In October, the 10th European Testicular Tumor Workshop took place in Prague. This is the only international event worldwide dedicated to research and treatment of testicular tumors, which was held under the auspices of the Mayor of the Capital City of Prague, and also many Czech and international professional organizations, including the National Institute for Cancer Research.
“After a six-year break caused by covid, we had the honor of hosting this conference for the first time in the Czech Republic,” says Ludmila Boublíková, on behalf of the organizing group and the scientific committee of the conference, whose research team is part of the National Institute for Cancer Research. The main organizer and sponsor of the conference was the Thomayer University Hospital, while the co-organizers were the First and Second Faculty of Medicine, Rigshospitalet and University of Copenhagen, the Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava and the Perlman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.
Testicular tumors are the most common solid malignancies in young adult men and the most common cause of cancer-related death. Overall, they are highly curable, even in more advanced stages, due to their extraordinary sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapy. However, some patients with the disease develop resistance to this chemotherapy. “We still do not have any effective form of targeted therapy or appropriate clinical trials available for them, and overall, these tumors seem to have been on the fringes of professional and lay public attention for a long time. The workshop was thus an extraordinary opportunity to share the latest findings from preclinical research and experience in the clinical management of these patients and to plan joint multicenter projects that could finally change this long-term unfavorable situation,” adds Ludmila Boublíková.
