From combining treatments in unprecedented ways to deploying artificial intelligence for personalised medicine, a raft of new advances in the fight against cancer have been presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), which ended on Tuesday. Here are some of the big announcements made at the five-day conference held in the Spanish city of Barcelona, which brought together 30,000 specialist doctors and researchers from around the world. Breastfeeding after cancer Women who breastfeed after receiving treatment for breast cancer do not have a higher risk of their cancer returning or of getting new tumors, according to two international studies presented at the conference.
This was also true for women carrying a genetic mutation called BRCA, which significantly increases the chance of developing breast cancer, the research found. There had previously been concerns about pregnancy and breastfeeding after women had been diagnosed with breast cancer, because both can affect hormone levels. "These results are key for women who wish to become pregnant and breastfeed their baby after breast cancer," said Fedro Alessandro Peccatori, a researcher and doctor at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan.
New combination for lung cancer Immunotherapy, which stimulates the body's immune system to fight tumors, has already been shown to be an effective weapon against lung cancer. On Saturday, the results of a phase two trial revealed promising signs against metastatic non-.