• May
American Transplant Congress
American Society of Transplantation (AST)
May 1-5
San Diego Convention Center
San Diego, California

Immunology 2010
American Association of Immunologists (AAI)
May 7-11
Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, Maryland

14th Annual International Congress of Hematologic Malignancies: Focus on Leukemias, Lymphomas and Myelomas
Physicians’ Education Resource
May 17-21
Fairmont Château Whistler
Whistler, British Columbia, Canada

American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT)
13th Annual Meeting
May 17-22
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, D.C.

International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT)
16th Annual Meeting
May 23-26
Sheraton Philadelphia City Center Hotel
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

American Society for Apheresis (ASFA)
30th Annual Meeting
May 26-29
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel
New Orleans, Louisiana

• June
8th Annual International Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation Symposium
Cord Blood Forum
June 3-5
Hyatt Regency San Francisco at Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, California

American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
46th Annual Meeting
June 4-8
McCormick Place
Chicago, Illinois

European Hematology Association (EHA)
15th Congress
June 10-13
The Gran Via Conference Center
Barcelona, Spain

8th International Donor Registry Conference
World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA)
June 16-19
Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland

International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)
8th Annual Meeting
June 16-19
Moscone Center
San Francisco, California

Oncology Practice Reviews
Hilton Anatole
Dallas, TX
June 18-19, 2010

FOCIS 2010
Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS)
June 24-28
Boston Marriott Copley Place
Boston, Massachusetts

• July
UK National Stem Cell Network (UKNSCN)
Annual Science Meeting
July 12-14
University of Nottingham, East Midlands Conference Center
Nottingham, England, United Kingdom

Cryo 2010
Society for Cryobiology
47th Annual Meeting
July 17-20
Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel
Bristol, England, United Kingdom

• August
Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST)
Annual Scientific Conference
Aug. 13-14
Vancouver Congress Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

• September
ISCT Europe Regional Meeting
International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT)
Sept. 11-14
Best Western Hotel Villa Carlotta
Belgirate, Italy

• October
Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology
6th International Symposium on Neuroprotection and Neurorepair
October 1-4
Yachthafenresidenz Hohe Düne
Rostock-Warnemünde, Germany

European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)
35th Annual Meeting
Oct. 8-12
Milano Convention Centre
Milan, Italy

American Association of Blood Banks (AABB)
2010 Annual Meeting
Oct. 9-12
Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, Maryland

International Society of Hematology (ISH)
33rd World Congress
Oct. 10-13
ICC Jerusalem International Convention Center
Jerusalem, Israel

European School of Haematology
8th International Conference
Oct. 14-18
Cascais, Portugal

ISCT Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting
International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT)
Oct. 17-20
Phoenix Seagaia Resort
Miyazaki, Japan

Histiocytosis Association of America (HAA)
Oct. 18-20
Boston, Massachusetts

• December
American Society of Hematology (ASH)
52nd Annual Meeting
Dec. 4-7
Orange County Convention Center
Orlando, Florida

• 2011
BMT Tandem Meetings
Combined ASBMT and CIBMTR annual meetings
Feb. 17-21
Hawaii Convention Center
Honolulu, Hawaii

A Word from President John Barrett, MD

Since the 1970s, bone marrow transplant meetings were closely associated with ski resorts. To a novice at both skiing and stem cell transplantation (SCT), the challenges for me were enormous. Both the first encounter with steroid-resistant GVHD and the first maladroit attempt at catching a draglift which threw me into deep snow at the feet of the astonished lift attendant came at the same time in my early education. It is many years since an entire transplant meeting could fit into a single room of a chalet. Since then, not only do I ski better, there has been an explosion in the numbers of stem cell transplants worldwide, reflected in the existence of numerous stem cell transplantation groups worldwide. Our own meetings now far exceed the conference capacities of a ski resort. In Orlando this year at the BMT Tandem Meetings, there were more than 2,500 participants. The European Group for Blood & Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) had more than twice that number. This growth is characteristic of a successful society representing broad membership across the discipline, strong links with associated professional bodies, a thriving journal and fiscal stability.

