The 54th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will take place this year from June 1 to June 5 in Chicago.

Approximately 40,000 physicians, nurses, and industry rep­resentatives from all over the world are expected to attend the five-day meeting to discuss current research in cancer treat­ment and care.

During the meeting, there will be pre­sen­ta­tions about all types of cancer, in­clud­ing many pre­­sen­ta­tions focused specifically on multiple myeloma. In fact, more than 90 myeloma-related studies are scheduled to be pre­sented, in one form or another, in connection with the ASCO meeting.

The ASCO meeting is one of three annual scientific meetings where important new myeloma-related re­search findings are reported. The other two key con­fer­ences are the annual meetings of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the European Hematology Association (EHA).

As in previous years, The Myeloma Beacon will be covering results presented at this year's ASCO meeting.  Readers can expect news articles during and after the meeting about the key myeloma findings.

The Beacon also has prepared special pages with lists of the myeloma-related sessions at this year's meeting, along with titles of all myeloma-related presentations and links to the presentation abstracts. Additional information about these pages, and links to them, can be found later in this article (and in the information box to the left).

Organization Of The Meeting

Research findings presented at ASCO and other scientific meetings are generally communicated in either oral pre­sen­ta­tions or poster summaries.

Oral pre­sen­ta­tions are usually given for research that is considered particularly important, either because the subject itself is important, or because the results are based on sub­stan­tial amounts of evidence (for example, a sizable clinical trial).

Poster research summaries are made available during specific “poster sessions,” when researchers display summaries of their studies on posters in a large exhibition hall.

Some medical conferences also make it possible for researchers to share poster summaries of their research in electronic form only – that is, without the researchers physically taking place in a conference poster session. Both the ASCO and EHA meetings allow for such "e-posters."

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

Most major medical conferences also organize education sessions, where leading researchers share their perspectives on key topics in their field. There will be four myeloma-related education sessions at the 2018 ASCO meeting, with a total of 14 individual education presentations.

The Beacon's Lists Of Myeloma-Related Sessions, Presentations & Abstracts At ASCO 2018

Abstracts for most ASCO pre­sen­ta­tions are now available, and The Beacon has put together four special pages with lists of all myeloma-related meeting sessions and presentations at ASCO 2018.

There is one list for oral sessions and presentations, a second list for poster sessions amd pre­sen­ta­tions, a third for education sessions and presentations, and a fourth for "eAbstracts."

The entire database of ASCO 2018 meeting abstracts also can be searched at this page at the ASCO abstract site.

Please note that the results in some abstracts are preliminary and will be updated at the meeting.