Volume 12
Welcome to this new edition of our ITMIG Newsletter summarizing the society’s activity over the past year.
Committees
ITMIG Committees are the core of our society, and beyond our Annual Meeting, are working all along the year on research projects, patients- and physicians-oriented initiatives, and developing the infrastructures for novel initiatives. Participation is open to all ITMIG members, and we need your input, engagement, and leadership in all these activities. ITMIG has 157 registered active members (as of August 2024) from 28 countries, representing 8 specialties.
Steering Committee
ITMIG’s annual meetings are a time for changes in board members. This 2024, Dr. Anja Roden is completing her term as ITMIG President.
The Society’s new board will include:
- Past President: Dr. Anja Roden
- President: Dr. Malgorzata Szolkowska
- Vice-President: Dr. Dirk van Raemdonck
- Secretary: Dr. Paolo Mendogni
- Treasurer: Dr. Annemarie Fernandes Shepherd
The position of Executive Director has been held by Ms. Pam Bruce for several years. For all matters requiring consideration by the Board of Directors, contact via EMAIL or via the contact form at ITMIG website.
Prospective Database Committee
The ITMIG prospective database is a major resource for studying the characteristics, treatment strategies, and outcomes of patients with thymic malignancies. More than 2000 patients are enrolled. The database is open both to previous contributors, for the update of these patients, and the entry of new patients. A key feature of the REDCap system is the capability to view and download all your data in one click. Subprojects focusing on one scientific question may be developed within the system, that will also contribute to the global database.
Please register at this link: https://redcap-externe.curie.fr. Once the data transfer agreement is signed with your institution, you will be able to access your patients and enter new patients. Guidelines on how to use the REDCap are available, and if needed, we can organize training sessions. We expect to launch a call for application by end of 2024 to start analyzing the data. The call will be open only to contributors to the database.
TARGETTHYM-1 is the first sub-project based on the ITMIG prospective database infrastructure. Led by the Biology Working Group, the study aims at collecting data from patients with thymic malignancies who received targeted therapies – excluding antiangiogenic agents and immunotherapy- for advanced disease. We will collect molecular alterations, if any, identified at genomic profiling. The project is open: to participate, please contact us!
Please contact nicolas.girard2@curie.fr or our database manager paulette.salamounfeghali@curie.fr
Membership Committee
The committee decided to introduce a discounted membership registration fee for residents and physicians in-training interested in joining ITMIG (100 USD; regular fee 150 USD). To take advantage of the discounted fee, a letter confirming residency/training signed by the Head of Department must be sent to the MC chair.
More information you can find HERE.
Communication Committee
The primary goal of the Communications Committee (CC) is to promote ITMIG activities among its members and the public. This is achieved through various efforts, including maintaining and updating the ITMIG website, managing the ITMIG YouTube channel (ITMIG Non-profit organization), posting news on social media (e.g. Facebook, X), and coordinating ITMIG webinars, annual conferences, and Thymic Malignancy Awareness Month initiatives.
In 2022, ITMIG declared May as Thymic Malignancy Awareness Month (TMAM). To mark the occasion, several webinars for physicians and patients were held in May. Some were prepared in cooperation with other scientific societies (the European Society of Pathology, the Society of Thoracic Radiology, the American Radium Society) or patient support groups (ThymicUK, TUTOR). Majority of webinars were recorded and are now available on ITMIG YouTube channel.
In addition, a patient information brochure available in 11 languages, numerous informational posts on Facebook and interviews with prominent ITMIG members were prepared.
The time and effort spent preparing the May events resulted in a significant increase in ITMIG’s visibility.
If you would like to join our team, we welcome you! Please, contact Chul Kim or Pam Bruce.
Working Groups
Thymic Carcinoma Working Group
Our working group has been very active assembling a multidisciplinary survey on questions relevant to various subspecialties, specifically focusing on questions towards cooperation between subspecialties and on current state of management of patients with thymoma and thymic carcinoma, aspects that were not included in the survey published by ITMIG and led by Dr. Annemarie Shepard in 2017 (PMID: 27876674). This survey has also been shared with other Societies that have distributed it to their membership. If you have not had the chance to fill in the survey please feel free to do so following the LINK.
In addition, we initiated a project on the pathologic and radiologic tumor response to neoadjuvant therapy in thymic carcinomas, thymomas, and thymic neuroendocrine neoplasms. Aims of the study are to assess radiologic and pathologic response to neoadjuvant therapy and to correlate response with outcome. We are still in the early stages of the project; therefore, anyone is welcome to join the project. If you are interested in joining the project, please email Dr. Anja Roden.
