REPETITIVE PRESENTATIONS OF PHASE II AND III TRIALS INVOLVING SYSTEMIC THERAPIES IN GASTROINTESTINAL (GI) MALIGNANCIES AT INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS IN THE PAST FEW YEARS

Introduction: The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) annual meetings as well as their GI dedicated meetings (ASCO GI and ESMO GI) have the premise to accept abstracts for oral presentations that have not been previously presented. Methods: We conducted a review of all 159 abstracts involving phase II or III trials of systemic therapies that have been presented orally from June 2019 to January 2022 at ASCO, ASCO GI, ESMO and ESMO GI meetings to evaluate the incidence of repetitive presentations of the same trial in different meetings as well as their relationship to pharmaceutical industry sponsorship. ANOVA test was used to compare means between different groups and p values of ≤ 0.1 were considered significant. Results: Overall, 19.5% of accepted oral abstracts from phase II or III trials were replicated during the 3-year time frame. Of them, 39% were phase II, 61% phase III, 71% pharma sponsored, 42% included developing countries, and 55% were positive. The association of industry sponsorship and study positivity indicated a variation of up to 4.24 appearances (P=0.09) in the number of times this research was orally presented. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that almost 20% of oral abstracts involving systemic therapies in GI cancers are presented more than once at relevant meetings, especially those with positive results and sponsored by pharma. Our study highlights the need for a more effective oral abstract selection system in Oncology meetings.