ewing sarcoma?

The content of the guidelines will continue to be updated in accordance to new published research when it becomes available. Further series covering other clinical questions will be released shortly.

Read our new sarcoma guidelines here.

Research Updates

MYTH Study: ANZSA is the proud funder of the MYTH Study (Methotrexate for adolescents and young adults (AYA) in The Home for AYA osteosarcoma patients) currently being conducted at the Chris O’Brien Life House. The MYTH Study aims to give patients the option of treatment out of hospital and hopes to explore their perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of having treatment in this manner.

Currently in Australia, patients receiving methotrexate as treatment for osteosarcoma, receive treatment in hospital. They are admitted for multiple days for each treatment, and spend up to 44 days in hospital over the course of all their treatment. An ‘ambulatory programme’ is proposed where patients wouldn’t have to be admitted; they would instead receive treatment at home, receiving fluids and medication held in specialised backpacks. In doing so, this might alleviate some of the problems that hospital admission contributes to, such as social isolation, loss of independence & freedom, and immobility & life disruption. This study aims to check if the ‘ambulatory programme’ is safe, feasible, and most importantly, acceptable and preferable for patients. 

This study is being led by Dr Elizabeth Connolly and Dr Vivek Bhadri at the Chris O’Brien Life House (COBLH), and Dr Jessica Ryan at the The Children's Hospital at Westmead. It is now open at COBLH and will soon also open at the The Children's Hospital at Westmead.

STRASS II: The STRASS II trial is making great progress within Australia, with two new sites set to open in the coming months. 

The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney held their site initiation visit on the 4th of August and the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane will be opening its very soon. The study is currently open in Melbourne. With our first patient recruited.

The EORTC 1809 STRASS II study is the first official trial looking into potential benefits of chemotherapy before surgery to improve disease control and survival in patients with retroperitoneal sarcoma. It is a pan-European study with a transatlantic collaboration with multiple specialised sarcoma centres in Australia, Canada and North America.

rEECUR: Research conducted by ANZSA featured in the rEECUR plenary presentation at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago this past June. ANZSA partnered with other cancer associations around the world to produce the presentation — with board member Prof. Marianne Phillips working as a co-author on the project.

This is a major achievement for the sarcoma community and for ANZSA, on an international stage.  The rEECUR study is a ground-breaking study for Ewing Sarcoma patients that will continue to recruit to new arms of investigations. ANZSA with our international partners and our local collaborators ANZCHOG (ANZ Children’s & Haematology Oncology Group) are proud to be able to offer this study for our Australian and New Zealand patients. 

The presentation focused on the research into the rEECUR trial that ANZSA is participating in amongst other cancer research organisations around the world. rEECUR is an international randomised controlled trial of chemotherapy for the treatment of recurrent and primary refractory Ewing sarcoma.

2022 Research Fellowship Recipient: Introducing Dr. Madeleine Strach, the 2022 recipient of the ANZSA Clinical Research Fellowship which has been co-funded by The Kids Cancer Project and Rainbows for Kate Foundation

Dr Madeleine Strach is a medical oncologist at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney and Garvan Institute of Medical Research and is currently completing an ESMO Translational Research Fellowship at The Christie Hospital in Manchester, UK.

She is passionate about improving management strategies for patients with sarcoma and other rare tumours, through cutting edge bench-to-bedside research, and to attending to the unmet research needs of adolescent and young adults with these tumours. She has set up a comprehensive research program that evaluates preclinical models of rare peritoneal and intra-abdominal cancers and the genetics of the tumour microenvironment.

By correlating biology with clinical outcomes of patients with these rare cancers, Dr Strach hopes to find important information that helps repurpose existing treatments and develop novel therapies for patients.

The ANZSA Fellowship supports her ongoing dedicated research for patients with intra-abdominal soft tissue tumours in an exciting program of translational research alongside her established clinical role in sarcoma care.

New Additions to ANZSA

Scientific Advisory Committee New Members

Our Scientific Advisory Council would like to announce the recruitment of two new members, Dr. Yeh Chen Lee and Prof. Gelareh Farshid.

Dr Yeh Chen Lee is a clinical investigator with subspecialty expertise in gynaecological cancers and soft tissue sarcoma. She is currently a medical oncologist at the Royal Prince Alfred-Chris O’Brien Lifehouse and Prince of Wales-Royal Hospital for Women; Research Fellow at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney; and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales.

Prof. Gelareh Farshid is an expert in breast and soft tissue pathology with substantial experience in population-based screening for breast cancer. She is a senior Consultant Pathologist at SA Pathology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Clinical Professor in the Schools of Medicine and Medical Sciences at the University of Adelaide. She serves on the executive boards of several professional societies and is a member of the PathWest Board of Directors.

Prof. Richard Carey Smith 

We would like to extend a warm welcome to Prof. Richard Carey Smith to the ANZSA Board of Directors as the Chair of the Orthopaedic Committee. 

Richard is a specialist adult and paediatric Orthopaedic surgeon who has specific expertise in Orthopaedic oncology (primary and secondary bone and soft tissue tumours), hip and knee surgery (hip and knee primary and complex revision surgery) and Osseointegration surgery.

Richard is an experienced orthopaedic surgeon with peer reviewed publications, has a broad range of orthopaedics and science and continues to present at national and international meetings and is active in the University Teaching Hospital.

Richard is an Examiner for the Royal College of Surgeons Orthopaedic trainees and is heavily involved in many Orthopaedic and Sarcoma boards.

Prof. Claudia Di Bella

Please join us in congratulating to Prof. Claudia Di Bella on her appointment as the lead for education on the subcommittee of the ANZSA Orthopaedic Committee of the Board.

Claudia is an academic orthopaedic surgeon in Melbourne, with main focus in joint arthroplasty and bone and soft tissue tumours.

With an impressive number of publications in peer reviewed journals and oral presentations at national and international conferences, Claudia’s main focus in basic science research is the use of 3D Bioprinting technologies and stem cells for the treatment of joint injuries and diseases. 

As well as her appointment as the lead of education, Claudia is a member of multiple surgical based organisations and boards. 

Thank you to our donors

We want to thank all of our generous donors for their significant contributions and donations towards sarcoma research this year. We rely heavily on these donations to continue our work and we cannot be more grateful for the support we have received so far. Every dollar helps and is invested in high-quality sarcoma research to find a cure and improve outcomes.