Becky and Carolyn Report from ASCO!

The intrepid pair Carolyn Grobe and Becky Bensenhaver went to Chicago for the 2010 ASCO meeting June 4-8, serving as news scouts for GIST patients to report new developments in GIST research and treatment. Becky received an ASCO scholarship to attend as a patient advocate on behalf of GIST Support International, and Carolyn served as GSI’s second representative. They scoured the program for information on GIST in oral presentations and posters, then made a demanding schedule and stuck to it to find the facts for us all.  This took a lot of stamina, not only for the brain but also for the feet!  MANY THANKS to both Carolyn and Becky for their diligent efforts in attending the huge meeting and gathering the new science to benefit all GIST patients!  In this photo Carolyn (left) and Becky (right) pose with Dr. Bulusu of the United Kingdom in front of his poster. 

On Saturday night, Becky and Carolyn attended the Novartis Patient Advocate dinner at a restaurant called Fogo de Chao.  Becky says "Members of multiple patient support groups attended, including advocates for groups such as breast cancer, multiple myeloma, and CML to name a few — all delightful people.  The restaurant itself was quite memorable and fun too.  Fogo de Chao is based on a Brazilian steakhouse concept. First you are served drinks and you make a trip to the salad bar, which is nice enough by itself, but the impressive part starts after you complete your salad.  Each person has a chip placed where they are seated. This chip is green (indicating GO)on one side and red (indicating STOP) on the other.  Upon completion of your trip to the salad bar you turn your chip green side up.  When you do this you quickly become engulfed in an ongoing stream of hunky Brazilian waiters bearing skewers of meat which they slice onto your plate. There were 15 kinds of meat available.  They continue to bring out the onslaught of meat until you turn your chip back over to display the red side. For most of us, it took a while to realize that we had the power to stop the meat delivery process!  Carolyn & I had to waddle back to our hotel afterwards.  I’ve included a picture of a hunk holding a hunk of meat."

Apparently this infusion of protein gave Carolyn and Becky the energy to keep attending sessions for the rest of the long meeting, as well as to walk the giant exhibit hall to talk with phamaceutical companies about new drug developments.  They enjoyed meeting many of the world’s GIST experts and researchers, putting faces with the names that are familiar from medical papers.

Summaries of ASCO GIST presentations

After returning home and recovering, Becky and Carolyn worked hard again to write up summaries of the presentations and posters they found most interesting for GIST.  You can read their summaries on our GIST Support wiki at this link.  Each summary has a link to the associated ASCO abstract.  This is a great synopsis of GIST news from the ASCO 2010 meeting.

We all thank our representatives Becky and Carolyn for the great job they did at ASCO 2010! 

Carolyn meets Dr. Goldstein of Australia during a poster session.

 Becky greets Dr. Ian Judson from the United Kingdom.