The 6th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (JASCC)

Akihiko Osaki, M.D., Ph.D.
President
The 6th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of
Supportive Care in Cancer
Professor, Department of Breast Oncology
Saitama Medical University International Medical Center

Dear colleagues,

Since the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak still continues, the 6th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (JASCC) will follow the format of the meeting in 2020 (the 5th Annual Meeting) and will be held online. The meeting will be made available live and on-demand with virtual exhibitions between May 29 (Sat.) and June 30 (Wed.), 2021.

First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy to all those who have been affected in any way by the novel coronavirus outbreak that began last year. Up until early last year, we had planned to hold a joint scientific meeting with the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC), under the leadership of President Mitsue Saito. However, this year's coronavirus epidemic has forced us to make major changes. It is expected that many changes and various measures will have to be taken vis-à-vis the conventional format of the conference. Hence, we have decided on a completely virtual meeting, as we wanted to put our focus on substantiating the content of this meeting, rather than the format. The theme of this year’s conference is "Developing new ideas based on past studies of supportive care in cancer.” While we have inherited a lot of beneficial supportive care in cancer that has been cultivated in our society, we have also found new issues due to the recent disaster. We must address the problems faced by cancer patients sincerely and all of us involved in cancer care must think very hard about how to move forward. As society as a whole searches for a new lifestyle, I hope that the conference will be fruitful with high-quality discussions.