Meetings

OCCAM Director addresses Pancreatic Cancer Symposium

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is a patient-based advocacy and research funding organization. On March 19, 2011, the organization held the Pancreatic Cancer Symposium in Washington, DC, which highlighted advances in disease treatments, symptoms and side effect management, and clinical trials. Attendees included patients, caregivers, researchers, and health care professionals. OCCAM Director, Dr. Jeffrey D. White was invited to present a session on complementary and alternative medicine. Dr. White spoke to the diverse crowd about complementary and alternative approaches to the treatment of patients with pancreatic cancer and the NCI-funded research supporting these endeavors.

In addition to Dr. White’s talk, breakout sessions during the conference allowed attendees to hear in-depth presentations on several topic areas including FDA-approved treatments and clinical trials, information on side effect management through nutrition, and a caregiver support session.

Dr. White’s talk titled “Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Pancreatic Cancer” presented an overview of the many types of CAM treatments and modalities available, discussed the status of NCI-funded cancer CAM research, highlighted CAM research results, and informed the audience about clinical trials they may enroll in for pancreatic cancer and CAM. Dr. White noted that the conference session “was very well attended and in the question and answer period there were many good questions about the availability of objective information about several CAM approaches including astragalus and various types of mushrooms. It is clear to me that our office needs to participate as much as possible in meetings like this to learn more about the specific information needs of the people that are making decisions regarding the use of these approaches. I hope that our office will be able to explore this issue more thoroughly with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and others.”