From the Editor-in-Chief's Desk

Abstract

This issue completes the 2014 volume of the Journal of Adolescent Young Adult Oncology. As Editor-in-Chief, I want to thank everyone who submitted articles, as well as our outstanding and dedicated reviewers, our managing editor Rebecca Morris, and the rest of JAYAO's highly professional staff. My thank you would not be complete without a very special thank you to our amazing and committed publisher, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Mary Ann Liebert herself identified the need for adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology healthcare professionals to have a journal to unite the community around issues that affect the science and delivery of care of this demographic.

This issue starts with three review articles that look at fertility and fertility preservation from a variety of angles. It starts with an excellent critical review of clinical practice guidelines for fertility preservation in teenagers and young adults with cancer by Jakes et al. This is followed by Djaladat et al.'s systematic review of the association between testicular cancer and semen abnormalities before orchiectomy and its implications for the preservation of fertility. Finally, in their review of the management of pregnancy during cancer, Zaidi et al. utilize two illustrative cases of pregnant teenaged patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia to highlight the complexity of such care delivery.

While colorectal cancer is often considered a disease of older adults, the Original article by Singh et al. went beyond the standard younger/older than the age of 50 in their analysis of age and racial/ethnic disparities in the trends of colorectal cancer incidence in California and its implications. This is followed by an Original article by Rosenberg et al. that addresses contributors and inhibitors of psychological resilience in AYAs with cancer. The issue with our regular inclusion of a Case Study that is illustrative of the uniqueness of AYAO, this time with a report by Lewin et al.

Society for Adolescent and Young Adult Conference Second Annual Conference and Oncofertility Think Tank/Workshop

The Second Annual Society for Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Conference was held at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Science and Engineering in Irvine, California on October 6–8, 2014. It brought together more than 250 experts in the field of acute lymphoblastic leukemia—the quintessential “AYA cancer”—and was the first of its kind conference to bring together experts from both the pediatric and adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia worlds. The premise of the conference was that age-based “silos” exist and impede knowledge. As such, the conference's goal was to break down those barriers. Feedback from the participants and speakers agreed that the conference did reach that goal and allowed a focus on the underlying biological underpinnings of acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The Society is excited to announce coming that the audio-synced presentations will be available for review in early 2015 on the 2014 SAYAO Conference website, www.sayao2014.com. These presentations are a comprehensive overview of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the prototypical disease of the AYA cancer movement.

Preservation of fertility remains a central theme of the AYA cancer experience, and the 2014 SAYAO Conference was followed on October 9 by the SAYAO Oncofertility Think Tank/Workshop, held in Newport Beach, California, with 25 leading experts in the field of male and female oncofertility. These reproductive experts came together to create a platform for improving implementation strategies for fertility preservation at pediatric hospitals. Think Tank/Workshop Co-Director Antoinette Anazodo from Australia presented the unique work being done by the Australian and New Zealand Children's Haematology Oncology Group and the Australasian Bone Marrow Transplant Recipient Registry (ANZCHOG) and their efforts to create a national registry to capture data on all AYA-aged cancer patients in those countries. The findings of the workshop will be made available in 2015 to the JAYAO and SAYAO community on SAYAO's redesigned website, due to launch in the spring of 2015.

The SAYAO Conference also saw the launch of the “I Am A Cancer Researcher” campaign, for which Conference participants and speakers gave testimony about what it means to them personally to say they are a “cancer researcher.” In 2015, the second component of the campaign will be launched on the SAYAO website, where we will integrate the dialogue with patients and patients' families and caregivers about their role in cancer research and how together the combination of a physician, healthcare provider, researcher, basic science researcher, and patient as researcher all contribute to the ongoing quest to cure AYAs with cancer and provide them meaningful survivorship.