Jack West, MD, FASCO

Please join us in welcoming another bright star to our 2025-2026 Patient Education Ambassadors Program: Dr. Chinmay Jani! 🌟

Dr. Jani is a Hematology-Oncology Fellow at the University of Miami/Jackson Health System. +

A Warm Congratulations to Dr. Faith Abodunrin!

We are delighted to recognize Dr. Faith Abodunrin as one of our four rising stars selected for the Patient Education Ambassadors Program for the years 2025 and 2026.

A 3rd place finish on beam and a 6th place finish on floor gives Mya Lauzon two more All-America accolades! 🌟

She graduates a 19x All-American, the most in Cal history!

#GoBears | #BeachBears

That's third at NCAA Nationals!

So proud of my step-daughter. Amazing!🤩

Dr. Karen Yun presenting: How Do You Read a Molecular Testing Report?

What are Driver Alterations in Lung Cancer?

#TargetedTherapiesInLungCancer #LungCancer #ALK #ROS1 #RET #NTRK #EGFR #BRAF #MET #HER2 #KRAS

That was supposed to be "trained", not "raised".

How sad that I find myself wishing for features of the other platform, where you can edit your post in the first hour.😩

I didn't know Dr. Yun before today, but she raised at UCSD with Drs. Luda Bazhenova & Sandip Patel.

She did a great job. Looking forward to seeing her career trajectory.

Several of my favorite people in thoracic oncology featured in this picture.

Dr. @ChristineBestv1 now presenting: ALK, ROS1 and RET: Pushing the Boundaries of Targeted Therapies

#ALK #ROS1 #RET #LungCancer #TargetedTherapies #cancerGRACE

#Smoking is associated with #KRAS (~100%) and #BRAF (50%) alterations.

• Increases cancers of upper airway, stomach, mouth, tongue, liver, cervix, bladder…

• So: Don’t start smoking+

Q&A session with Drs. @lungoncdoc, @MMarmarelis, @LudaBazhenovaMD, and @IyengarPuneeth

Is it better to continue on the same therapy as long as possible?

#TargetedTherapiesInLungCancer #LungCancer

In a self-indulgent moment, I need to say how incredibly proud I am of my stepdaughter, Mya Lauzon, who is a phenomenal gymnast, (& student, & person) at @calwgym.bsky.social: she won all-around, including a perfect 10 on floor. She is 1st Cal gymnast ever to score 10s in 3 different rotations. 😊🤩

Great conference. I'm looking forward to seeing folks there!🤠

Hats became far less common in the mid-60s, before I was on the scene, but I'm happy to be living through time when neckties become superfluous. I was just at another mtg where 90% of the men wore open collars: a good thing.

In addition to shirts, men still have socks for colorful self-expression.

Totally agree that it would be helpful to have more of an "area under the curve" approach to adverse events...but we would need to change how the clin research world collects, analyzes, and reports AE data. After that, we could address how to present those data.

It may take some getting used to, but I think it would be clear & distill to just what a clinician (or pt) would care about. An alternative could be to just have bar graphs show same info. Do folks like this kind of called out subset of AEs? Is one format easier (both showing same data)?

IMO, it would be helpful if safety profiles for phase 3 trials highlighted where there are significant differences between 2 arms (along w/full data of all AEs elsewhere). What do ppl think of a version like this, showing a lower number for one arm & colored arrow to higher number in the other arm?

She is really something. My gift to her is that I provided none of her genes.

Lauzon Named ACC Gymnast Of The Week - California Golden Bears Athletics Senior Earns 4 Podium Finishes

So amazingly proud of my step-daughter, Mya Lauzon, Cal Berkeley gymnast, who's at the top of her game now, in her senior year.

First week of the season, second in all-around behind Olympic gymnast Jade Carey, & named ACC gymnast of the week.

calbears.com/news/2025/1/...

I really liked this book but just read the biography of Thomas Mutter (in anticipation of visiting his namesake museum in Philadelphia in a few months). That book provides a rich enough historical context that I want to re-read The Facemaker now.

Finally, today w/streaming videos (Netflix, etc.), we see a multi-episode series tell a story over 1-10 hrs rather than fitting all narratives into a 90-120 min movie. Great!

We should step back & reflect on time needed to best convey med/sci data & retain messages well: less is more! (5/5)

Even if tasked w/50 min live talk, audience will stay engaged better if it is broken into sections of 10 min or less, w/few points in each. In between, interactive Q or a clinical case can transition to new section; also, a case serves as a STORY. Our brains are ready-made to encode stories. (4/5)

To maximize internalization of our messages, ideally we’d break it up into mentally digestible pieces of 10 min or less (“chunking”).

When programs can be made into pre-recorded videos, I’d favor breaking 45 min of content into a series of ~5 or more shorter pieces. (3/5)

The idea of an attention span being fixed at 7 or 9 min (or being conditioned to <2 min by TikTok) is an oversimplified myth. It depends on how engaging data are & how easy or hard to incorporate into audience understanding. But it’s usually <10 min, not a 50 min lecture. (2/5)

Working with Working Memory

The first step of internalizing new info is having it retained temporarily & “understood”. Then, some fraction may be retained in long-term memory. But working memory can’t handle >3-4 ideas at once. More overwhelms us, like juggling too many balls at one time. (1/5)

Quite clear. Maybe now that I'm noting them more, I am seeing more examples. I think they're catching on.

Would also be a nice way to visualize evolution of acquired resistance mechanisms in pts with EGFRm+ NSCLC, etc. Could illustrate subsequent molecular findings &/or subsequent treatment.

To me, these figures are a concise & clever way to show associations for a paper or handout, even if they make what might have been a simple figure far more to process. Good or bad? I’d include but would want to verbally highlight key findings in the by added layers of complexity.
Thoughts? (5/5)

For these figures, I welcome the added complexity, but it comes at cost of turning a figure with often a single clear message into something where you can’t process all the data during a short viewing from a talk; instead, the multilayered content is well suited to studying at length later. (4/5)

Following the same principle, some swimmer plots feature not just duration of treatment but enhancements like details of a patient’s past treatments, off-protocol therapies, molecular features, response milestones, & of course markers for ongoing treatment on trial. (3/5)