The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will kick off its 54^th annual meeting next Saturday, December 8. This year’s meeting will run through Tuesday, December 11 and will be held in Atlanta.

Similar to past years, over 20,000 people are expected to attend the meeting to listen to experts from around the world discuss current research regarding the biology, diagnosis, treatment, and progression of various blood diseases, including multiple myeloma.

The ASH meeting, along with the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the European Hematology Association (EHA) meetings, are the three key annual scientific meetings where important new myeloma-related research findings are reported.

Among these three meetings, ASH is generally viewed as the most important for myeloma researchers, patients, and caregivers.  This is due both to the volume and the importance of the research usually presented at the meeting.

At this year’s ASH meeting, almost 200 oral presentations and more than 500 poster presentations will summarize research focused on myeloma.

As in previous years, The Beacon will provide in-depth coverage of the ASH meeting.  A team of editors and writers, some of whom will be on site in Atlanta, will be publishing daily summaries and in-depth research reviews during and after the meeting.

Each day of the meeting, The Beacon will publish one or more daily updates summarizing the key events and findings of the day.

During the meeting and for several weeks thereafter, The Beacon will also publish individual news articles looking in depth at important findings presented at the ASH meeting.

Most of the research findings presented at scientific meetings are communicated in either oral presentations or poster summaries.

Research findings presented in oral presentations are generally considered particularly important, either because the subject itself is important, or the results are based on substantial amounts of evidence (for example, a sizable clinical trial).

Other research findings are presented during poster sessions, in which researchers display summaries of their results on posters in a large exhibition hall.

Compared to the research summarized during oral presentations, the findings in poster summaries generally are in earlier stages of development.  They may involve laboratory research, clinical trials with just a small number of patients, or early results from ongoing clinical trials.

Presentations related to myeloma will kick off early on the first day of the ASH meeting with an educational program called “Keeping Pace With Advances In Multiple Myeloma.” The session will include talks given by Dr. Gareth Morgan of Royal Marsden Hospital in the United Kingdom; Dr. Vincent Rajkumar of the Mayo Clinic; and Dr. Antonio Palumbo from the University of Torino in Italy.

For the most part, though, the myeloma-related research presented on Saturday will be in the form of poster summaries made available during poster sessions in the evening.

Both Sunday and Monday, however, will be packed with oral and poster presentations related to myeloma.

Oral presentations about potential new myeloma treatments — including trial results for ARRY-520 ^[1], BHQ880 ^[2], circularly permuted TRAIL ^[3], daratumumab ^[4], dinaciclib ^[5], elotuzumab ^[6], lorvotuzumab mertansine ^[7], MLN9708 ^[8] (ixazomib ^[9]), oprozomib ^[10], pomalidomide ^[11], tabalumab ^[12], and Zolinza ^[13] (vorinostat) — will be spread across Sunday and Monday.  An oral presentation of results from a study of Treanda ^[14] (bendamustine) will also be presented on Tuesday.

Some of these studies are testing the new drugs as monotherapy and others are testing them in combination with currently-approved myeloma treatments.

There will also be a number of studies further evaluating the efficacy and safety of Kyprolis ^[15] (carfilzomib), which was approved to treat myeloma earlier this year.

In addition to all of the oral presentations on Sunday and Monday, poster sessions with long lists of myeloma-related research results are scheduled for both of those evenings.

The myeloma-related sessions will conclude Tuesday morning.  Several myeloma-related oral sessions are scheduled simultaneously for first thing in the morning.

Of particular note, one of Tuesday’s presentations will be about the complete results from the Phase 3 study showing that pomalidomide plus dexamethasone ^[16] (Decadron) significantly extends overall survival as compared to high-dose dexamethasone alone.  Results from other pomalidomide studies will be presented earlier during the meeting.

Additional information about the ASH meeting, including details about registration, the meeting schedule, and presentation and poster abstracts, can be found at the ASH meeting ^[17] website.

Beacon coverage of myeloma-related research presented at recent scientific meetings can be found at these links: ASCO 2012 Meeting ^[18] and EHA 2012 Meeting ^[19].