S&C is proud to have had several winners at the ESMO Gastrointestinal Cancers Congress 2025.
Congratulations to Dr. Pasquale Lombardi on winning the Merit Travel Grant and Best Abstract Award.
Congratulations to Dr. Aria Torkpour on winning the Merit Travel Grant and Best Abstract Award.
Congratulations to Dr. Leonardo Brunetti on winning the Merit Travel Grant.
Dr. Pasquale Lombardi
Pasquale Lombardi, from the Pinato Group at Imperial College London, and colleagues from an international consortium identified clinical and molecular features of primary resistance to atezolizumab plus bevacizumab in hepatocellular carcinoma.
The study, awarded both a Merit Award and Best Abstract at ESMO GI 2025, revealed that primary resistance, associated with poor survival, is linked to reduced intrinsic immunogenicity. Through multi-omic analyses, the team uncovered a myeloid-driven immunosuppressive signature with accumulation of regulatory T cells and CD163^low macrophages, identifying a population potentially amenable to emerging myeloid-targeting strategies.
Dr. Aria Torkpour
Aria Torkpour and colleagues from the Pinato Group at Imperial College London’s Convergence Science Centre have characterised the histomorphologic characteristics enriched in hepatocellular carcinoma patients who respond to neoadjuvant immunotherapy before liver resection.
This study analysed 277 H&E resection samples from 70 patients to characterise features associated with treatment response. Features indicating immune activation (dense lymphocytic infiltrates and dense plasma cells) and cell death (haemosiderin and cholesterol clefts) were significantly enriched in patients achieving a Major or Complete Pathological Response.
The abstract received the ESMO GI 2025 Merit Travel Grant and the Best Poster Award for the hepatobiliary cancers category, neither of which would have been possible without Dr Francesco Mauri’s histopathologic evaluation of each specimen.
Dr. Leonardo Brunetti
Brunetti and colleagues, from Dr Pinato’s group at Imperial College London, pooled 131 patients from six phase I/II trials of neoadjuvant immune-checkpoint inhibitors (nICI) before liver resection within the global NeoHCC consortium, comparing them with the digitally reconstructed active-surveillance arm of IMbrave050. Despite more advanced baseline disease, nICI recipients achieved a 24-month recurrence-free survival of 66.4 % versus 52.0 % for controls (p = 0.014) and a significant whole-curve advantage (log-rank p = 0.003). Median RFS reached 48.7 months, with benefit persisting even without adjuvant therapy. Awarded the ESMO-GI 2025 Merit Travel Grant, these findings warrant randomised trials of neoadjuvant immunotherapy in resectable hepatocellular carcinoma.