AACR COVID-19 Highlights

At the July 2020 AACR virtual meeting on COVID-19 and cancer, Solange Peters, MD, PhD, European Society for Medical Oncology President, and Head, Medical Oncology Department, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland, delivered the keynote address, providing an update on the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium cohort study.

“COVID-19 is more than just the common cold. It represents a perpetual challenge for which we have to be perpetually prepared,” stated Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD), in his keynote lecture at the July 2020 AACR virtual meeting on COVID-19 and cancer. Dr Fauci has been Director of NIAD for 36 years.

One question on oncologists’ minds these days is whether treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients with cancer has a negative effect on COVID-19 disease. So far, the data have not shown a deleterious effect, but the definitive answer is unknown. In fact, some experts think immune checkpoint inhibitors may have a positive effect on COVID-19.