Yelak Biru | The IMF at ASH 2021

ASH 2021 May Be Over, But This is Not the End

Dec 14, 2021 | Yelak Biru

On Monday, the 63rd Annual Meeting and Exposition of the American Society of Hematology came to an end. The hybrid model worked for the most part. Like any live event, there were technology hiccups here and there. Here are my five takeaways from the meeting. Screening for myeloma will become the future. The iStopMM (Iceland Screens Treats or Prevents Multiple Myeloma) team had four live presentations related to smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) that indicated about 0.5% of the Iceland...

#ASH21 Trial Design Acronyms

Dec 13, 2021 | Yelak Biru

I was going to write something insightful – my biggest takeaways – from the last two days of the 63rd annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting. I started saying that: the MASTER trial was very patient-centric; it had over 23% African Americans enrolled in the trial, the MRD response adopted treatment secession strategy is innovative, the trial enrollment was enriched and powered for high-risk patients, and the MASTER-2 trial design is future-looking, the result...

The Day of Symposiums

Dec 12, 2021 | Yelak Biru

Hybrid Meeting Format As with previous years, the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) held its signature satellite symposium during that 63rd annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). It featured Drs. Brian G.M. Durie (IMF Chairman of the Board), S. Vincent Rajkumar (Mayo Clinic — Rochester, MN), Tom Martin (UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center — San Francisco, CA), Jesus San-Miguel (Clinica Universidad de Navarra — Navarra, Spain), Philippe Moreau...

Pre-ASH Blog: Virtual to Hybrid: 63rd ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition to Highlight Progress of Critical Research

Dec 7, 2021 | Yelak Biru

On December 12, 2021, there were 545 open and recruiting clinical trials on the clinicaltrials.gov website. There are over 800 #ASH21 abstracts with the word #myeloma in them. There was a four-fold increase in Google’s keyword trend for #myeloma after the death of Secretary of State General Colin L. Powell. Over 750,000 men, women, and children have died in the US and over 5 million worldwide due to the #COVID19...