ACCREDITATION STATEMENT
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education activities for physicians.
CREDIT DESIGNATION STATEMENT
The AACR has designated this educational activity for a maximum of 19.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)TM. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
CLAIMING CME CREDIT
Physicians and other health care professionals seeking AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM for this continuing medical education activity must complete the online CME Request for Credit Survey (available here as the conference approaches) by Friday, August 3, 2012. Your CME certificate will be sent to you via email after the completion of the activity.
STATEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL NEED, TARGET AUDIENCE, AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer related deaths in the United States. Lack of initial symptoms has challenged the early diagnosis of this disease and has resulted in more than 50 percent of patients reaching the clinic only once the disease has metastasized to distant organs. The overall survival rate of patients with advanced stage is merely 1 percent, with less than one year of survival after initial diagnosis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to bring together physicians and cancer researchers to exchange ideas that can lead to the discovery of new biomarkers for early diagnosis and establish new animal models that can facilitate evaluation of novel therapeutic targets and help in designing of new clinical trials for targeted therapeutics.
Studying events involved in the initiation as well as progression of pancreatic cancer is pivotal to developing therapies to prolong survival. It is necessary to allocate more resources towards exploratory research and exchange of ideas across scientific disciplines. Enhanced dialogue and scientific collaboration between physicians, scientists and health professionals will help in identifying and testing new strategies and technologies that can promote translation of bench side research into bedside treatments.
After participating in this CME activity, physicians should be able to:
- Articulate current scientific understanding of the role of tumor microenvironment, immune programming, metabolism and KRAS in the development and treatment of pancreatic cancer;
- Identify key risk factors including familial/genetic risk, obesity and inflammation and their application in clinical settings;
- Assess the use of imaging and RNA biomarkers to improve early detection and diagnosis of pancreatic cancer;
- Explain recent advances in stem cell research and applicability to pancreatic cancer metastasis, regulatory mechanisms and targeted therapies; and
- Evaluate various drug delivery strategies and their relative efficacy in advancing treatment in pre-clinical and clinical trials.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
It is the policy of the AACR that the information presented at AACR CME activities will be unbiased and based on scientific evidence. To help participants make judgments about the presence of bias, the AACR will provide information that Scientific Program Committee members and speakers have disclosed about financial relationships they have with commercial entities that produce or market products or services related to the content of this CME activity. This disclosure information will be made available in the Program/Proceedings of this conference.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF FINANCIAL OR OTHER SUPPORT
This activity is supported by grants and will be disclosed at the activity.
QUESTIONS ABOUT CME?
Please contact the Office of CME at (215) 440-9300 or cme@aacr.org.