Under the leadership of Dr. Andreas Rimner, the manuscript entitled “Postoperative radiation therapy for thymic carcinoma: An analysis of the international Thymic Malignancy Interest Group / European Society of Thoracic Surgeons Database” was submitted and accepted by the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (PMID: 38070599). This study utilized both, the ITMIG and the ESTS retrospective databases.
We would like to invite you to join our working group. We are looking for ITMIG members of any specialty interested in thymic carcinomas. Please contact Dr. Anja Roden.
Mediastinal Working Group
This very active and engaged working group is studying tumors that occur in the prevascular mediastinum but are not thymoma, thymic carcinoma, or thymic neuroendocrine neoplasms.
We are currently working on a primary mediastinal germ cell tumor (PMGCT) project. Because of the paucity of PMGCT studies are in general small and information is relatively sparse. Furthermore, there is currently no agreed upon staging for PMGCT. We are currently studying the morphologic features of PMGCT and will correlate those with outcome. In addition, we will correlate demographic features and surgical treatment with outcome of patients and collect molecular data. Subsequently we will also investigate imaging features of these tumors and compare those to pathologic findings and clinical characteristics. Ultimately, we would like to establish a staging system for PMGCT. Currently, we review the morphologic and immunophenotypic features of PMGCT by web meetings.
If you are interested in this working group, please contact Dr. Anja Roden. If you have ideas for new projects, please join us and work with us.
Biology Working Group 
The ITMIG biology Working group has been launched in December 2023 aiming at gathering MD and/or PhD interested in a better understanding of the biology of these tumors and to facilitate projects either to be evaluated and/or validated at an international level thanks to the ITMIG. It worked on sample collections (blood, serum, tumor) linked to the ITMIG database and their availability through a collaborative project.
The first project that has been discussed within the last 6 months by the group is TARGETTHYM-1 proposed by Nicolas Girard. There was a consensus among the participants to approve this project as a starting project for the Biology WG. TARGETTHYM-1 is the first sub-project based on the ITMIG prospective database infrastructure. Led by the Biology Working Group, the study aims at collecting data from patients with thymic malignancies who received targeted therapies – excluding antiangiogenic agents and immunotherapy- for advanced disease. We will collect molecular alterations, if any, identified at genomic profiling.
The project is open: to participate, please contact nicolas.girard2@curie.fr or his database manager paulette.salamounfeghali@curie.fr. Many ongoing basic scientific projects on thymic epithelial tumors by members of the WG were presented. They led us to discuss on defining potential ITMIG guidelines for optimal management of tumor and blood/serum of patients with TET for biopathology projects.
Artificial Intelligence Working Group 
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being gradually introduced into various areas of healthcare, and holds great promise with respect to improving diagnostic processes in disease classification, prognosis and prediction of response to therapy. Mediastinal diseases are no exception in that respect, and perhaps especially lend themselves to AI algorithm support due to their relative rarity and heterogeneity, and ensuing diagnostic ambiguity. ITMIG has realized this potential, and has installed an AI working group.
The desirable scope for the working group is potentially broad. Its activities will encompass providing advice and a meeting place to those interested in setting up/supporting mediastinal AI projects in mediastinal diseases; setting up specific (pilot) projects with already available cohorts and datasets; stimulating AI collaboration between modalities (i.e. pathology, radiology, clinical); and striving towards a retrospective (and potentially prospective) broadly accessible repository of (also clinically) annotated pathology and radiology images for AI-related projects. The working group has a virtual meeting every first Friday of the month, and welcomes new members.
If you have any questions or would like to enquire about joining the WG, please contact its current chair Jan von der Thüsen.
14th ITMIG Annual Meeting (ITMIG 2024)
Thank you very much for attending the 14th Annual Meeting of the International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG 2024) in Yokohama, Japan. The ITMIG annual meeting was partner with the Japanese Lung Cancer Society (JCLS) meeting.
Date: October 30th – November 1st, 2024.
Venue: Pacifico Yokohama North, 1-1-2 Minato Mirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, 220-0012, Japan
The conference was attended by more than 160 participants, more than 70 abstracts were presented. Recordings of the scientific sessions will soon be available to participants.
MEDIASTINUM – An Official ITMIG Journal
As of May 2024, MEDIASTINUM (https://med.amegroups.org/) serves as the official journal of ITMIG. MEDIASTINUM is an open access journal for high-quality research in mediastinum. ITMIG members who submit a manuscript through the ITMIG website are eligible to a 30% discount on article processing charge. For more information, visit the ITMIG homepage.
All abstracts from ITMIG2024 will be published in the Abstract Book on the MEDIASTINUM website and will be available in the PubMed Central database.
ITMIG Communication Committee