Bladder Cancer Think Tank 2011
Thursday – Day 1

BCAN’s 6th annual Bladder Cancer Think Tank started with a bang on Thursday, August 4! More than 100 leading doctors, researchers, patient advocates, and industry representatives have come to Coronado, California to talk about ways to improve bladder cancer care.

The 2011 meeting theme is “Identifying Obstacles and Creating Solutions in Bladder Cancer: Basic Science, Clinical Trials and Survivorship.” Everyone here shares a common goal: working together to help advance bladder cancer research. This may be at the basic science level, by finding better ways to collect data, or by improving survivorship by creating new patient educational materials.

We started out with a keynote address from Jeffrey Trent, Ph.D., President and Research Director at The Translational Genomics Research Institute. Dr. Trent discussed ways research can help treat the patient in front of any given doctor – focusing on finding treatments for individuals as well as larger groups.

After the keynote, we split into five working groups to discuss work from the previous year and start planning projects for the coming year. Three working groups continued from 2010 – the Data Mining group, Standardization of Care group, and Survivorship group. Updates from these groups will be posted tomorrow. We also welcomed two new groups to the 2011 meeting – a group focusing on Enhancing Enrollment in Clinical Trials, and a group seeking ways to collaborate in Translational Science.

The day concluded with a presentation from Larry Rzepka, BCAN’s Executive Director, on what BCAN has done and how the doctors, researchers and Think Tank participants can help us continue to grow. We hope they will go back to their communities across the country and work with you – patients, caregivers, friends and family – to start new support groups, organize Walks for Bladder Cancer in 2012, and help us bring a patient forum to your area.

We’ve got full days ahead on Friday and Saturday. Learn more about the work done on Friday.