GSRGT 2020: The Global Voice of Penile Cancer Research: The International Registry

• Is penile cancer research moving along with the incidence of the disease?
• Are there countries with remarkable numbers of patients with penile cancer adequately involved in multi-institutional studies?
• Are there open randomized clinical trials in areas where the incidence of the disease is maximal?

Using Scopus® to assess the worldwide scientific productivity of penile cancer research, Dr. Bandini notes that over the last five years there have been 328 research papers (excluding reviews and case reports). As follows is the number of penile cancer publications per nation:

Furthermore, multi-institutional involvement in publications per nation is as follows:

Importantly, there are several penile cancer national registries globally, as delineated in the following figure:

Dr. Bandini notes that the best way to promote international collaboration across countries for penile cancer research is to have a global society and an international registry. Important characteristics of an international registry include (i) accessibility to all academic and non-academic centers, (ii) encouraging the participation of low-income countries, (iii) setting a collaborative environment, and (iv) providing a useful source of scientific data to advance the field.

This international registry will soon be available through the GSRGT website, will be accessible to all participating institutions, and will be a topic of round table discussions for ongoing and upcoming projects.

Key components of the international registry will be as follows:

• Center and patient identifiers
• Patient characteristics (smoking status, phimosis, race, age, etc.)
• Tumor baseline characteristics (HPV status, cTNM stage, histology, PET, tumor markers, etc.)
• Neoadjuvant data
• Surgical data (technique, inguinal lymph node dissection template, etc.)
• Pathology (lymphovascular invasion [LVI], pTNM, margins, perineural invasion, etc.)
• Adjuvant treatments (chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiotherapy)
• Salvage treatments
• Follow-up data
• Overall, there will be 156 total variables

Dr. Bandini concluded his presentation with the following take-home messages regarding the international penile cancer registry:

• Despite an overall low prevalence, penile cancer is present at a significantly high frequency in specific areas of the world, including low- and middle-income countries, where it currently represents a healthcare problem
• Research on penile cancer is not adequately covered in countries where the incidence of disease is the highest
• International cooperation is urgently needed to identify the major clinical gaps surrounding this rare malignancy, with a final goal of homogenized care and treatment across countries and improved life expectancies for patients with this tumor