Upfront Treatment and Early Intervention to Get Attention at ASH
The 66th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition will take place December 7-10, 2024, in San Diego, California.
For several years, the therapeutic leaps unveiled at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition (ASH) focused on patients who had exhausted all other options—with the big news coming from chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy or bispecific T-cell engagers (BiTEs).
ASH 2024 will have important news for those therapies, but this time the excitement in San Diego, California, December 7-10, 2024, involves bringing the most advanced therapies into earlier lines of care—or even to patients who are precancerous, with “smoldering” disease.
On Monday, physicians will learn more about a potential option for patients with untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) when Jennifer R. Brown, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute presents results from the
Results from the
Word will come first thing Saturday on results of a study from the Children’s Oncology Group, which examined survival benefits of blinatumomab and chemotherapy for newly diagnosed pediatric patients with B-acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). Amgen, the maker of this BiTE, sold as Blincyto, has highlighted that this is the 10th anniversary of its approval.
Quality of Life—for Patients and Physicians
Of interest to managed care audiences, results from the use of epcoritamab in patients with heavily pretreated CLL appear to offer good news about strong responses alongside marked improvement in toxicity. Alexey Danilov, MD, PhD, of City of Hope, will present these findings.
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Finally, among the many ASH symposia is Monday’s “Placing the Brakes on Accelerated Aging,” which notes the prevalence of hematological malignancies among older adults and will examine the distinction between chronological and biological aging assessments for hematologic disease. Organizers say these distinctions “will be crucial for the identification of targets and development of therapies for this specific population.”
Late-Breaking Abstracts
Tuesday’s late-breaking session always offers practice-changing possibilities, and 2024 will be no exception. Three studies of note are:
- Results from the phase 3 inMIND study, evaluating tafasitamab plus lenalidomide and rituximab for R/R follicular lymphoma. This study looked at the effective of dual monoclonal antibodies, CD20 and CD19, and results show significant reduction in the risk for disease progression or death compared with therapies that target CD20 alone.
- An abstract involving a key mechanism of myeloproliferative neoplasms, titled “Andean enriched NFKB1 haplotype reduces inflammation and improves response to ropeginterferon Alfa-2b in polycythemia vera essential thrombocythemia."
- This study will raise new possibilities for treatment management through the measurement of minimal residual disease (MRD): "Lack of benefit of autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (auto-HCT) in mantle cell lymphoma patients in first complete remission with Undetectable MRD: Initial report from the ECOG-ACRIN EA4151 phase 3 randomized trial.” MRD assessments can identify those patients who respond to initial chemoimmunotherapy, allowing them to skip high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation.
AI in Hematology
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made conference agendas across health care this year, and ASH is no exception: it is the meeting theme, with sessions on AI applications in genomics, diagnostics, clinical workflows, and decision-making. Sessions include:
- The Application of Artificial Intelligence in
Hematological Diagnostics - The Role of AI in
Hematological Practice : The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Other Notable Studies
A generation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the
Follow-up data on landmark therapies approved a year ago on the eve of ASH 2023 will be presented this weekend. Stacey Rifkin-Zenenberg, DO, of Hackensack Meridian Health, will present data on
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