Dear ISUP members,
The last months have been a hectic period for ISUP and a lot of work has been done behind the scenes. It is time to give you an update of all the ongoing projects.
We are happy to announce the ISUP program for the upcoming USCAP meeting in Seattle:
Saturday 12 March 2016
4:00-6 :00 pm ISUP Member Reception
6:15-6:45 pm AGM (Annual business meeting of ISUP)
7:00 pm ISUP Companion Meeting
Sunday 13 March 2016
12:30-5:00 pm ISUP Interactive Conference on Standardization of Diagnosis and Grading
6:30 pm Grawitz Dinner
The GU Specialty Conference will be held in the evening of Tuesday 15 March.
ISUP member reception: The Secretary of the Society, Hemamali Samaratunga, has kindly offered to sponsor this year’s member reception through Aquesta Pathology. We are very grateful for this and look forward to a lively social event!
USCAP companion meeting: The companion meeting moderators Jesse McKenney and Steven Shen have set up an exciting program. The upcoming WHO classification will be presented and the preliminary list of speakers include all four chapter editors: Peter Humphrey, Victor Reuter, Holger Moch and Tom Ulbright.
Imagebase: This is a reference image database that aims to standardize different aspects of urological pathology. As you may recall, the idea behind Imagebase is to let experts upload images and then vote independently on the cases. Once a certain consensus level has been reached (currently 2/3) the case is moved over to a public database available to all ISUP members. The aim is to collect a bank of reference images that leading experts agree on. This will promote standardization of pathology by illustrating the range of patterns within the diagnostic categories. The website was launched two months ago on a preliminary web address and we have already uploaded quite a number of cases. Three expert panels have been organized for prostate, bladder and kidney pathology. Each panel has 24 leading international experts. We have included members who are acknowledged experts and have published in the field. We have also tried to achieve an appropriate geographic representation, including most continents, as practices may vary across the globe. We have received several requests for members to be included in these panels but the mechanism has been set up for exactly 24 experts, so this will currently not be possible unless someone drops out. The following projects have been launched:
Grading of prostate cancer
Classification and grading of papillary urothelial lesions
Classification of flat lesions of the urothelium
Classification of renal cell tumors
Grading of renal cell cancer
The prostate project is more or less finished for the first batch of cases and there is already a large series of consensus cases in the public domain. The other projects are also advancing at a good pace. As soon as we have set up the new ISUP website all members will have access to the public cases. Detailed instructions and links will soon be sent out.
Society website: A new website has been constructed and is almost ready to be launched. This website will have many new functions and as soon as it is up and running (hopefully within a few weeks) we will send detailed information on how to use it. We have had difficulties getting access to the current web address so it will be found on a slightly different address than before: www.isupweb.org. It will also be possible to reach it through the old address (www.isuporg.org). There will be a new individual login that will give each member access to several features available in the members section. The case of the month will be re-activated after having been inactive for a couple of years. The new login will also give access to the Imagebase website. The member directory and member dues payment functions will be updated and these will be more interactive. There will be a calendar detailing upcoming events in urological pathology with a considerable detailed information on international meetings. We hope all of this will be found to be useful and add to the value of being member of our Society.
International datasets (ICCR): We have worked intensively with the ICCR project over the last few months. Twelve datasets of four different areas are being finalized. The prostate part of the project is more or less finished and the datasets will soon be available. The aim is to define minimum requirements for reporting of uropathology. The ICCR project has been led by John Srigley.
ISUP conference in Seattle: ISUP will host a meeting on Sunday afternoon at the upcoming USCAP meeting. The topic for this is standardization of grading and diagnosis of urological tumors. The meeting will use Imagebase results and we will have some interactive element. We have not finalized the details but there will most likely be some voting through Imagebase before the meeting and possibly also electronic voting at the meeting. Hopefully this will be a very educational meeting that can help setting the golden standard for reporting. John Srigley will also present the ICCR datasets. This meeting will be open for ISUP members only.
Grawitz dinner: Larry True is currently working on the organization of the 2016 Grawitz dinner and invitations will later be sent out through Mahul Amin. The 2015 dinner in Boston was very well-attended with around 120 guests. As usual the Grawitz dinner is open not only to members, but to anyone with an interest in urological pathology and their accompanying persons.
Prostate cancer grading: The proceedings of the 2014 ISUP consensus conference on grading of prostate cancer have now been published in the American Journal of Surgical Pathology:
Epstein JI, Egevad L, Amin MB, Delahunt B, Srigley JR, Humphrey PA; and the Grading Committee: The 2014 International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) Consensus Conference on Gleason Grading of Prostatic Carcinoma: Definition of Grading Patterns and Proposal for a New Grading System. Am J Surg Pathol. 2015 Oct 21. PMID: 26492179
This meeting was convened by the ISUP in Chicago in November 2014. Unlike other recent ISUP events, only invited experts attended. The reason why we did not hold this conference at USCAP as we normally do, was that there was a rush to complete the work before the WHO blue book editorial meeting. Similar to the 2005 ISUP revision, we have made modifications to both the interpretation of morphology and how the grade information should be reported. We recommend that grading is still done by the Gleason system but also reported as ISUP grades 1-5 corresponding to Gleason scores ≤6, 3+4=7, 4+3=7, 8 and 9-10 as it is well-known now that these grade groups have clinical relevance. These recommendations will be included in the upcoming WHO classification due for publication in early 2016
ISUP Constitution and By-Laws Committee: The last time our constitution was revised was in 2010 and Council has determined that this should be undertaken on a regular basis. A committee chaired by the President-Elect, Dr Cristina Magi-Galluzzi, and including ISUP council members and members at large, has been working on a revised draft version over the last months. The revised Constitution and By-laws are being fully updated and a Code of Conduct for Society members will be added. The changes will require approval of Council prior to being put before the AGM of the Society for approval.
More detailed information on some of the projects outlined above will follow within the next month!
Lars Egevad
President of ISUP