Monthly Update: March 2026

Hello everyone, welcome to our monthly newsletter, March 2026 edition.

Exciting Announcement

Publications

1. Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen published a new article titled “Beyond Convenience: Does Subcutaneous Pembrolizumab Add Value for Patients and Health Systems?” with coauthor Dr. Rachel Riechelman and senior author BG in Journal of Clinical Oncology. Recently, subcutaneous formulations of immunotherapies such as pembrolizumab have been approved. They are promoted to offer more “convenience” for patients versus the current available intravenous formulations.  In this paper, we question whether this promoted convenience is real or a pseudo convenience. Even if convenient, what is the cost of this convenience? We also argue that these new formulations reflect “patent hopping” more than patient convenience. This builds on the concept of Cost of Convenience, BG discussed in his commentary last September. Read our news post where we dive deeper into this paper.
   
   This paper also reflects Laure-Anne’s first peer-reviewed paper in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Oncology, even more exciting considering that she is the first author of the paper. At BG Lab, we find it very meaningful to celebrate these milestones, which embodies our philosophy of mentorship. Congratulations, Laure-Anne on this amazing first of many milestones!

Trainee and Mentee News

1. BG Lab fellow, Dr. Javier David Benitez Fuentes was honored as a 2025 JCO Global Oncology Top Reviewer. Congratulations Javi!
2. If you want to apply for an in-person fellowship with us at BG Lab, some exciting opportunties have opened up. If you are an oncologist, you can apply for ESMO Leadership and Career Development Award and use the award to do fellowship with us. If you are a PhD wanting to do post-doc fellowship with us, there is also an opportunity through Queen’s.
   For what we want in our fellows, read this.

Media

1. The second episode of Grounded in Groundshot Podcast was released with our first guest, Professor Elizabeth Eisenhauer! BG considers her a great role model in oncology – watch the episode to hear them discuss work-life balances, women in oncology, her establishment of the Queen’s Cancer Research Institute, and more! Watch or listen on Youtube, apple podcasts, and Spotify.

2. BG released a new video commentary in Medscape on the topic of whole-body cancer screening. Should you get a whole body CT scan or a whole body MRI? What about a pan-cancer screening blood test? Watch or read his thoughts here.

3. BG posted a new Medscape Skills Lab video discussing measures to assess effect sizes in clinical trials, including medians, hazard ratios and confidence intervals. Watch or read here.

4. The ASCO Post interviewed BG on the recently published ASCO Guidelines on use of WBC Growth Factors that BG co-chaired and was the first-author on. Read it here.

Talks, Presentations and Meetings

1. BG chaired a session, mentored at workshops, and delivered three lectures at the 2026 ASCO-AIOM Clinical Research Course in Rome, Italy. His first talk was on de-escalation trials in oncology, another on statistical versus clinical significance, and the third talk on common sense in oncology. At this course, there was also a mentor-mentee reunion moment of BG Lab because Laure-Anne Teuwen was in the audience taking the course.

2. BG also participated in the Scientific Committee Meeting of the Care Delivery Track at the ASCO Headquarters for planning the 2026 Annual Meeting.

3. Our BG Lab virtual fellow Javier-David Benítez-Fuentes, together with colleagues from the RIO Working Group among others, presented ePoster 180eP at ELCC 2026 from March 25-28 titled “ECOG performance status 2 or higher in EMA labels for advanced non-small cell lung cancer: A cross-sectional analysis of EU SmPCs.” The work highlights how rarely EU labels provide explicit guidance for patients with poor performance status in advanced NSCLC, underscoring the gap between regulatory documents and routine clinical practice.

4. For our GLPH 488 course, we had guest lectures this month from Dr. Sharon Batt, who talked about her experience as a patient advocate in health policy and pharmaceutical funding, Dr. Karen Yeates, who talked about her global research to eliminate cervical cancer, and Dr. Kristina Jenei who taught on cancer drug regulation and pricing. Our own research assistant, Brian Shkabari, also gave a lecture on life after graduating from Queen’s University.
   
   We also had ASCO Chief Medical Officer Dr. Julie Gralow give a lecture to our GLPH 488 students on her journey to becoming involved in breast cancer research, empowering patient advocates, and the Ukraine Breast Cancer Assistance Project. Dr. Gralow’s lecture was very inspiring for our students.

Upcoming Events

1. CSO Annual Meeting is happening in Montreal April 13-15. BG is very much looking forward to this event not only as a co-host, but also as a friend who gets to meet his friends and colleagues in oncology from all over the world!

2. CIHR Institute of Cancer Research Advisory Board Meeting is happening April 28-30, also in Montreal. BG is looking forward to visiting Montreal again- twice in 2 weeks!

3. Laure-Anne is visiting BG Lab in person April 16-24, as a visiting fellow, supported by the grants from the hospital foundation. She spent 6 weeks in BG Lab last year. She will discuss collaborations on ongoing and future BG Lab projects, and make a presentation on April 23 at CCE Rounds about her BG Lab projects.

From the Archives

The concept of cancer screening has intrigued BG since he came across the concept of lead-time bias, first while reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book The Emperor of All Maladies, and later reading Gil Welch’s book, Overdiagnosis. His first screening-related paper was titled “Should low-income countries invest in breast cancer screening?” , published in 2016, reflecting his growing interest in the intersection of cancer policy and global oncology at that time. He then followed up on this in 2020 with another thought-provoking piece titled “When Is a Suboptimal Approach to Cancer Screening Better Than None?” along the same philosophy. When NordICC trial of colonoscopy screening was published, BG published this editorial that discusses the nuances of individual level benefit versus population level benefit of screening, and intention to treat versus per protocol analysis. Most recently, last year, his team examined how congruent top US Cancer Centers are with USPSTF guidelines in their screening recommendations for major cancers and published the results in Eclinicalmedicine.

More of his thoughts related to cancer screening are published in other media outlets, if you are interested in exploring.

• Biden’s Prostate Cancer Diagnosis: Debunking Common Misconceptions

• Incidentalomas and Anxiety: The Hidden Costs of Whole-Body Screening

• New research suggests surge in incurable prostate cancer from lack of early screening

• Protecting the Patients and their Prostates from Physician Bias: Thoughts on the PROTECT Trial by Dr. Bishal Gyawali

Do you like what we do? You can support us!

The type of work that we do is often not funded by traditional funding channels. If you like our work and want to support us with a donation to our lab, please reach out directly to BG at gyawali.bishal@queensu.ca.

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Thank you for reading and stay tuned for next month’s update!