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SIRiiM International Society for Radiation Medicine, Immunity and Immunomodulation

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Meeting record

ASTRO 2023

American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting, 1–4 October 2023, San Diego. SIRiiM reads that meeting as a field snapshot — not as a Society endorsement of any single abstract.

Honesty rule — no invented DOI. ASTRO Annual Meeting abstracts are published in a supplement of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics (the Red Journal). A supplement abstract is a meeting record. It is not a peer-reviewed article, and SIRiiM will not invent or display a journal article DOI for one. If a full paper was later published, cite that paper’s DOI. If it was not, say so.

What this page is

A Society education page about the 2023 meeting’s radiation-immune conversation: in-situ vaccination, combination with checkpoint blockade, dose and fractionation as immunological variables, and the stubborn rarity of reproducible abscopal responses. It is not a claims page. It is not a Clay Hess bibliography dressed as a meeting.

How to cite a 2023 meeting abstract

Use this pattern, and stop there:

Author(s). Title. Presented at: American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting; October 1–4, 2023; San Diego, CA. Abstract [number]. Published in: Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2023;117(2 suppl).

Do not append a fabricated doi:10…. The supplement is the citation. Abstract numbers, if used, must come from the published program or supplement — not from memory.

What SIRiiM takes from that meeting

  • Radiation dose, volume and timing are immunological variables, not only oncologic ones.
  • Combination with immunotherapy is a protocol problem (sequence, selection, endpoints), not a slogan.
  • Out-of-field response remains uncommon enough that every positive case still has to explain the negative ones. See abscopal.
  • Low-dose immunomodulation for non-malignant disease is a different conversation from high-dose in-situ vaccination. See immunity and arthritis.

Related work that does have a DOI

Immunomodulatory whole-lung LDRT for COVID-19 pneumonia was published as a full Red Journal paper in 2021, with a real DOI. That paper is not an ASTRO 2023 abstract. Do not collapse the two.1

The randomised, double-blind COVID LDRT trial that did not improve outcomes is likewise a 2021 full paper, not a 2023 abstract.2

Where to go next

The Society’s ongoing record is the journal, not a single meeting: theorangejournal.org. Primary-care teaching of the same material starts at /pcp.

Meeting education, not a substitute for the published supplement. Verify abstract numbers against the Red Journal ASTRO 2023 supplement before citing them in print.

References

  1. Hess CB, Nasti TH, Dhere VR, et al. Immunomodulatory low-dose whole-lung radiation for patients with coronavirus disease 2019–related pneumonia. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2021;109(4):867–879. doi:10.1016/j.ijrobp.2020.11.049
  2. Papachristofilou A, Finazzi T, Blum A, et al. Low-dose radiation therapy for severe COVID-19 pneumonia: a randomized double-blind study. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2021;110(5):1274–1282. doi:10.1016/j.ijrobp.2021.02.054
  3. American Society for Radiation Oncology. Annual Meeting program and abstracts. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2023;117(2 suppl). Meeting record; no individual abstract DOI is asserted here.