47th Annual Meeting and Exposition
December 10-13, 2005

Georgia World Congress Center
Atlanta, Georgia

Special Lectures

SATURDAY

During the last decade, we have witnessed an avalanche of newly identified risk factors for venous thrombosis. This has advanced our knowledge of its etiology, because more determinants have been described and because the underlying concepts have received a new and broader understanding.

Venous thrombosis is a multicausal disease occurring as the result of interacting genetic, environmental, and behavioral risk factors. Some of these have been known since medieval times, such as the increased risk due to immobilization in pregnancy and after childbirth, although retained milk of the breast-feeding mother was seen as the primary cause for the latter. The immobilization in puerperium of the old days takes us straight to immobilization in current times, during long-haul travel in airplanes or by excessive electronic gaming. Pregnancy and puerperium still cause thrombosis, as do exogenous hormones in oral contraceptives and hormonal replacement therapy. While pedigrees with abundant thrombosis were observed in the early 1900s, the first cause of heritable thrombophilia (antithrombin deficiency) was discovered in 1965, with the subsequent identification of deficiencies of protein C and protein S in the early 1980s. These were uncommon and strong risk factors, whereas the more recently discovered genetic variants are common and weak and cause disease only in the presence of other factors. Black and white has become a greyscale, and no longer is thrombophilia a rare disorder. All can have it, but some can be more thrombophilic than others.

Based on results of the NHANES III Study and other research sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), it is increasingly apparent that anemia occurs with considerable frequency in the elderly, and that even when “mild” anemia is present it either causes or is associated with distinct clinical impairment. In 2004, ASH and the NIA brought together a panel of experts to discuss the next steps that must be pursued in order to understand the causes of anemia, impaired biology, clinical impact, and management of anemia in the elderly. The number of elderly Americans with anemia – currently estimated in the millions – continues to escalate as the population ages, making this issue a significant public health crisis. This special symposium sponsored by the Society’s Committee on Practice Subcommittee on Quality will review the key biologic problems related to anemia in the elderly, share recommendations for a clinical work-up of such patients, and discuss the role of the hematologist and ASH in addressing this public health concern. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentations.

Dr William Ershler will review the normal physiology of erythropoietin and then contrast this with alterations seen with aging. He will discuss important pathophysiologic consequences.

Dr Stanley Schrier will provide a review of the ASH-NIA expert panel’s conclusions. In particular, he will detail senescent changes associated with stem cell production, iron metabolism, and the physiology of inflammation.

Dr Vincent Picozzi will summarize the implications of the panel’s conclusions from the perspective of various stakeholders, including patients, insurers, individual hematologists, and ASH. In particular, specific recommendations to practitioners on the management of anemia in the elderly will be provided.

SUNDAY

Continuing in the tradition of collaboration at the annual meeting, ASH is pleased to welcome the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) for this special joint session. This year’s symposium is based on the advances made in tailoring therapy through the application of molecular medicine to the common solid tumors: colon, lung, and breast. Major advances in characterization of the host and the tumor are altering therapeutic practice to bring about greater efficacy and less toxicity to cancer patients. This session promises broad appeal as it will combine the latest translational science with clinical practice.

This year’s Policy Forum is the inaugural joint program between ASH and the European Hematology Association (EHA). The focus will be on the unique challenges facing clinical investigators in both the US and Europe as the infrastructure guiding clinical trials in these two regions is quite distinct.

ASH welcomes two world-renowned clinical investigators to offer their perspectives on this topic: Richard L. Schilsky, MD, Chairman of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB), and Jean-Luc Harousseau, MD, a founding member of the Intergroupe Francophone du Myélome. Drs Schilsky and Harousseau will discuss how US and European clinical investigators contend with several issues, including: access to new drugs; how to pay for clinical research; enrollment of patients; and dealing with potential conflicts of interest in investigator-sponsor relationships; and post-approval issues of safety and marketing.

Please join us for an invigorating discussion on this important public policy issue!

This focused special plenary session will highlight the recent, exciting discovery that a single site, clonal, gain-of-function mutation of the signaling kinase JAK2 is found in myeloid cells from many patients with polycythemia vera, idiopathic myelofibrosis, and essential thrombocythemia. Implications for the diagnosis, prognosis, and potential specific therapy of such patients will be discussed, as well as the intriguing pathophysiological questions that this discovery raises: How can one mutation lead to three diseases? Does the kinase mutation cause the hypercoagulability or predisposition to malignancy characteristic of these disorders? Does the dysregulated kinase affect substrates other than those known to reside downstream of the EPO, TPO, and other growth factor receptors that normally employ JAK2 for signaling?

As this session highlights late-breaking science, please check the ASH Web site for updates on confirmed speakers and topics.

During this prestigious session that is traditionally a highlight of the annual meeting, attendees will hear the presentations of the most groundbreaking abstracts selected by the Program Committee from among the thousands submitted from around the world. The speakers will be announced on the ASH Web site when the abstracts are posted online in early November.

MONDAY

After 50 years of investigations into the use of pluripotent hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for therapy of malignant and non-malignant marrow diseases, this procedure has progressed from one that was thought to be plagued with insurmountable complications to a standard treatment for many hematological disorders. How have these hurdles been overcome, and how can the therapy be expanded to benefit patients who cannot tolerate conventional transplant approaches due to age or poor health?

TUESDAY

Announcement of the Dameshek Prize and the Stratton Medal

The William Dameshek Prize was named for the late Dr William Dameshek, a past president of the Society and the original editor of Blood, to recognize a recent outstanding contribution to
the field of hematology.

The Stratton Medal was named for the late Henry M. Stratton, a co-founder of the publishing house of Grune & Stratton, to honor an individual whose contributions to hematology are well recognized and have taken place over a period of several years.

Dr Nabel was named the Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in January 2005. She is a board-certified cardiologist as well as a leading investigator in molecular cardiology and vascular biology. Dr Nabel joined NHLBI in 1999 as the Institute’s Scientific Director of Clinical Research. Prior to moving to NHLBI, she was the Chief of the Division of Cardiology, Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, and Professor of Internal Medicine and Physiology at the University of Michigan. ASH is honored to have Dr Nabel provide her vision for the future of hematology research.

This year’s Presidential Symposium does not focus on a single topic, but rather on the broad theme of translational research in several important areas of hematology. Each of the speakers has made major contributions to the understanding of the biologic principles of the diseases they study, and has interpreted these insights for the improvement of patient care. This symposium will provide current updates on molecular analysis of lymphomas, the potential for novel targeted therapies for acute myeloid leukemia, and the future of gene transfer therapy for immunodeficiencies.