Luan Pham

I was very honoured to have been chosen to receive the APSR / Woolcock Vietnam Young Investigator Award at the APSR 2021 Congress in Kyoto, Japan. Due to the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference could not be held in person, but through the online conference I had interesting and meaningful experiences.

This is the second time I have been honoured to receive an award from the APSR. The first time was the APSR Assembly Education Award at the 2019 Congress here in Hanoi, Vietnam. Coming to this 2021 Congress, my presentation was about “The efficacy of Gefitinib as a first-line therapy in elderly patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutations”. This is a real-world study conducted at our hospital. Although there are currently three generations of TKI in Vietnam, most of our patients with non-small cell lung cancer are treated with 1st and 2nd generation TKIs, because the 3rd generation is still quite expensive and not yet covered by the health insurance agency. Therefore, in this study, we focused on evaluating the effectiveness of Gefitinib in elderly patients. The results showed that this is a drug with effective, safe, and affordable for Vietnamese patients.

I appreciate all the questions and comments from the audience, which became a great opportunity for learning and exchanging ideas for our future research plan. In addition, we obtained many important new findings of the basic and clinical science of respiratory medicine at the APSR Congress.

Finally, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my colleagues in our department. I know that I wouldn’t have had this great opportunity if it were not for their support. I believe in the future development of the field in the Asia-Pacific region through the conference. I sincerely hope to attend the APSR Congress again in the future.

Luan Pham