The last year has been a really exciting time and there has been so much progress in salivary gland cancer research. I am personally really excited by the progress of the clinical, translational and laboratory program I am developing at The Christie/CRUK Manchester Institute and across the UK network as well as those through the combined efforts of the International salivary gland cancer research community. I have been so busy with my research program that I haven’t posted any updates. However, I am having my first proper break now since Christmas, and have had a chance to stop and reflect on all the progress. I have listed just a few of the items below and I will expand on these topics over the next few weeks …. but in brief:
The UK adenoid cystic carcinoma patient group has held face-to-face meetings on three occasions through 2018/19 with 40-50 people attending each meeting - which I think makes us the World’s largest face-to-face ACC national body. I jointly lead these with Emma Kinloch, but thanks so much to Emma for all the hard work as she does the lions share of the organising.
We have formally established a charity salivaryglandcancer.uk to support the activity of the UK patient group and professional community (thanks so much again to Emma who put so much work into this).
Through the salivary gland clinic in Manchester I have begun collecting the samples to develop the World’s largest fully clinically annotated sequencing bio-repository (whole exome, transcriptome and immune phenotyping) for adenoid cystic carcinoma patients (part of The Ella Project). This is generously funded though two charitable foundations (Syncona Foundation and the Infrastructure Industry Foundation) with the support of the FightBACC events hosted by Ella and her family and friends.
I presented the results of the first 100 patients that I sequenced with focused genomic profiling though the salivary gland cancer trials clinic at The Christie (using a targeted next generation sequencing panel) at ASCO annual meeting, Chicago - this is the global oncology meeting for these clinical/translational studies.
In parallel to the patient-facing side of my life, I have made really exciting progress setting up a laboratory research program into adenoid cystic carcinoma: I had an interview with the Cancer Research UK Clinical Careers Committee in late 2018 and have been invited to reapply for funding with the data I generate through 2019/20.
I was honoured to present an update on my clinical, translational and laboratory research program at the Updated in Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Translation Research Meeting held at Massachusetts General Hospital in March 2019 (noted by the US ACC Research Foundation) - it was an inspirational weekend with talks by all ‘the great and the good’ of the global ACC research community.
From the International research community there have been a flurry of studies looking at targeted therapies in sub-groups of salivary gland cancer patients: androgen deprivation therapy in AR over expressing ductal carcinoma; entrectinib in NTRK rearranged secretory carcinoma; lorotrectinib in NTRK rearranged secretory carcinoma; trastuzumab and docetaxel in HER2 over expressing salivary gland cancer; ado-trastuzumab emtansine in HER2 amplified/over-expressing salivary gland cancer; neratinib in ERBB2 mutated solid tumours; and lenvatinib in adenoid cystic carcinoma. In addition, there are studies recruiting in NOTCH mutated adenoid cystic carcinoma and RET rearranged intra-ductal carcinoma which I will be recruiting to through 2019/20.