As mentioned in a previous blog post (Celebrating Cancer Hashtag Communities and a Moonshot), the online cancer hashtag communities will be discussing ideas for the Cancer Moonshot this week. The 6/30 #LCSM Chat at 8 PM Eastern will be the second of two chats discussing Moonshot working group topics for improving cancer research and outcomes. The 6/27 #BCSM Chat will discuss ideas for three of the seven working groups: Expanding Clinical Trials, Enhanced Data Sharing, and Precision Prevention and Early Detection.

The 6/30 #LCSM Chat at 8 PM Eastern Time (which occurs the day after the Cancer Moonshot Summits on 6/29) will be a cross-cancer chat about the remaining four Cancer Moonshot Working Group topics:

• Cancer Immunology and Prevention
• Tumor Evolution and Progression
• Implementation Sciences
• Pediatric Cancer

Participants will use two hashtags for the chat: #LCSM and #cancerchat. Ideas generated during the chat will be submitted online to the Cancer Moonshot.

Our topic questions for this chat:

• T1: How might we accelerate/improve research into immunotherapy for treatment and prevention of cancer?
• T2: How might we improve dissemination of info about new approaches for cancer prevention, screening, tx, survivorship?
• T3: How might we accelerate/improve research into ways that cancer spreads to other parts of the body?
• T4: How might we accelerate/improve research into drivers and less toxic treatments of pediatric cancers?

We hope you’ll join #LCSM Chat on Thursday June 30 at 8 PM EDT. If you’re new to tweetchats, please read this primer on how to participate in #LCSM Chats.

More detail on the Cancer Moonshot working group topics (from the NCI webpage):

Cancer Immunology and Prevention Working Group
In the past few years, the rapidly advancing field of cancer immunology has produced several new methods of treating cancer, called immunotherapies, that increase the strength of a patient’s immune responses against tumors. Such treatments have led to dramatic successes in some cancers but not others. At the same time, the concept of adjusting the immune response, or immunomodulation, is being extended into cancer prevention, with the goal of developing strategies to spur the immune system to both prevent the development of cancer in the first place and prevent recurrence.

Implementation Sciences Working Group
Studying the impact of cancer on large populations can provide important information that influences practices, policies, and programs that directly affect the health of millions of people each year. To improve cancer outcomes, it is essential to identify and test methods for more effectively disseminating information about new approaches for cancer prevention, risk assessment, screening, prognosis, treatment, and survivorship. Interventions must fit within real-world public health and clinical settings and be accessible and understandable to practitioners and the public.

Tumor Evolution and Progression Working Group
Cancer genomics has yielded a greater understanding of the mutations that occur within cancer cells and their roles in tumor initiation and progression. Concurrent with an increased understanding of cancer genomics, a greater appreciation has developed for the enormous heterogeneity of cancer cells that evolve within a tumor, the metabolic changes in both the cancer cell and immune cells in the microenvironment, and the roles of the non-cancer cellular and molecular components of the tumor microenvironment that both support and suppress tumor progression.

Pediatric Cancer Working Group
Children are not just small adults; their cancers are different in many ways from those in older individuals. Improving childhood cancer outcomes requires both a better mechanistic understanding of cancer in general as well as an understanding of cancer in children specifically. Important issues to address include the molecular drivers of childhood cancer, which are often different from those of adult cancers; the causes of childhood cancer; and the development of therapies that are less toxic to children’s developing bodies.