Under the motto “Consolidating multidisciplinary strategies”, the 8th European Multidisciplinary Meeting on Urological Cancers (EMUC) brought together clinicians and researchers in the field of uro-oncology to share their specialist knowledge, discuss current practice and consider opportunities for optimized collaboration to provide best patient care. This year's meeting, jointly organized by ESMO, ESTRO and EAU, had the highest number of attendees to date and a high-profile selection of speakers, highlighting the importance of joining forces at a time when possibilities for disease diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring are rapidly expanding.

The necessity for multimodal strategies was evident in many of the presented topics. For example, mpMRI of prostate cancer is emerging as a key diagnostic tool, providing information that has not previously been available. Collaboration between all experts involved in acquiring, interpreting, and making decisions based on mpMRI data is required to optimize patient care. In addition, for most urological cancers, considerations of multimodal treatment, involving surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and targeted agents, are increasingly important, as studies demonstrate the benefit of specific approaches at disease stages for which they had previously been thought ineffective. The advent of new tools for tumour characterization and corresponding personalized treatments and of novel agents, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, will require the shared expertise of urologists, oncologists, radiologists and pathologists to decide on an optimal course of action for an individual patient.

The EMUC16 was a remarkable opportunity to consolidate the spirit of collaboration between the clinical specialists while providing a platform to present the latest research that will shape the treatment of patients in the future.