ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition

Several updates highlighted at the 2012 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting as well as other developments.

Francesco Lo-Coco, MD, Hematology, University Tor Vergata, discusses a new emerging treatment, arsenic trioxide, in acute promyelocytic leukemia.

James R. Berenson, MD, discusses a phase I/II study of pomalidomide, dexamethasone and pegylated liposomal doxorubicin for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

Jorge E. Cortes, MD, Department of Leukemia, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the use of ponatinib as initial therapy for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

Michelle A. Fanale, MD, Associate Professor, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the role of brentuximab vedotin as frontline treatment of systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma.

John C. Byrd, MD, director of the division of hematology at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the role of Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Harry Erba, MD, PhD, discusses the results of a phase II study analyzing azacitidine and gemtuzumab ozogamicin as induction and post-remission therapy in patients of age 60 and older with previously untreated non-M3 AML.

Sundar Jagannath, MD, Director, Multiple Myeloma Program, The Tisch Cancer Institute at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, details the advances in life expectancy for patients with multiple myeloma.

Tal Zaks, MD, PhD, Sanofi Oncology, details a phase II randomized study of the JAK2 inhibitor SAR302503 in patients with intermediate-2 or high-risk primary myelofibrosis (MF), post-polycythemia vera MF, or post-essential thrombocythemia MF.

Smita Bhatia, MD, MPH, Population Sciences, City of Hope, Duarte, California, explains a clinical trial analyzing genetic susceptibility to anthracycline-related congestive heart failure in survivors of hematopoietic cell transplantation.

Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, explains the impact that rituximab has made in the treatment of patients with non-Hodgkin and B-cell lymphomas.

Francisco Cervantes, MD, PhD, Hospital Clinic, IDIBAPS, Barcelona, Spain, discusses the initial and long-term findings of the COMFORT-II trial of ruxolitib for the treatment of myelofibrosis.

Timothy P. Hughes, MD, MBBS, explains the two-year follow-up results of the ENESTcmr trial analyzing the switch to nilotinib after at least 2 years on imatinib in patients with chronic phase chronic myeloid leukemia.

Mark J. Levis, MD, PhD, Department of Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University, discusses the design and results of a phase II trial of quizartinib in patients with FLT3-ITD positive or negative relapsed/refractory AML.

Sundar Jagannath, MD, discusses the use of pomalidomide (POM) in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.

Meir Wetzler, MD, explains the CALGB 10001 study analyzing autologous and allogeneic stem cell transplantation for Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Giancarlo Agnelli, MD, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, discusses the results of a study comparing the efficacy and safety of two doses of apixaban, an oral factor Xa inhibitor, with placebo for the treatment of venous thromboembolism.

Sung W. Choi, MD, Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, discusses the results of a phase I/II trial examining the use of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor vorinostat in graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prevention.

Jorge E. Cortes, MD, from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, describes results from a 12 month follow up of the phase II PACE study that examined ponatinib in patients with CML and Ph+ ALL.

Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the trials investigating ABT-199 and ibrutinib that were presented at the 2012 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Meeting.

Proposed federal budget cuts that could affect the National Institutes of Health, and thus hematology/oncology research, were highlighted as an area of concern during the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Atlanta, Georgia.

Photos from the 54th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, held at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, GA, from December 8-11, 2012.

Researchers have demonstrated that ponatinib can overcome a wide range of mutations that cause treatment resistance-including the stubborn T315I mutation-in all stages of CML and Ph+ ALL.

The combination of pomalidomide and a steroid significantly improved outcomes for patients with MM who have exhausted other novel therapies, marking what researchers say is a notable advancement for a sizable proportion of those treated for the disease.

MLN9708 has shown comparable efficacy and greater convenience and tolerability than bortezomib, for patients with multiple myeloma.

Harry Erba, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director, University of Alabama at Birmingham Hematologic Malignancy Program, explains the declining treatment-related mortality (TRM) rates in AML patients.

Tiziano Barbui, MD, USC Hematology, Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy, on hematocrit (HCT) levels in patients with polycythemia vera (PV).

Shaji K. Kumar, MD, Division of Hematology, Mayo Clinic, talks about managing toxicities in the MLN9708 study.