Monthly Update: June 2026

Hello everyone, welcome to our monthly newsletter, June 2026 edition. If you missed it, we have a newsletter dedicated just for the ASCO highlights, so please refer to that for our updates from ASCO Annual Meeting! A quick plug-in here for BG’s annual ASCO Highlights video, in case you want a quick no-nonsense update on the most important studies discussed at the ASCO Annual meeting.

Exciting Announcement

BG Lab is thrilled to celebrate that our PI, Dr. Bishal Gyawali, has been promoted to the position of full professor in the Department of Oncology (with cross appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences) at Queen’s University. This is a well-deserved recognition of his years of dedication and contribution to oncology and to Queen’s University. Congratulations, Prof. Gyawali!

Publications

1. BG published a critical appraisal commentary in JNCI that elucidates the distinction between prognostic and predictive biomarkers in oncology, specially in the context of pathological complete response rates and ctDNA. This paper was led by his colleague Dr. Aliyah Pabani at John Hopkins. Using recent high-profile clinical trials such as Destiny Breast 11, SERENA-6, DYNAMIC-3 and IMvigor 011 as examples, they discuss whether and when biomarkers such as ctDNA and pCR can only prognosticate versus guide therapeutic decisions or serve as surrogate endpoints. The article emphasizes the importance of rigorous interpretation of biomarkers to support evidence-based clinical practice.

2. In a new original article published in ecancer, BG and colleagues examined how travel burden affects outcomes for patients with colorectal cancer in resource-limited regions of Kashmir, India. This paper was led by Dr. Saquib Banday, BG’s mentee from the ESMO 2022 Virtual Mentorship Program! They found that patients with the longest travel times were less likely to receive treatment and experience poorer survival. This shows that travel burden is an important barrier to equitable cancer care and underscores the need for health system strategies that improve treatment access.

3. BG Lab fellow Dr. Javier-David Benítez-Fuentes with our co-investigator Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen and senior author BG published a commentary in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology on the implications of the RECITE trial for chemotherapy-induced thrombocytopenia. While acknowledging the promise of romiplostim in improving platelet counts, the paper emphasizes that the ultimate goal of cancer treatment is to improve patient outcomes, and it should not be assumed that a supportive-care therapy that enables maintained chemotherapy doses also improves outcomes that are meaningful for patients (i.e. QOL and survival). They aptly title this paper “treat patients, not platelets”.

Trainee and Mentee News

1. Congratulations to Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen for a well-deserved Abstract Award for her research on whether new drugs for early-stage cancers have translated to more cures – she delivered a poster presentation for this research at ASCO Breakthrough 2026! Read her abstract here. She assessed FDA approvals of cancer drugs over the last 20 years, finding that while the number of approvals and treatment duration are increasing, the magnitude of benefit remains modest.

Media

1. BG Lab has released the latest episode of the Grounded in Groundshot Podcast! In this episode, BG chats with Dr. Dario Trapani and Dr. Felipe Roitberg. The podcast highlights crucial topics like friendships, career development, global oncology, and cancer policy. The conversation is very lighthearted and jovial! Watch this episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can watch all previous episodes here.

2. BG was featured in a news and media article by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research on How cancer research can put patients first. BG is an OICR Clinical Scientist – in this news article, he discusses cancer research being done at our lab, and what he hopes to see in the future of cancer research and patient care.

3. BG was on air on CTV National News as well as quoted in a CTV News article to discuss a recent Canadian study published in NEJM Evidence that suggests only one dose of zoledronic acid may be just as effective as multiple doses, with fewer side effects, in patients with breast cancer. BG contributes to this discussion highlighting the broader theme of de-escalation of treatment in oncology, suggesting that this is emblematic of a shift in cancer care philosophy to prioritize patient quality of life to achieve similar outcomes with lower doses. To read more about treatment de-escalation, look back on BG’s very important paper advocating for the use of superiority design de-escalation trials!

4. BG released a new video on Medscape where he discusses toxicity reporting (read this Nature Medicine paper if you haven’t already), informative censoring, and other issues with cancer drug trials reporting.

Talks, Presentations, and Meetings

1. BG gave a presentation at Best of ASCO Vancouver at a special session on global oncology. This was highly informative and highlighted key developments in global cancer care, as well as lessons on cancer groundshot and how to do global oncology well.

2. BG presented at the 2026 ASCO Breakthrough Meeting in Singapore. He presented at the session “From Data to Delivery: Advancing Equitable Oncology in the Asia–Pacific Region—Bridging Gaps With Common Sense.” His discussion surrounded the topics of cancer groundshot, common sense, and mutual collaboration between high-income countries and low-and-middle-income countries in the spirit of bidirectional learning.

Upcoming Events

1. BG is delivering a lunchtime seminar at Institute of Clinical Trials & Methodology in University College London on July 6. His talk will be centered on cost of convenience in cancer care and conducting de-escalation trials in oncology.

2. Our virtual fellow Javi is joining BG Lab in Kingston in person for 3 weeks starting the last week of July!

From the Archives

When Prof. Gyawali was still a trainee- even before his graduation-he published a couple of single-author articles (besides his first-ever single author article called “me too” in JCO Global Oncology which we already discussed in January newsletter). First was a point/counterpoint (debate) article in Journal of NCCN where BG argues that the imprecision in biomarker measurement has contributed to precision oncology not reaching its full potential. As a trainee, he was delighted (shocked in disbelief!) to see that the journal invited the precision oncology gurus such as Drs. Sumei Kato, Vivek Subbiah, and Razelle Kurzrock to write the counterpoint article! Second was his scathing commentary on the Olympiad trial in breast cancer (probably the first of his critical appraisal papers!) where he discusses the issues of appropriate endpoints, quality of life, suboptimal control arm treatments, and what matters to patients. In this paper, you can see BG formulating his thoughts on these important issues that he later gained more expertise on and expanded in more detail when writing the ESMO-MCBS Bias paper, the CSO RCT Checklist paper, How I Read a Clinical Trial paper, as well as his Skills Lab videos. You will also notice in the Olympiad commentary that even as a trainee, BG was unafraid to call a spade a spade and doesn’t pull any punches when he concludes: “although olaparib seems to have won the Gold with OlympiAD, patients probably have not. Patients deserve a real gold. We need to stop celebrating a gold-plated bronze as a true gold so that one day our patients can finally get the gold they deserve.”

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!