Recent years have seen a number of important advances in the rapidly evolving field of cancer chemoprevention. During the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024, a panel of experts will discuss new and emerging research that is driving the field.

The session, Applying Precision Medicine to Cancer Prevention: Opportunities Ahead, will be held on Wednesday, April 10, from 10:15 – 11:45 a.m. in Room 29 on the upper level of the San Diego Convention Center.

“Our goal in this session is to present cutting-edge research and state-of-the-art data on precision chemoprevention, focusing on the potential impact chemoprevention can have on reducing cancer burden,” said session Chair Adetunji Toriola, MD, PhD, MPH, professor of surgery, William H. Danforth Washington University Physician-Scientist Scholar, and co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Washington University School of Medicine. “We will also focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms of various chemoprevention agents, as well as the current state of knowledge, gaps in knowledge, and opportunities to advance chemoprevention research.”

Toriola will begin the session with a discussion of the promise of receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand (RANKL) inhibition in breast cancer prevention in premenopausal women with dense breasts, followed by Geoffrey J. Lindeman, MBBS, PhD, of The Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Parkville, Victoria, Australia, who will review novel cancer chemoprevention strategies for women carrying pathogenic variants in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene.

Marike A. Gabrielson, MD, PhD, associate professor at the Karolinska Institutet Cancer Center in Stockholm, Sweden, will talk about the role of tamoxifen in breast cancer prevention, and Meredith A. Tennis, PhD, associate professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, will conclude the presentations with a discussion of progress and challenges in precision medicine for lung cancer prevention.

“This is an exciting time to be discussing precision cancer chemoprevention because, while we know that lifestyle modification is effective in reducing cancer risk, the opportunities for cancer prevention with chemoprevention are enormous. We can target individuals who are most likely to benefit, taking into consideration the risk-benefit profile,” Toriola said. “We have made tremendous progress, but we still need to expand our footprint in chemoprevention research and make it a viable and sustainable option for cancer prevention.”

Toriola expects this session to appeal to a broad audience spanning basic scientists, population scientists, translational scientists, as well as clinicians. “This session can help to foster transdisciplinary discussions about how we can accelerate and translate cancer chemoprevention research, so that experimental findings can be tested quickly and robustly in population-based studies and vice versa, ultimately leading to the rapid discovery of new agents that can be used in primary prevention of cancer,” he said.