LS CancerDiag attends the CGA-IGC Annual Meeting as the main partner
Following our earlier announcement on the partnership with CGA-IGC, we attended their Annual Meeting in Las Vegas to launch our closer collaboration.
The Collaborative Group of the Americas on Inherited Gastrointestinal Cancer, CGA-IGC, is an organization established in 1995 that brings together colorectal surgeons, medical oncologists, gastroenterologists, researchers, geneticists, nurses, colorectal cancer registry coordinators, genetic counselors, psychologists, and all other health care professionals involved in the care of individuals with hereditary gastrointestinal cancer to improve understanding of the basic science and the clinical management of inherited gastrointestinal cancers.
The CGA-IGC vision and mission are very aligned with LS CancerDiag’s own mission of empowering families and healthcare professionals to make better informed decisions for cancer prevention. Earlier this year we announced our partnership with the society and we were looking forward to attending their Annual Meeting in Las Vegas as the main partner.
We had high expectation and were not disappointed over the three days of the conference happening from the 26th to the 28th of October at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino.
The company hosted a well attended industry symposium on the starting day with the title “Lynch Syndrome or not? DiagMMR provides the functional solution”. While the attendees enjoyed the offered lunch to refuel their batteries for what would be three intense days of knowledge sharing, learning, exchange, and debates, they had the opportunity to hear, learn and ask questions from leading scientists in the field of Lynch syndrome.
The session was started with a inspiring presentation by world-leading Lynch syndrome researcher Prof. Päivi Peltomäki from the University of Helsinki. She provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of Lynch syndrome diagnostics, the advances achieved, and the difficulties and pitfalls that continue to exist. For those interested in more detail, Prof. Peltomäki recently published a corresponding review article together with our Founder Prof. Nyström.
This was followed by a panel discussion moderated by our CEO Niklas Lahti, for which our CSO Dr. Minttu Kansikas and Dr. Toni Seppälä, leading clinical researcher and member of our Clinical Advisory Board, joined the conversation. He is also a co-author of the aforementioned review article. Together they elaborated on the use case of functional testing of the characteristically deficient mismatch repair (MMR) proteins in Lynch syndrome patients, its use in the diagnostics pathway, and addressed questions from the audience.
The fully packed agenda of the first day continued throughout the afternoon, before culminating in the social event ‘Viva Las Vegas’, which we were glad to co-sponsor together with the advocacy group FightCRC. A wonderful opportunity to celebrate the dedication and effort of everyone involved.
Memorable and touching stories from patients were shared on stage that day during the morning and in the evening, reminding us all of the importance of the contributions of everyone attending this meeting and the organizations they represent, to reduce unnecessary suffering of patients and families.
This is one of the reasons we have partnered with CGA-IGC and have deep appreciation for their work, year-round activities, and the annual meeting. It brings together health professionals, researchers, patients, advocacy groups, and industry players, to join forces in service of a common cause and fight hereditary cancers.
It is also aligned with our value of creating and sharing knowledge, to continue the progress of our understanding of these complex conditions, which this community is all about.
The second and third day of the conference came with more deep dives into various areas of hereditary cancer, sometimes very serious, and sometimes less so, like when teams gathered on stage to compete in the already legendary ‘Jeoparody’ at the end of day two.
We left Las Vegas with a lot of new insights, valuable contacts, and moving stories. We are very much looking forward to the next edition of the CGA-IGC Annual Meeting, which will take place in Philadelphia from November 14-16, 2024. See you there!
To learn more about CGA-IGC, please visit their website at https://www.cgaigc.com/
