Continuing Medical Education
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
AACR has designated this live activity for a maximum of 17.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Credit certification for individual sessions may vary, dependent upon compliance with the ACCME Accreditation Criteria. The final number of credits may vary from the maximum number indicated above.
Claiming (CME) Credit
Physicians and other health care professionals seeking AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)TM for this live continuing medical education activity must complete the online CME Request for Credit Survey by December 5, 2023. Certificates will only be issued to those who complete the survey. Your CME certificate will be sent to you via email after the completion of the activity.
Successful completion of this CME activity, which includes participation in the evaluation component, enables the participant to earn up to 17.0 Medical Knowledge MOC points in the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program. Participants will earn MOC points equivalent to the amount of CME credits claimed for the activity. It is the CME activity provider’s responsibility to submit participant completion information to ACCME for the purpose of granting ABIM MOC credit.
To receive ABIM MOC, participants must request MOC in the CME Request for Credit Survey and complete all questions. Once these steps are completed, AACR will submit your completion information via the ACCME’s Program and Activity Reporting System for the purpose of granting MOC points.
Statement of Educational Need, Target Audience, and Learning Objectives
Despite incremental advances in the therapeutic approach to glioblastoma, 5-year survival rates remain <10%. Current standard-of-care therapies for these cancers include surgery, radiation and palliative cytotoxics, which have significant side-effects and limited efficacy and are largely palliative. Pediatric central nervous system tumors are the most common solid malignancies in childhood, and aggressive therapy often leads to long-term sequelae in survivors, making these tumors challenging to treat. Advances in our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of cancer have led to targeted molecular therapies that may permit improvement in therapeutic efficacy and reduced toxicity; these therapies, however, still face many challenges. Innovative clinical trial designs with biomarker-enrichment strategies are needed to ultimately improve the outcome of patients with brain cancer.
The brain microenvironment, with its unique cell types, anatomical structures, metabolic constraints and immune environment, differs drastically from microenvironments of extracranial lesions, imposing a distinct selective pressure on tumor cells that, in turn, shapes the metastatic process and therapeutic responses. the study of brain metastasis could uncover new therapeutic targets and identify novel treatment approaches to address the unmet clinical need. Moreover, such efforts could provide insight into the biology of primary brain tumors. The lack of robust preclinical models of brain metastasis has severely limited such investigations, underscoring the importance of developing improved experimental models that holistically encompass the metastatic cascade and/or brain microenvironment. The brain microenvironment is crucial to understanding the biology of brain metastasis and could be the source of novel therapeutic targets.
As metabolic regulation lies at the intersection of many research areas, concerted efforts to understand the metabolic mechanism(s) driving malignant brain tumors and metastases may reveal novel therapeutic targets to prevent or reduce metastasis and predict biomarkers for the treatment of this aggressive disease. This conference will cover topics related to the various aspects of metabolic signaling, interface between metabolic regulators and cellular processes, and implications of their dysregulation in the context of brain tumors and metastases.
New targeted therapies that cross the blood-brain barrier have improved disease control and survival of selected patients with brain metastasis.
In order for physicians to improve outcomes of primary and metastatic CNS tumors, they should ideally understand the disease from multiple perspectives, microscopically and macroscopically. This conference will bring together the physicians who are treating the patients for primary disease, adverse reactions to treatment, and resistance to treatment with the scientists who are studying the mechanisms at the transcriptional and epigenetic levels, understanding the contribution of the tumor microenvironment, using models, and recognizing the limitations of current models. Clinicians should come away with a better understanding of CNS tumor biology.
After participating in this CME activity, physicians should be able to:
- Explain how epigenetic and epitranscriptomic modifications contribute to development of brain tumors.
- Evaluate novel drug design for better CNS penetration.
- Explain the role of metabolism in the CNS tumor microenvironment.
- Integrate novel therapeutics for personalizing brain cancer care.
- Identify novel strategies for treating brain tumors.
- Evaluate novel biomarkers or neoantigens, and genomics to assess patients’ individual cancer, potential responses to treatment, and to personalize therapy.
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, AACR will provide information that Scientific Program Committee members and speakers have disclosed all financial relationships they have with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products or services used by or on patients. All of the relevant financial relationships for these individuals have been mitigated.
Acknowledgment of Financial or Other Support
The AACR gratefully acknowledges the following commercial supporters for their Professional Educational Grants:
- Novocure
Questions about CME?
Please read our frequently asked questions. If you still have questions, contact the Office of CME at (215) 440-9300 or [email protected].