3-Aug-09 1:00 PM CST

2008 SNO Meeting Recap

The 2008 Society for Neuro-Oncology Scientific Meeting held at the Loews Las Vegas Resort in Lake Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 21-23, 2008 was a huge success. The meeting, which drew a record number of abstracts (565, up 15% from 2007) and attendees (over 1200, an increase of over 33% from 2007!) began Thursday with an Education Day organized by Patrick Wen M.D. and Sherry Fox, Ph.D. The scientific program was organized by Michael Vogelbaum, M.D.

Click here to read a recap of the Education Day.

Click here to read the comments of SNO Founder Victor Levin, MD, who presented the 2008 SNO Lifetime Achievement Award to Charles Wilson, MD.

The formal meeting itself began on Friday with three concurrent and very well-attended Sunrise Sessions focusing on the biology of glioma invasion, low grade gliomas, and glioma epidemiology and markers. The Plenary session opened with a session focused on the highest scoring abstracts. Most of the abstracts in this session were also selected for awards, which were presented to the authors at the time of their presentation. The second half of the opening plenary session was focused on advances in imaging of tumors and therapeutic responses. A special luncheon lecture was given by Jiri Bartek on the topic of DNA damage checkpoints. Friday afternoon brought concurrent sessions focusing on the latest results from clinical trials and advances in cell biology. The concurrent sessions were followed by a new presentation format; a poster discussion session. The poster discussion session consisted of a 1-hour period of viewing the highest ranked posters, followed by a 1-hour discussion of the posters by a select panel of senior investigators. The general posters were available for viewing on Friday evening.

Saturday began with three additional concurrent sunrise sessions devoted to ependymomas, epigenetics and a panel discussion of whether more chemotherapy is better. The Saturday morning plenary session focused on stem cell biology and pediatric neuro-oncology basic science. These two topics were featured in separate Keynote lectures given by Richard Gilbertson (stem cells) and David Largaespada (pediatric basic science). Saturday afternoon brought concurrent sessions focused on pathology and prognostic markers, and epidemiology and quality of life. The second poster discussion session followed the concurrent sessions, and this in turn was followed by the second general poster session. Saturday evening brought the SNO banquet which featured the presentation of the SNO Lifetime Achievement Award to Charles Wilson, M.D.

Sunday morning brought three additional sunrise sessions on advanced technology in radiation oncology, neurocognition and quality of life, and immunotherapy. The Sunday morning plenary session started with a focus on immunotherapies and then closed with an excellent series of abstracts focused on experimental therapeutics. The meeting adjourned at noon on Sunday.

The Society for Neuro-Oncology wishes to thank Michael Vogelbaum, M.D, Patrick Wen M.D. and Sherry Fox, Ph.D. for their extraordinary efforts in organizing the most successful meeting in the Society's history.

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