A “Flurry” of Activity at this Year’s ASH

I was in the air for an hour on my way to this year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in Atlanta, when the captain announced the plane would be turning around and heading back to Toronto because it was snowing it Atlanta. I had been hoping for a break from snowy Canadian winter, but sadly this was not to be! Once I eventually got to ASH the next day, although it was a little colder than I’d been hoping, it was a great meeting.

The meeting was capped off with the late-breaking abstracts session on Tuesday morning. This is the Program Committee’s selection of the highest-impact abstracts from different disease areas, which were not available by the general abstract deadline. Some of the studies this year were:

• The Hercules study, which showed that caplacizumab + standard care resulted in a faster resolution of acute acquired or immune-mediated thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (aTTP) vs. placebo + standard of care. This is a life-threatening microangiography caused by autoantibodies.

• MURANO, which showed that venetoclax + rituximab resulted in a profound improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) across all subgroups vs. bendamustine + rituximab in relapsed/refractory patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

• ALCYONE, which showed that the addition of daratumumab to the first-line chemotherapy regimen VMP in patients with multiple myeloma not eligible for transplant, significantly improved PFS vs. VMP alone.

I’m happy I made it to Atlanta to see all the exciting new data in hematology!

-Cristi