Oncology Experts Highlight Top Takeaways From the 2025 AACR Annual Meeting

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Following the 2025 AACR Annual Meeting, OncLive^® asked experts from across oncology specialties to share some of their favorite insights gleaned from the meeting, including some of the most talked-about studies and discussions.

“There’s a lot going on. AACR is comprehensive, and we’re talking about not just the basic science or clinical research, but also a lot of other aspects of oncology care,” Herbert H F Loong, MBBS, PDipMDPath, MRCP, FRCP Edin, FHKCP, FHKAM(Medicine), FASCO, of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, emphasized about the meeting as a whole.

Read on for a multidisciplinary glimpse at the conference’s top abstracts and themes:

Breast Cancer

Elia Seguí Solis, MD , of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Boston, Massachusetts:

As a breast cancer oncologist focusing mainly on biomarkers for immunotherapy, I was excited about the plenary session talk that Marleen Kok, MD, PhD, [of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam], gave about breast cancer dynamics in response to immunotherapy.

Gastrointestinal Cancers

Michael Cecchini, MD, of Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut:

This is always an excellent meeting. There were data presented with a Werner-Helicase inhibitor for mismatch repair–deficient [dMMR] tumors, which is relevant to my clinical practice, as I primarily focus on colorectal cancer [CRC], which has a high rate of dMMR tumors. Those are compelling findings. I chaired a session on antibody-drug conjugates [ADCs], as well as neoantigen vaccines. ADCs is an area of research that is absolutely exploding, so it’s exciting to see some of the new targets, the new payloads, and linkers.

Deepak Vadehra, DO, of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York:

There was an interesting session dedicated to early-onset CRC. There’s a clinical trial highlights session that gave some good data and was a good opportunity to see how basic science and molecular signatures are driving the development of new treatment. The overarching theme of why this meeting is so special is you get a large amount of basic science, and it’s great from a clinical perspective to see how translational research and basic science research is really helping to drive that lab-to-bedside [process], and we’re seeing that happen more and more with precision medicine. There were some good sessions on precision medicine too.

Head and Neck Cancers

Glenn J. Hanna, MD, of DFCI:

As head and neck oncologists, we’re excited about the phase 3 KEYNOTE-689 trial [NCT03765918] data, which [showed] that 2 doses of pembrolizumab [Keytruda] prior to surgery for high-risk resectable head and neck cancers—primary human papillomavirus–[HPV]–negative, although the trial included some HPV-positive patients—prior to surgery is going to shift the paradigm in terms of how we surgically manage head and neck cancers. That trial explored perioperative immunotherapy—2 doses upfront, followed by surgery [and] traditional radiation and/or chemotherapy use, but added adjuvant immunotherapy for up to 1 year. The results were positive, and we were excited to see the [pathologic complete response and event-free survival rates]. It could very well be that that changes the standard of care in the coming months.

Sarcoma

Erica Maria Pimenta, MD, PhD, DFCI:

What I like about going to AACR is getting to hear things that I wouldn’t think about normally, as well as learning from experts about things that are immediately relevant to my work. I went to an interesting session on tissue mechanics and the physics of mechanoreceptors, so now that’s stored away, and maybe one day that will also be relevant to my work. It’s cool to hear about things that I don’t think about often. I also went to a session on epigenetics and how that modulates the immune system, and we’re now learning that epigenetics plays a role in liposarcoma. I was also excited for the major symposium that tried to figure out the best way to integrate multiomic data—spatial profiling, many sequencing modalities—to get at molecular biology and predictive value. We will have to do that in sarcoma to uncover more mechanisms for better therapies, so I was excited to learn how to do that.

Solid Tumors

Ronny Drapkin, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia:

One of the areas we’re most excited about that relates to what we’re doing in early precancers are the features of aggressive disease. One of the talks I really enjoyed was by Paul Mischel, MD, [of Stanford University in California], about extrachromosomal DNA [ecDNA] and its contribution to disease development and aggressive biology. We’re eager to see whether ecDNA is a part of what defines an aggressive precursor in the fallopian tube.

S. Daniel Haldar, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston:

One [compelling presentation] was the data presented by Yelena Janjigian, MD, [of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York, New York] on the use of circulating tumor DNA [ctDNA] in patients with early-stage microsatellite instability–high cancers and using ctDNA positivity as a trigger to treat those patients earlier with PD-1 blockade immunotherapy. Those data showed that [the investigators] were able to achieve ctDNA clearance with the use of immunotherapy in that space and then also potentially reduce the risk of recurrence. [Additionally], Andrea Cercek, MD, [of MSK], presented data on the use of immunotherapy as a nonoperative management strategy in patients with localized [dMMR] cancers. This built on prior data that we’re already aware of in rectal cancer, but she shared interesting data expanding that to other tumor types, and that is also going to be an area of excitement moving forward.

Elena Maroto-Martín, PhD, DFCI:

Throughout AACR, I’ve seen a strong focus on bispecific antibodies, specifically those that combine different antigens. Bispecific antibodies in combination with dual targeting is promising.

Naomi Olsen, PhD, DFCI:

I went to a fantastic lineage plasticity session. I went to an epigenetics and immunotherapy in solid tumors session. There’s a lot of exciting epigenetic-based and chromatin-based therapies, and it was exciting to see what people are doing with them.

Aditya Shreenivas, MD, MS, of City of Hope in Duarte, California:

I was most excited to hear the talk by Catherine Wu, MD, [of DFCI], about the neoantigen vaccines. I also heard [a] talk on extrachromosomal DNA. All of this is exciting work.

Amin Sobh, PhD, of the University of Florida in Gainesville:

I’m interested in immunometabolism, and I attended many talks related to how the metabolic changes in cancer cells affect the immune microenvironment, [as well as] the role of mitochondrial metabolism in cancer cells and immunity.

Robert Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, Abramson Cancer Center:

The most exciting talk was Dr Mischel’s talk at the opening plenary session describing ecDNA and how our thinking about linear chromosomes and how mutations are passed cell to cell in cancer may need to be rethought. It’s another example of new scientific knowledge around cell biology and cancer biology. In this past year, we’re learning new things about centromeres on chromosomes. We’re learning new things about telomeres and telomerase. And now [we’re learning new things about] ecDNA. The reason it's important is that these are basic observations funded by basic grants that in large part come from federal funding. Without that, we wouldn’t understand cancer biology as well as we might. These are the clues that are going to allow us to help patients better in the future. Basic science is so important, and to see basic science highlighted at this meeting—no more so than in Dr Mischel’s talk—is always the best part of AACR.

Artificial Intelligence in Oncology

Ahmad Tarhini, MD, PhD, Moffitt Cancer Center:

Overall at AACR, it was interesting to see the accelerated advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning that are being applied to basic science and translational research. This is promising and will probably help us advance science more accurately. We’re excited about these applications and what the future holds.