BG Lab at ASCO 2026

Hello everyone, welcome to our ASCO 2026 newsletter! BG Lab had an outstanding ASCO Annual meeting this year. We are very excited to share these major announcements from ASCO 2026. Thanks for tagging along on this ride!

1. As usual, BG posted his ecancer ASCO highlights and analysis video. He provides a bias-free commentary on the most important takeaways from this year’s ASCO meeting. This is your “Best of ASCO” in 40 mins. He covers all the plenary trials (yes, including that pancreatic cancer drug trial, and that prostate cancer trial, and that lung cancer trial, and that sarcoma trial that everybody is talking about!) and more.

2. For the first time, BG was the discussant for the three oral abstracts in the Care Delivery/Models of Care delivery track. These abstracts encompassed concerns relating to access, affordability, and availability of cancer drugs; BG contributed to critical discussions on current advances and challenges associated with oncology care delivery, especially surrounding access to drugs, and oral cancer drugs. If you have missed this session, you can watch it on demand on the virtual platform.

3. At the Oncodaily Yvonne Awards ceremony, BG Lab’s partnerships with Oncodaily and Agenus for supporting virtual fellowships were officially announced on the stage. BG Lab-Oncodaily announced their first virtual fellow in Cancer Groundshot, Dr. Elen Baloyan. Dr. Syeda Mina and Dr. Javier Benitez-Fuentes are the virtual fellows in cancer groundshot, sponsored by Agenus Inc.
   Drs. Gyawali, Baloyan, and Mina were on the stage and talked about the role of such fellowship opportunities for career growth and global equitable access to cancer care and research.

4. BG and Dr. Herbert Loong handed the Dr. Asha Dhanarajan Award (Most Engaged Member) from the ASCO Health Policy Community of Practice to Dr. Enes Erul.

5. At the ASCO Annual Meeting, BG was featured in ASCO Daily News that discussed the updated ASCO Guideline on the use of WBC Growth Factors that BG lead this past year. Read our previous news post to brush up on the significance of this guideline!
   
   His Cost of Convenience paper in JCO Oncology Practice was another article that was heavily featured in the JCO Central Journal lounge and trainee lounges.

6. BG presented a poster on disparities in receipt of guideline-concordant adjuvant chemotherapy and survival outcomes among immigrant patients with colon cancer: real-world evidence from Ontario. These results are critical to understanding inequities and to inform equitable oncology policy. The manuscript for this research is currently under review.

7. The results of RASoulte-302, the trial of daraxonrasib for pancreatic cancer, were presented at ASCO plenary and received a standing ovation. BG did an interview with CBC News about this new drug that has now offered a new hope for patients for prolonged survival, but BG cautions that this is not yet a cure and there are miles to go in this disease space. He cautions regarding the survival still being only 13 months in a highly selected population, toxicity management, financial toxicity, and the need for the drugs to reach patients anywhere in the world. However, he did mention that he wants to change the title of his Lancet Oncology piece from 2 years ago from “Treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer: 25 years of innovation with little progress for patients” to “27 years of innovation with one real progress for patients”. In the CBC news piece, BG comments about this promising new drug and the road ahead. Read or watch the interview! For his detailed thoughts, watch the ecancer ASCO highlights video!

8. BG published a single-author paper in Nature Medicine during ASCO26 titled “Downplaying toxicities in cancer drug trials is not acceptable” to caution against the use of subjective downplaying terms while describing toxicities in presentations and publications. This has already garnered a lot of attention on social media with the post receiving over 51K views in 2 days! BG says the real metric of success with this article would rather be journals and conferences prohibiting the use of such downplaying terms in describing toxicities. Let’s keep the momentum going until the journals and conferences hear! Importantly, this piece is also accompanied by a piece from a patient’s perspective, which is also a must-read. It is also aptly titled “Manageable toxicity is not a label — it is an oxymoron.”

Fellow and Trainee News

1. Dr. Kleida Mati Ramizi was selected as BG’s International Development and Education Award (IDEA) mentee for the ASCO’s IDEA mentorship program. She was also part of the Women’s Networking Center Panel on Advancing Together: Allyship, Mentorship, and Sponsorship. This panel conversation centered on what it really takes to support each other in oncology careers, and how mentorship, sponsorship, and allyship, while related, each play a different role.

2. Dr. Syeda Mina received the Conquer Cancer Global Oncology Young Investigator Award (YIA). The YIA provides funding for promising investigators during their transition from fellow to faculty to support meaningful research in clinical oncology.

3. Dr. Elen Baloyan delivered an oral presentation at ASCO 2026. She presented results of her study on workforce shortages in oncology across the world.

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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!