It’s once again time for ASCO, or the American Society of Clinical Oncology, where more than 25,000 oncology doctors as well as countless pharma, biotech, genomic testing, and assorted media types converge on downtown Chicago and the McCormick Convention Center and try and sort out which meetings to attend.
ASCO is truly an assault on your senses; there is so much going on at all times, it is essentially impossible to be at everything. Your best hope is to, upfront, identify the most important things to your practice and place them on your calendar. ASCO makes that quite easy with the AM iPlanner app (App stores) or the online version, which allows you to create a calendar, with Favorites, of things you want to see/hear, and upload those events to your “real” calendar. Luckily for me, I can focus on the Melanoma track…until a few years ago, when the anti-PD1 antibodies exploded onto the scene with unbelievably good results. Last year, I had to add the “Developmental Therapeutics” (Phase I) track to my calendar, further complicating my time at ASCO. This year, it appears once again that the Developmental Therapeutics sessions will dominate my time, as there are numerous exciting new trials to be presented.
That doesn’t even include the numerous meetings that are essential to our clinical and research program at the Atlantic Melanoma Center, to reinforce relationships with other melanoma specialists and various industry research sponsors.
Having arrived in Chicago earlier today, I am finalizing my schedule before beginning to dive into the meeting this evening (Friday).
For those interested, here are the sessions that I plan to attend:
Saturday, May 31:
Emerging Combination Therapies
Melanoma General Poster Session
Frontline Approach to Metastatic BRAF-Mutant Melanoma
From Coley to Cure: Past, Present and Future of Immunotherapy for Melanoma
Sunday, June 1:
Novel Combination Therapies for Melanoma
Developmental Therapeutics-Immunotherapy General Poster Session
Monday, June 2:
Selected (Discussed) Melanoma Poster Session
Internet, Social Media, Privacy Regulations and Clinical Trials
Oral Abstracts, Melanoma
Selected (Discussed) Developmental Therapeutics-Immunotherapy Poster Session
Tuesday, June 3:
Biology of Basal Cell, Squamous Cell, and Merkel Cell Carcinomas
Oral Abstracts, Developmental Therapeutics-Immunotherapy
Then return Tuesday evening after more meetings (various meetings are scattered throughout the time here)
I will start to preview some of the trial results in future posts.
Eric Whitman, MD
Senior Editor
TheMelanomaCenter.com
