Monthly Update: May 2026

Hello everyone, welcome to our monthly newsletter, May 2026 edition. We have a separate newsletter dedicated just for the ASCO highlights, so please refer to that for our updates from ASCO Annual Meeting.

Exciting Announcement

Dr. Elen Baloyan was selected as the first Cancer Groundshot Virtual Fellow under BG Lab-Oncodaily partnership. Dr. Baloyan is a clinical research physician at the Immune Oncology Research Institute. Her training and medical oncology interests align with lung cancer, immune oncology, global oncology, cancer molecular biology and access to care in LMICs. Read our news article to learn more about this new BG Lab-Oncodaily fellowship and about Dr. Baloyan!

Publications

  1. BG published a very important paper in Nature Medicine discussing the culture of minimizing patients’ toxicity experiences in clinical trial publications by using subjective downplaying terms such as “toxicities were acceptable” or “manageable toxicities”. This piece has garnered quite a lot of attention on social media. We hope that this pushes the journals and conferences to include a directive that the trial reports and presentations should not use such terms in describing toxicities. Rather, they should simply report the PROs and QOL data from the trials or as the paper proposes, state “23% of the patients considered the toxicities acceptable” rather than the trialists subjectively deciding that the toxicities were acceptable.

Trainee and Mentee News

  1. BG Lab’s Research Assistant, Claire Diana-Gonsalves, has been accepted into the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) MD program. We would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations, and we wish her continued success in her upcoming medical training.
  1. Claire Diana-Gonsalves (yes, that same person who just got into MD!) had an ORAL presentation at CAHSPR conference on May 26 – this was her first conference as a participant, as a presenter, as an oral speaker- all! She presented on The Landscape of Solid Cancer Drug Reimbursement Decisions by Canada’s Drug Agency, a project that she has been working on with BG Lab over the past year. 

Co-Investigator News

  1. Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen was selected for the ASCO 2026 Breakthrough Abstract Award. She will be presenting BG Lab’s research on cancer drugs magnitude of benefit in the curative settings. Congratulations, Laure-Anne! 

Media

  1. BG Lab released their fourth episode of the Grounded in Groundshot podcast, with special guest, Professor Ian Tannock. Watch the episode to hear BG and Dr. Tannock discuss important and interesting topics like Dr. Tannock’s career journey, his pivotal prostate cancer trials, industry influence in both cancer trials and reporting, financial conflicts of interests, cancer of the great toe, and more. Tune in on YouTube, or listen on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
  1. BG published a heartfelt blog on his experiences serving as a faculty at the 2026 ASCO-AIOM International Clinical Research Course in Rome, titled All Roads Lead to Rome, But Where to Go From There: A Report From the ASCO-AIOM International Clinical Research Course, in ASCO Connection. He emphasizes the value of the course, especially in its global collaboration, high audience engagement, and strong mentorship environment. BG concludes that the course’s impact will be seen through how oncologists critically interpret research and apply lessons in their future careers. 
  1. Last month, BG published a groundbreaking and viral publication: How I Read a Clinical Trial Report? A Primer for Busy Clinicians. This article has since been recognized as a Featured Article on the JCO Oncology Practice website, along with being featured on OncoDaily.
  1. BG did an interview with CBC News about an experimental drug that doubled survival time and halted or reversed tumor progression by nearly one-third for patients with pancreatic cancer. The results from this clinical trial were also presented at the ASCO annual meeting and received a standing ovation. In this news piece, BG expressed his excitement for this drug since pancreatic cancer is difficult to treat, and while “there are still miles to go” it is promising to see good outcomes for pancreatic cancer. Read or watch the interview!
  1. BG published a new post on Medscape on the rise of Celebrity Effect in Medicine, fueled by monetization of social media channels. This is a provocative discussion on how previously thoughtful medicine experts have now turned into unthoughtful click-bait pursuing frivolous or hatred-spreading digital celebs. BG concludes this video powerfully by saying “Don’t outsource critical thinking”.
  1. BG published a second post on Medscape on Challenging the Norms of Cancer Care Fallacies in Medicine. This is an important discussion on common misconceptions in cancer care associated with drug approvals, screening, asking for evidence, and clinical expertise not equalling expertise in regulatory or public health decisions. BG discusses the nuances of these fallacies in how they can harm patients and the public. This is a meaningful article for anyone to read to be aware of these fallacies to avoid flawed reasoning and uphold evidence-based medicine.
  1. We also published a list of resources for people attending the ASCO Annual meeting, including how to make best use of the meeting, and how to interpret the results of the meetings correctly. This list will come handy for any ASCO, ESMO, or other major meetings.

Talks, Presentations, and Meetings

  1. BG attended the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting from May 29 to June 2. Read our dedicated ASCO 2026 newsletter for a complete coverage on the topic.

Upcoming Events

  1. BG is presenting on Queen’s Global Oncology program and BG Lab fellowship achievements at the Queen’s Department of Oncology retreat on June 12.
  1. BG is presenting Global Oncology at Best of ASCO Vancouver meeting on June 19.
  1. BG is an invited faculty at the 2026 ASCO Breakthrough Meeting in Singapore. On June 26th 3:30-4:45PM, he will be presenting at the session “From Data to Delivery: Advancing Equitable Oncology in the Asia–Pacific Region—Bridging Gaps With Common Sense” at the Padang Ballroom.
  1. At the same meeting, Laure-Anne is the first author and BG is the senior author of the poster that won Abstract Award for Laure-Anne. She will be presenting our poster on “New and more drugs for early-stage cancers: Have they translated to more cures?” on June 26th, 12:25-1:40 PM at the Caning Ballroom.

From the Archives

One of those papers that BG wrote quite early in his career has quite important philosophical insights and lays the seeds for his whole academic career, but was published in a relatively obscure journal. The paper is called “Economics of Cancer Medicines: For Whose Benefit?”. This is a long and extensively detailed essay on the ethics and values of new cancer drugs, and what needs to change in the drug development landscape. If you want to get a sense of how BG’s thoughts were evolving as he was completing his training, this is a fantastic piece published in May 2017.

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.

If you want to make a one-time contribution or regular contributions, please click here.

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

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