SNO Update

The Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) had a busy summer, organizing two separate boutique meetings. The first, the 5th Pediatric Basic and Translational Neuro-Oncology Research Conference, was held May 3-4 in San Francisco, with Nada Jabado and Sabine Mueller serving as program chairs. The meeting had record attendance of close to 600 participants. The inaugural SNO Conference on Brain Metastases was held August 16-17, 2019, in New York, chaired by Manmeet Ahluwalia, Ayal Aizer and Eudocia Lee. The meeting enjoyed excellent attendance, with approximately 300 participants. The 2nd SNO Conference on Brain Metastases is scheduled to be held August 14-15, 2020, in Toronto with Priscilla Brastianos, Paul Kongkham and David Schulz serving as chairs.

Final preparations are underway for SNO’s 24th Annual Meeting and Education Day, which this year will take place in Phoenix, November 20-24, 2019. The meeting features a range of pre-meeting courses and special sessions, including the Neuro-Oncology Review Course, chaired by Maciej Mrugala; The SNO-SCIDOT Joint Conference on Therapeutic Delivery to the CNS chaired by Michael Vogelbaum (SCIDOT) and Nathalie Agar (SNO); a special Think Tank focusing on Brain Tumor Immunology chaired by Hideho Okada, Robert Prins and Michael Platten; a Clinical Trials Course chaired by Vinay Puduvalli, Stephen Bagley, Susan Chang, Mustafa Khasraw and Patrick Wen; a Fellowship Career Retreat chaired by Scott Plotkin; and in partnership with the European Society of Neuro-Oncology (EANO), SNO is hosting a Basic and Translational Brain Tumor Research Dinner (formerly the “NeuroTumor Club”) chaired by Roger Abounader, Shwetal Mehta and Michael Prinz. The Education Day on Thursday will focus on Therapeutic Resistance chaired by Ranjit Bindra, Dan Cahill, Duane Mitchell and Michelle Monje, with a parallel track on Palliative Care and Medical Complications of Therapy, chaired by Christina Amidei and Deborah Forst. The main meeting, chaired by Daphne Haas-Kogan, Monika Hegi, Michael Lim and David Schiff has an overall theme of Innovation to Overcome Tumor Resistance. In addition to the morning and lunchtime session and the accepted oral and poster abstracts, the chairs have lined up an impressive list of keynote speakers, including Alan D’Andrea, Michelle Monje, Matthew Myerson, Thomas Gajewski, Charles Limb and Kevan Shokat.

The Society was pleased to launch its third official journal this summer, entitled Neuro-Oncology Advances (NOA). The new journal, with Gelareh Zadeh serving as editor-in-chief, is intended to expand the scope and spectrum of what SNO’s flagship journal, Neuro-Oncology, covers. NOA is an entirely open access journal, encompassing basic, applied and clinical investigations in all research areas as they relate to cancer and the central nervous system. The journal is a joint effort of SNO, EANO and Oxford University Press.

Last but not least, SNO welcomes the following new officers after the summer elections: Gelareh Zadeh, President; Tracy Batchelor, Vice President; and Erik Sulman, Secretary-Treasurer.

More information on all of SNO’s activities can be found on its website.