AACR on Campus Poland/Ukraine: Creating New Opportunities for Cancer Care in Ukraine Amid War

War imagery and terminology can sometimes be used as a metaphor for the treatment of cancer, but for some doctors and patients, the relationship between war and cancer is more than a metaphor—it is their reality. That is the case for Iryna Dudchenko, MD, PhD, who is an associate professor at Sumy State University and a practicing hematologist in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, which is on the frontlines of the conflict with Russia.

“We work amid constant air-raid alerts and logistical challenges, and sometimes treatment has to be postponed,” Dudchenko explained.

In her clinical practice, she is also increasingly seeing patients whose hematologic malignancies are now being diagnosed at later stages. To better understand why, Dudchenko is studying how the war is impacting the diagnosis of multiple myeloma while trying to identify tools that could help primary care physicians recognize possible multiple myeloma earlier and refer patients for appropriate diagnostic testing.

Dudchenko believes that international collaboration can help make this kind of research more actionable. So, along with around 100 other clinicians and researchers from Ukraine and Poland, she attended the AACR on Campus Poland/Ukraine event in Warsaw from August 6 to 7. These events are intentionally designed as smaller, highly interactive programs to support the professional growth and scientific exchange of early-career cancer researchers and clinical professionals in the region.

Organized by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in partnership with the Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology (MSCI) in Warsaw, Poland, and the Global Medical Knowledge Alliance (GMKA) Ukraine, the program focused on some of the most consequential challenges facing oncology professionals in those two countries, including detecting cancer earlier, improving patients’ quality of life, and translating research and real-world data into better clinical care.

“Despite all the challenges, we continue to work, continue to live, and want to remain in our cities,” Dudchenko said. “Programs like this give us an opportunity not only to gain new knowledge, but also to see that major international professional organizations understand the circumstances in which we work and are prepared to support change in Ukraine. That matters for physicians, for our patients, and for the development of the health care system as a whole.”

Bringing Ukrainian Research to an International Audience

Like Dudchenko, Anna Karavska, MD, is also examining the impact of the war on oncology services in Ukraine, including access to cancer care, the quality of care, and gaps within the health care system. Karavska, a surgical intern at the First Lviv Territorial Medical Union, St. Panteleimon Hospital in Ukraine, presented her research during a poster session where she spoke about the need for clinical research in her country.

“Conducting clinical trials in Ukraine is critically important,” Karavska said. “Trials give patients access to the newest and sometimes the only effective therapies, while giving Ukrainian physicians the opportunity to work according to global standards of cancer care. I hope the connections made at this conference will help build collaborations that enable more clinical trials to be conducted in Ukraine.”

As one of the two winners from the poster session—the other was Klaudia Bobak from Poland—Karavska will also get the opportunity to forge more international connections at the AACR Annual Meeting 2027, which will be held April 2-7 in Orlando.

“I am incredibly happy and sincerely grateful to AACR for this opportunity,” Karavska said. “I will do everything I can to represent Ukraine and remind our international colleagues of the importance of continuing to strengthen our collaboration to improve the quality of cancer care in Ukraine, especially during the war.”

Lessons From Ukraine Can Help the Global Oncology Community

Richard Sullivan, MD, PhD, of the Institute of Cancer Policy at King’s College London, led a session on health economics, health services research, and implementation science, and emphasized that international collaboration with Ukraine works both ways as the world has much to learn from how clinicians in the country have adapted to wartime challenges.

Sullivan said Ukrainian oncologists have demonstrated incredible resilience in their ability to get radiotherapy machines back up and working during electricity outages caused by attacks as well as to develop adaptive surgical procedures to care for patients at various stages in their diagnosis. Further, Sullivan is working with Ukrainian and Polish researchers to better understand patients’ access to high-tech medical innovations in their respective countries and how they approach the financing of cancer care, which he explained can provide useful comparisons that can drive public policy changes that improve access to care on a global scale.

“Partnership with Ukrainian colleagues is important not only as an expression of solidarity and support, but we also do a lot of work in terms of understanding the impact of conflict in Ukraine and translating that across to other European countries and other settings around the world,” Sullivan said. “This kind of two-way collaboration creates a strong foundation for long-term partnership and for further strengthening cancer care and research in Ukraine.”

Putting Patients’ Quality of Life at the Center of Cancer Care

This event also furthered the partnership between Poland and Ukraine—former adversaries who have come together following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“It is extremely important for us to host programs like this, collaborate with organizations such as AACR, and continue supporting Ukraine,” said Iwona Ługowska, MD, PhD, professor, head of the Centre of Excellence for Precision Oncology, and director’s representative for international affairs at the Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology. “As a neighboring country, Poland has supported Ukraine for many years—not only by providing medical care, but also by expanding research collaboration and strengthening partnerships between hospitals. Many Ukrainian colleagues now work in our hospitals, so our countries and institutions are closely connected.”

The program was designed to address the needs of both countries, and patients’ quality of life and the growing role of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) was chosen to be one of the event’s central themes.

“We should not focus only on treatment efficacy,” said Katarzyna Pogoda, MD, a medical oncologist in the Department of Breast Cancer and Reconstructive Surgery at the Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, who led a session on quality of life. “Of course, we want to reduce the risk of recurrence, but at the same time, we need to think about quality of life: how to assess it, how to discuss it with patients, and how to help them stay on treatment.”

Across modern oncology, PROs are becoming an increasingly important tool for understanding the full impact of treatment. They complement traditional clinical measures by showing not only whether a therapy controls disease, but also how it affects a person’s symptoms, daily functioning, and overall well-being. Incorporating this perspective can help clinicians and researchers make treatment decisions that better reflect what matters to patients, Pogoda explained.

“We may think, ‘I’ll prescribe the medication, and the patient will take it.’ But it doesn’t work that way,” she added. “We need to talk about quality of life, how to improve it, and how to help patients manage the challenges they face so that we can achieve better treatment outcomes.”

Building Connections With an Eye on the Future

As with other AACR on Campus events, the program also featured workshops designed to equip participants with practical tools to advance their own research, including in the areas of scientific publishing, grant writing, identifying funding opportunities, and academic career development.

“This conference is especially important to us because it brought together proactive clinicians, researchers, and health care leaders who are already providing high-quality care to their patients while also being ready to take on greater responsibility—strengthening their institutions and helping drive change in cancer care in their countries,” said Inesa Huivaniuk, MD, MPA, a surgical oncologist and co-executive director of GMKA Ukraine. “It also gives us an opportunity to launch new research projects, develop our own ideas with international experts and mentors, and build partnerships that can continue well beyond this program.”

In fact, in a post-program survey, participants emphasized the practical value of the program: 97.6% said they would be able to apply what they learned directly in their work.

“For young physicians who, like me, hope to become oncologists, this is a wonderful opportunity to learn,” said Anna Trelecka, MD, an early-career physician from Warsaw conducting research in melanoma and sarcoma. “I gained a great deal of knowledge, and I think I will be able to apply it in my future research.”

Huivaniuk said the program’s potential long-term impact on early-career researchers and cancer care overall in Ukraine was central to GMKA’s decision to partner with AACR.

“For Ukrainian oncology, international collaboration opens access to joint research, mentorship, grant programs, and clinical trials, but its value goes far beyond individual professional opportunities,” Huivaniuk explained. “What matters is that Ukrainian clinicians and researchers can participate fully in the international professional community—sharing their own experience, developing research questions together, and working with partners to identify solutions that improve cancer care and patients’ quality of life. This is important for Ukraine today, and it will remain important after the war ends.”