Monthly Update: September 2026

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

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Exciting Announcement

BG Lab will be heading to the 2026 ESMO Congress in Madrid, Spain, in October.

Of note, BG is delivering a special Educational Session titled, “How I read and interpret a cancer clinical trial? Perspectives on critical appraisal from a practising clinician.” This lecture is happening on Friday 1:30pm within the ESMO-MCBS session. BG Lab is very excited about this session, since critical appraisal training is one of our core missions, and we very much appreciate ESMO Leadership creating a space to discuss critical appraisal of clinical trials within the ESMO Annual Meeting Platform.

If you want to prepare yourself for this talk, don’t forget to read these articles and come prepared:

BG is also presenting our abstract that has been selected for a Proffered Paper Session titled, “Drugs approved based on Phase 2 evidence: Do FDA and EMA always agree?”; and Javier David’s abstract has been selected for a Rapid Oral, in addition to some other posters from us. Check out “Upcoming Events” below for dates, and mark our sessions in your calendar. We look forward to seeing you in Madrid in October!

Publications

BG Lab published SIX papers this month!

Our BG Lab virtual fellow, Dr. Javier David Benitez Fuentes, was the author of two important manuscripts this month:

  1. The first was an editorial published in ESMO Open, titled, “Access to cancer clinical trials in Europe: when trial availability does not match patient need“. The editorial argues that merely counting the number of clinical trials in a country is not the right metric of access to clinical trials- it should be controlled for population and the quality of trials. It argues that unequal access to meaningful oncology clinical trials across Europe should be treated as a core issue of cancer care equity. Further, Drs. Lazaro Sanchez and Benitez Fuentes and co-authors call for increased investment in research infrastructure, fewer regulatory barriers for low-risk academic trials, and support to reduce patients’ financial and logistical burdens, emphasizing that progress should be measured by access to research that improves care rather than trial numbers alone. BG is the senior author in this publication which also includes Laure-Anne and Elen Baloyan as co-authors. (Congratulations to Dr. Elen Baloyan on her first BG Lab publication!). This also marks an important collaboration between BG lab and colleagues at EORTC, with Dr. Denis Lacombe and Dr. Winette van der Graaf as important collaborators.
  1. The second publication was a longitudinal ecological study published in the Journal of Cancer Policy, titled, “Territorial inequality in oncology clinical trial participation and its ecological association with cancer mortality in Spain.” The study examined oncology clinical trial participation within the 17 autonomous health regions of Spain to identify links to mortality. While trial participation varied 209-fold across the 17 health regions, its association alone with mortality should not serve as evidence that expanding trial activity would reduce mortality itself. (Congratulations to our biostatistician Dr. Mahsa Fayaz Dastgerdi for her first publication as part of BG Lab!)

BG also contributed to the following manuscripts:

  1. Early termination of clinical trials enrolling patients with breast cancer: Reasons, determinants, and temporal patterns. Published in The Breast.
  2. (Neo)adjuvant approvals for solid tumors by the US Food and Drug Administration 2010-2023. Published in JNCI.
  3. Decentralizing Post-Treatment Follow-Up for Cervical Cancer in Rwanda: Perspectives of Survivors and Clinicians. Published in JCO Global Oncology. This paper is led by Dr. Fidel Rubagumya as a part of his PhD, for which BG serves as one of his PhD supervisors.

  1. BG Lab co-investigator and former fellow, Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen, recently co-authored a correspondence in Nature Medicine on addressing the growing burden of cancer among young adults. Dr. Teuwen and the authors call for national cancer control plans to prioritize this population’s unique needs, from timely diagnosis and treatment to fertility preservation, psychosocial support, and survivorship care.

Trainee and Mentee News

  1. Nicole Vorko and Dr. Kleida Mati have successfully defended their Master’s theses.
    1. Nicole completed an MSc in Epidemiology at Queen’s University, the title of her thesis is “A systematic review of HPV vaccine uptake interventions and an analysis of coverage trends and disparities in Ontario, Canada“.
    2. Dr. Mati completed her MSc in Molecular Oncology at the Center for Biosanitary Studies in Madrid, Spain, with a partial scholarship from the European School of Oncology. Her thesis is titled, “Spatial multi-omics and response variability to targeted therapy in driver-mutant NSCLC.”

Nicole after her MSc defence!

  1. Dr. Elen Baloyan completed her board certification exam, with a record 100% score. Congratulations, Elen, on becoming a full medical oncologist!

Media

BG, for the Toronto Star. PC: Ian MacAlpine.

