Cancer and COVID-19 in Victoria: Challenges and Perspectives from the USA

The current COVID-19 pandemic raises critical clinical questions and challenges for health professionals seeking to continue optimal care for patients with cancer. The MPCCC and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre alliance present a special series of Cancer and COVID-19 education events.

Globally cancer patients are one of the largest groups to be impacted by COVID-19. In addition to the physical impact on patients, the delivery of cancer care and research has been severely disrupted.

The VCCN is delighted to welcome Dr Ziad Bakouny, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston USA, who will highlight the biological interplay between the two diseases and provide practical recommendations for the treatment of patients with cancer during the pandemic. He will discuss the potential legacy of the pandemic on cancer care due to its effect on cancer research. He will also provide biological insights from the cancer research community in the United States that could help develop novel therapies for all patients with COVID-19.

Thus far Australia has been spared the scale of direct impact of COVID-19 on patients with cancer as that experienced overseas. However, the disruptions of the pandemic due to prioritisation and the need to continually reassess the balance between the risks and the benefits of cancer-directed interventions within the context of the added risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2, has been universal.

Join us to gain insights from the lead author of COVID-19 and Cancer: Current Challenges and Perspectives review published in Cancer Cell on 1 October, 2020.

Dr Ziad Bakouny
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston USA

Ziad Bakouny, MD, MSc is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). Ziad has published over 45 PubMed-index peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research, European Urology, European Urology Focus, European Journal of Cancer, the Journal of Biomechanics, and Gait & Posture.

Ziad is a post-doctoral research fellow at DFCI, where he has been co-mentored since September 2018 by Dr Toni Choueiri in Genitourinary Oncology and Eliezer Van Allen in a Computational Oncology dry Lab. His current research focuses on clinical and computational research in the field of Genitourinary Oncology. He is specifically interested in the determinants of response and resistance to systemic therapies and in the molecular bases of rare and aggressive forms of kidney cancer.

Event details

1-2pm, Friday 6 November.

This event will be held online via Zoom. Zoom joining details will be circulated 1 hour prior to the commencement of the event.

Register for webinar >>