Hi all, I just wanted to highlight a recent paper (link below) reviewing all ~2,900 abstracts from ESMO 2025 and asking a question: which trials, chosen purely for clinical reasons, would also cut cancer care's carbon footprint? They went into more detail on 10, spanning treatment de-escalation, dose and duration reduction, smarter patient selection, non-drug interventions, and prevention, and modelled carbon savings using the ECOVAMED emissions database.
Highlights include intermittent hormone therapy in metastatic prostate cancer, low-dose pembrolizumab in triple-negative breast cancer, optimisation of anti-PD-1 therapy in responding melanoma patients, shorter chemotherapy courses in urothelial cancer, optimisation of scheduling of bone-modifying agents, and ctDNA-guided adjuvant immunotherapy in bladder cancer.
The striking finding was that not one of these studies set out to measure environmental impact, the carbon savings were a byproduct. The authors argue this is exactly the gap worth closing: build environmental endpoints into trial design from the start, the way quality-of-life and cost-effectiveness measures already are.
A useful reminder that lower carbon oncology and better patient outcomes can be complementary.
Hi Sara have you seen the research on the role of vitamin D3 and radiotherapy and more generally how it basically helps natural killer cells target cancer cells and protects healthy cells whilst credd asking an opportunity to reduce the radiotherapy required. Win win.
I’ve been interviewing oncologists and immunotherapists and the ignorance about the significance of the importance of addressing low level vitamin D is widespread. People are still just talking about rickets.
It prevents many diseases developing , it supports traditional treatment and it’s also hugely beneficial for rehabilitation , repairing cell damage . There is some amazing work around immunotherapy too which indicates it’s key to efficacy . I’ve got a paper that collates some key studies I can share .
Hi Jo, I'd be interested to read more so please do share the papers. Thank you!
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