  1. BG was featured in an article in the Toronto Star as part of an international investigation about the differences in global access to immunotherapies like Keytruda. Reflecting upon his experiences in both Canada and Nepal, BG highlights how the drug’s high cost puts life-extending treatment out of reach for many patients. This article also draws from our own study on price variations in Nepal for cancer drugs used to treat gastrointestinal cancer.
  1. BG Lab released a new podcast episode of Grounded in Groundshot. BG chats with Dr. Erika Ruiz, Professor of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at Instituto Nacional de Cancerologia in Mexico City. In this episode you’ll find some very interesting chats about Dr. Ruiz’s pathway into medicine, facing career barriers, and working with people you can trust. Dr. Ruiz also has some excellent sound-bites on mentorship, and how to break through as an oncologist from an LMIC. Watch now on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Talks, Presentations, and Meetings

  1. BG and Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen served as International Faculty for the 4th Annual Balco Medical Center Cancer Conclave in Raipur, India. BG Lab is super proud of Dr. Teuwen’s professional growth from an excellent fellow and learner into an even greater teacher. Moments like these have been essential to the BG Lab philosophy of leading the next generation of leaders in oncology.
  1. BG delivered the Dr. P. A. Shah Oration at the 26th National Conference of the Foundation for Head and Neck Oncology (FHNO) in Srinagar, Kashmir, India on critical appraisal in head and neck cancer trials. BG was hosted by our ESMO Virtual Mentee, Dr. Saquib Banday, who sits on the conference’s organizing committee. BG was also inducted as an honorary life member of FHNO during the same event.
  1. BG was invited as the clinical observer for the final clinical practical exams for the DM Clinical Hematology program at the National Academy of Medical Sciences in Nepal.
  1. Dr. Gyawali delivered a talk on “How to Read and How to Write” at the Department of Medicine and Department of Oncology combined rounds on September 3rd.

Upcoming Events

  1. BG Lab will have a jam-packed 2026 ESMO Congress. Be on the lookout for the following presentations and posters.
    1. PROFFERED PAPER SESSION: 3313O – Drugs approved based on Phase 2 evidence: Do FDA and EMA always agree?
      Presenter: Bishal Gyawali
      (Add to your calendar)
    2. SPECIAL SESSION: How do I read and interpret a cancer clinical trial? Perspectives on critical appraisal from a practising clinician.
      Presenter: Bishal Gyawali
      (Add to your calendar)
    3. RAPID ORAL SESSION: Applying the Common Sense Oncology (CSO) checklist for phase III trials supporting European Medicines Agency (EMA) Lung Cancer approvals.
      Presenter: Javier David Benitez Fuentes
      (Add to your calendar)
    4. POSTER SESSION: 3329P – Regional inequality in access to oncology clinical trials and cancer mortality in Spain
      Presenter: Javier David Benitez Fuentes
    5. POSTER SESSION: 3378P – Cancer Drugs Approved for Curative Settings: Longer Durations but Smaller Benefits.
      Presenter: Bishal Gyawali
    6. POSTER SESSION: 3331P – Exploring regional variations in conflicts of interest reporting in oncology across Europe: Evidence from the ONCOTRUST-2 study.
      Presenter: Kleida Mati
  1. Our newest BG Lab fellow, Dr. Kleida Mati, will be recognized at the ESMO Fellowship Programme session on Monday, October 26th.
  1. BG will be giving a talk on de-escalation clinical trials and the cost of convenience at the 2026 International Gynecologic Cancer Society (IGCS) meeting in Montreal on Friday, October 2nd.
  1. BG will also be at the ASCO International Affairs Committee meeting in Washington D.C., on October 14-16.

From the Archives: Story of Cancer Groundshot

The readers know by now that Cancer Groundshot is the core philosophy of BG Lab. Let us tell you the story of Cancer Groundshot today.

Cancer Groundshot is the philosophy that implementation of interventions already proven to work is as much as, if not more, important than simply discovery of new interventions.

BG first introduced this philosophy in a blog post in ecancer in November 2016. He then gave a talk on this at the Royal Society of Medicine meeting in London in 2017. He spoke with ecancer about that in this video interview and this one. In 2018, he finally published this philosophy as an academic article in The Lancet Oncology. Since then, Cancer Groundshot has become the theme of several academic conferences. The most important highlight of this was the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting where Cancer Groundshot was the theme of an entire educational session that was chaired by BG.

They have also written an ASCO Ed Book chapter on this session. Cancer Groundshot has also now been covered by Nature. Cancer Groundshot philosophy is also the basis for our podcast titled Grounded in Groundshot, which we invite you to watch! There is also now a growing group of oncology trainees and early career oncologists across the world who are rooted in the philosophy of cancer groundshot- they call themselves the GROW group (Groundshot Oncology Workforce), a torch carried on by Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen and Dr. Kleida Mati of BG Lab (please reach out to them if you want to join this).

Overall, we believe that this story tells you how an idea can take on wings and transform from a mere idea to a tangible movement.

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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