Next week, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) staff will begin to set up for the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL. More than 90 hotels are readying their rooms, and 200 shuttle buses will converge on the city, ready to whisk the 30,000 attendees to and from McCormick Place Convention Center when the meeting begins on June 3.
This year’s theme, “Collective Wisdom: The Future of Patient-Centered Care and Research,” will be well-represented by the approximately 2,200 abstracts selected for presentation in the plenary session, clinical science symposia, and oral and poster sessions.
“With each new discovery, we must continue to evolve cancer care and research,” said ASCO President Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO, in a May 18, 2016, presscast. This evolution involves “many more areas of expertise…to address our patient’s needs beyond treatment.”
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The 200-plus members of ASCO’s Education and Scientific Program Committees develop and plan the meeting each year. At a Scientific Program Committee Leadership meeting, more than 150 ASCO members, including biostatisticians and experts in value and health disparities, are “tasked with determining the placement of accepted studies in the meeting program,” noted an ASCO spokesperson.
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Immunotherapy, ASCO’s Cancer Advance of the Year, was well-reflected in the submitted abstracts and will be the focus of 3 special clinical science symposia. These sessions are entitled “The View Beyond Single Agent Checkpoint Blockade,” (Saturday, June 4, from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM); “Immunotherapy: Now We’re Getting Personal—Using Genomics and Biomarkers to Predict Response,” (Sunday, June 5, from 9:45 AM to 11:15 AM), which will examine “how predictive biomarkers and genomic profiles can be used to determine which patients are most likely to benefit from the new immunotherapies,” noted 2015-2016 Scientific Program Chair Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO; and “Actionable Mutations Redefined,” (Monday, June 6, from 9:45 AM to 11:15 AM).
