Dr. Florez Shares Highlights From the IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer

Narjust Florez, MD, FASCO, Co-Chair of the IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer, joined Lung Cancers Today at the conference to discusses key highlights of the meeting, the IASLC 50^th Anniversary Celebration, and the research that her lab is presenting.

Dr. Florez, a thoracic medical oncologist, the Associate Director of Cancer Care Equity at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, worked with her fellow co-chairs Linda Martin, MD; Fabio Ynoe de Moraes, MD, PhD, MBA; and Sandip Patel, MD, to organize this year’s meeting.

“It has been a 2-year journey, but we have actually changed so many things about the conference,” she said. For example, this year’s conference features unique sessions and workshops, a wellness lounge, and much more.

“We have workshops dedicated to compassion fatigue,” she said. “We have workshops dedicated to [topics from] early stage to surgery because IASLC is the only international society that is multidisciplinary and we all have the same objective, which is to cure thoracic malignancies as we know them.”

In addition, this year’s meeting highlights a wide array of practice-changing research and has reached a unique milestone.

“For the first time at the World Conference on Lung Cancer, we have 2 presidential sessions, one [September 8] and one [on September 9] where we’re going to have groundbreaking data that will impact the patients with lung cancer worldwide,” Dr. Florez said.

Beyond the 2 presidential sessions, the conference is also marking another first this year.

“We have, for the first time, a Wellness Lounge, which is a quiet place in which people can have refreshments all for free,” Dr. Florez said. “You can go there and decompress during a very busy conference. We also have the Wellness Challenge, which, I can tell you, is so competitive right now.”

Dr. Florez highlighted the unique opportunities for international and in-person connection as well as collaboration offered at this year’s World Conference on Lung Cancer, which brought together delegates from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South and North America.

“Since its inception 50 years ago, IASLC has been an international society…at the beginning it was challenging. Technology wasn’t there. It was hard to connect,” she said. “And after the pandemic, it was like a little disjointed. We were together, but apart. We really put a lot of effort because this is the first conference in which we didn’t have a contingency plan for COVID, so we were able to bring people from all around the world.”

With the opportunity to meet again in-person, Dr. Florez and her co-chairs focused on maximizing the opportunities for international collaboration and highlighting voices from around the world in sessions.

“We have the largest representation of Latin America ever at the World Conference on Lung Cancer, and that’s very important to me as a Latina and originally from Latin America because everyone’s voice matters,” she said.

Dr. Florez reflected on the importance of global perspectives and collaboration, noting that it’s important to learn from others, “because we’re always better if we work as a team and we’re always better if we will learn from other people’s life experiences.”

She also highlighted the research that her lab is presenting at the IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer, including a mini oral presentation on lung cancer screening in vulnerable populations through the Cancer Care Equity program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The presentation will detail how the program significantly increased lung cancer screening rates in vulnerable populations in Boston, leading to an 85% completion rate for lung cancer screening in the patients who met with the team.

“Furthermore, this is the first time we are presenting the data about the Pregnancy and Lung Cancer registry,” Dr. Florez said. “We at the Florez lab, in December last year, created the first registry about lung cancer in pregnancy and we’re going to have some of the early data presented as a poster.”

In addition, the Florez lab will present a poster on their longitudinal, prospective evaluation of gender differences in the tolerability and side effects of immunotherapy.

“I invite everyone… to check out the mini oral presentation on lung cancer screening in vulnerable populations, the poster about lung cancer and pregnancy, and our poster about gender differences in immune related adverse events,” Dr. Florez said. “Despite being the conference chair, the Florez lab is where my heart is, and I want many people to stop by. They’re very young, brilliant minds presenting this research at the World Conference on Lung Cancer.”