How long will growth in SCT continue?
Critical though these features are to a healthy organization, they become of little importance if SCT loses its cutting edge in the field of medicine over the next decade. ASBMT is especially vulnerable to changes and vogues in medical care because its focus is a treatment, not a disease entity.

So it is appropriate to pause and consider the evolution of SCT and where it will stand in 10 years’ time. Indicative of healthy growth is the increasing availability of donors, both related and unrelated from diverse stem cell sources, increased survival from SCT and increased transplantation in older patients. Worldwide, the number of allogeneic SCTs continues to rise as new indications and improved results with less than fully matched donors are achieved. Against continued expansion is the persistence of GVHD as a serious cause of mortality, the weakness of graft versus leukemia (GVL) in diseases where we most need it and, least predictable of all, the potential of non-transplant treatment breakthroughs that can sideline SCT almost overnight -- the “imatinib effect” that occurred in chronic myeloid leukemia treatment.

Sometimes it seems transplantation is too hastily eclipsed by “simpler” but ultimately more expensive treatments. Take, for example, Gaucher’s disease. SCT can rapidly, completely, and permanently correct the disease, but enzyme replacement therapy with its high cost for lifelong treatment and sometimes incomplete correction has replaced SCT as the standard of care. Another factor working against the continuing expansion of SCT as a viable treatment in the world of exciting small molecules (which usually fall short of the therapeutic breakthrough made by imatinib) are prejudices about the horrors of SCT and chronic GVHD created in the minds of some non-transplant investigators from memories of how SCT was during their training in the past century. BMT units tend to be isolated from the hospital community, and the arcane goings-on within the unit are too often considered off-limits to doctors in training and off-putting for ancillary staff seeking a specialty career.

Recipes for future growth
ASBMT has striven to break down prejudice about SCT, for example by promoting the technique during medical training and including all the stakeholders, pharmacists, nursing and mid-level practitioners in the organization, giving them (for the first time) a seat on the Executive Board. In evolution, only a few species (lamp shells being one of them) have been able to survive through geological epochs without change, but typically species must continually evolve to avoid extinction. So, critical to the survival of SCT is the need to keep reinventing itself. While we have to ensure transplants are performed to the best standards of care for 2010, we need to understand SCT as a continually evolving discipline where underlying biology informs new treatments and study of immunology and stem cell function stimulates new clinical developments (the so-called “bench-to bedside-to-bench” approach).

How can we do this? Firstly, by applying what we learn from transplantation biology to advance the field of SCT as well as to other disciplines. For example, GVL is a model for immunotherapy of malignant disease, GVHD provides models for rheumatologists and specialists in autoimmune disorders; stem cell biology and the provision of good manufacturing practice (GMP) quality products underpins the huge explosion in regenerative medicine research. At the same time, we should be alert to the opportunities for incorporating the so called “novel therapies” — non-classical chemotherapy agents, small molecules and vaccines — into the transplant arena. ASBMT can maintain the immediacy of SCT and open the doors to incorporation of new treatments in transplants by outreach to other organizations, such as the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the European Society of Hypertension, the International Society for Cellular Therapy, as well as the close partnership we enjoy with sister organizations the National Marrow Donor Program and the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research. A new venture this year is to seek partnership with EBMT. We will be discussing collaborations of mutual benefit educational initiatives, such as developing the popular EBMT handbook, sharing evidence-based reviews, promoting fellowships and scholarships, and seeking joint funding for scientific and clinical research. If you have ideas for ways in which the two societies could collaborate, please share those with us by responding to this email address mail@asbmt.org.

So where will we be in 10 years? Maybe SCT will continue to evolve and what we learn from transplant immunology and stem cells will extend increasingly diverse forms of cell transplantation into applications still unguessed. Or, SCT may be overtaken by advances in other fields, and all the years of GVHD research, libraries of papers, two journals, and a dozen or more SCT societies will be dumped in the archive of history — or something in between these two extremes? As Niels Bohr succinctly put it, “Prediction is very difficult especially about the future,” but I can predict that for better or worse we will not be holding our annual meetings in ski resorts.

-- John