Day 1 :
Session Introduction
Alia M. Saeed
Ain Shams University,Egypt
Title: : Impact of programmed death ligand 1 (PDL-1) on prognosis of adult de-novo acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients.
Biography:
Abstract:
Objectives: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) exhibits one of the therapeutic challenges to the clinicians. Despite the increasing knowledge about its underlying pathophysiology, there is little contribution of this massive amount of information to alter the standard of care. Immune checkpoints have gained attention in the recent years in the oncology field as a presumable mechanism of cancer immune evasion, but their status in AML has to be investigated.
Aim: The primary outcome is to measure programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) expression on the blast cells in denovo AML patients before chemotherapy induction, whereas the secondary outcome is to investigate a potential relationship between PDL-1 expression on one hand and different patients’ variables, disease prognostic parameters, and therapy outcomes on the other hand. Methods: A total number of 40 adult de-novo AML patients has been recruited. Surface expression of PDL-1 on the blast cells has been evaluated by multi-color flowcytometry. Results: PDL-1 has been expressed amongst the study cohort with a mean expression of 43.01%±24.72SD. PDL-1 expression was not different among different risk categories and did not influence the therapeutic response. Despite higher PDL-1 expression in refractory cases in comparison to responders, being 68.9% and 43.4 % respectively, this did not reach a statistical significance. Conclusion: PDL-1 expression neither showed a discernible relationship with any patients’ or disease parameters nor influenced patients’ response to treatment or survival. Refractory cases displayed higher expression but they were too few to draw statistical inferences with the need of a more ample sample size.
Miriam Kanyugo
University of Africa Nazarene school of Humanities, Kenya
Title: THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN CANCER CARE AND MANAGEMENT IN KENYA
Biography:
Miriam Kanyugo has completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communication at the University of Africa Nazarene school of Humanities and Social sciences. She is the Officer of Communications at Ampath Oncology & Hematology in Kenya.
Abstract:
Cancer is the 3rd highest cause of morbidity with 7% of deaths per year in Kenya. Estimated 39,000 new cases of Cancer each year with more than 27,000 deaths per year. 60% of Kenyans affected by Cancer are younger than 70 years old, a population (60%) age bracket that is generally active in matters of development. Mass media is an important social institution in any modern society therefore using its prowess in educating masses as well as in deciphering taboos and myths associated with the disease to the public eventually will result to achieving the goal of reducing cancer mortality and morbidity.
More emphasis and time has been given though to reporting on other issues affecting the public giving meagre time to health reporting. However, in working towards eradicating cancer, media should be on the fore front in awareness creation as well as in educating masses on prevention, treatment and management of the disease.