Call for Late-Breaking Abstracts

The following criteria must be met for a late-breaking abstract submission:

• Late-breaking abstracts should highlight novel and substantive studies of high impact. The late-breaking abstract deadline is not intended to be merely an extension of the general submission deadline and will focus on capturing abstracts with ground-breaking and novel data that otherwise could not be presented at the annual meeting.
• Updated analyses will be considered only if the abstract is a significant extension of previously published work. The author must provide an explanation in the Updated Analysis section of the late-breaking abstract application form to show how the abstract contains significant new information.
• The selection process will be highly competitive; no more than six abstracts will be selected for an oral presentation in a late-breaking abstracts session on Tuesday morning of the ASH annual meeting.
• Examples of suitable content for late-breaking abstracts might include the first report of the primary endpoint results of a potentially practice-changing prospective clinical trial or the discovery of a mechanism underlying or characterizing a disease process.
• Trials in Progress (i.e., abstracts describing clinical trial design and eligibility that contain no data) are NOT eligible for late-breaking abstract consideration.
• Late-breaking abstracts should not include content that has already been submitted to the regular ASH annual meeting abstract program, and those late-breaking abstracts not chosen for presentation in the Late-breaking abstract session will not be presented orally or as a poster at the ASH annual meeting, and will not be published.
• All ASH policies stated in the general submission call for abstracts will apply.
• At least one of the authors must be a current ASH member with up-to-date payment of membership dues.
• If none of the abstract authors is an ASH member, the abstract must be sponsored by a current ASH member. ASH members are urged to use their best judgment in restricting sponsorship to a reasonable number of abstracts, keeping in mind that they are endorsing the authenticity and quality of each abstract that they sponsor.
• The content of the abstract must fit into one of the ASH 2023 categories.
• In contrast to past years, oral abstract and poster presentations will no longer be contained within the ACCME-accredited portion of the annual meeting. Therefore, presenting authors are no longer subject to ACCME restrictions, and can be employees of publicly-traded or privately-held healthcare companies or owners of privately-held entities. All relevant conflicts of interest must be disclosed, and data presented fairly and transparently.

• Abstracts describing work posted to a preprint server prior to submission to ASH will be considered, but preprint posting must be disclosed during submission and a working link to the preprint provided.
• Authors must retain copyright of the abstract so that it may be transferred to the American Society of Hematology if the abstract is accepted, per ASH’s copyright policy.
• Once the abstract is submitted to ASH, no further changes can be made to the preprint, including the abstract, nor may the preprint be updated if the abstract is accepted for presentation at ASH.
• Upon abstract acceptance for presentation at the annual meeting, the contents and conclusions of the abstract are embargoed from publication.

Any of the following criteria will make an abstract ineligible for presentation at the ASH annual meeting:

• Data from peer-reviewed content is publicly available via major search engines (such as PubMed, Google Scholar, etc.)
• Data are accepted for journal publication before the abstract submission closing date October 26, 2023. Any abstract submission accepted for publication before October 26, 2023, must be withdrawn.
• If the work is accepted after the abstract submission deadline but before notification of abstract decisions the third week of November, it should be embargoed from online or final publication until the decision on the abstract has been made.
• If the abstract is chosen for presentation and is accepted for publication, publication must be embargoed until December 12, 2023, after the Late-breaking abstract session.
• Data have been or are to be presented at a meeting of 1,000 or more participants before the 2023 ASH annual meeting.
• Data are to be presented at an ASH Friday Satellite Symposium, scheduled for December 8, 2023.

Updated analyses of work previously presented at ASH or other meetings of more than 1,000 participants will be considered only if the abstract is a significant extension of previously published or presented work. The author must provide an explanation (see section below) documenting the significant new information.

Responsibilities of the Presenting Author 

• The first author listed for each abstract serves as the presenting author and as the primary contact for all correspondence regarding the abstract, unless otherwise specified under the “Contact Information” section of the online abstract submission system.
• The presenting author must be one of the co-authors listed on the submitted abstract. 
• The presenting author is responsible for the following:
  • Ensuring that all authors have read the abstract and agreed to be co-authors. Failure to get approval from all authors will result in rejection of the abstract.
  • Notifying all co-authors of any additions, deletions, and changes to the program, as may be communicated by ASH.
  • Obtaining all of the conflict-of-interest disclosure and copyright transfer information from co-authors.
  • Forwarding all correspondence to all co-authors, including ASH policies and guidelines relating to disclosure of financial relationships.
• Unless announced otherwise by ASH, presenting authors of abstracts accepted for oral presentation or poster presentation must attend the 2023 Annual Meeting in person in San Diego. If the original designated presenting author cannot attend, a co-author may be designated as an alternative presenter.

Each abstract author agrees and certifies that they:

• Have read all the rules and agrees to be bound by them.
• Are responsible for submission of the abstract in accordance with the rules.
• Waive any and all claims against ASH and any reviewer arising out of or relating to the abstract submission and review process, including but not limited to peer review and the grading of abstracts.

• An abstract must include primary scientific, clinical, meta-analytic, health outcomes or epidemiologic data.
• All studies reported in submitted abstracts involving human and animal subjects must comply with the guiding principles for experimental procedures found in the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association.
• Data from the long-term follow-up of previously presented or published clinical trials may be submitted only if they include significant new information. In this case, please use the Updated Analyses section of the abstract form to explain the extent and the significance of the new data. The reviewers will have this information available during their evaluation.
• Interim analysis of a prospective randomized clinical trial will be considered only if it is performed as planned in the original protocol and is statistically valid. If your abstract involves interim analysis, use the Interim Analysis of a Clinical Trial section of the abstract form to explain the details of your study. The reviewers will have this information available during their evaluation.

• ML/AI tools are not eligible for authorship and may not be listed as an author.
• Research that used ML/AI tools for data acquisition or analysis is eligible for submission.
• Submissions may include graphic outputs of ML/AI tools as long as the role of ML/AI in creating the graphics is specified in the legend.
• Text generated by AI may not be included in the abstract.

• Authors assign copyright of the abstract to ASH upon submission, unless one of the authors is a U.S. Federal employee (in such case, ASH does not hold copyright). This means that the identical abstract may not be republished or submitted to another meeting.
• Learn more about the Annual Meeting's copyright and reuse policy for abstracts, presentations, and presentation materials.

• Other than abstracts, materials presented at the ASH Annual Meeting or requested for submission by ASH in conjunction with the Annual Meeting, including but not limited to posters, on-screen presentations (e.g. PowerPoint slides, pre-recorded presentations) and hand-outs are the intellectual property of individual presenters or entities other than ASH. Although ASH is not the copyright holder of such other presentation materials, presenters grant an exclusive license to ASH to use such other materials in connection with the presentation (see below).

• By presenting at the ASH Annual Meeting, the presenter grants to ASH: (a) the exclusive right to broadcast, record, create plain language summaries, and otherwise use my presentation in whole or in part, including all documents, slides or other materials displayed or distributed in connection with my presentation (collectively, the "Work"), in any media whatsoever; and (b) a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, exclusive license to re-present, reproduce, redistribute and otherwise use (and to license others to use) the Work in any and all media throughout the world. Presenters further grant to ASH the right to use (and to license others to use) the presenter's name, image, likeness, voice, and biographical information in connection with the Work.

• Abstracts submitted to ASH are embargoed from the time of submission. This means that the data in the abstract cannot be published in a journal once submitted for the ASH annual meeting until the meeting has concluded. (Note the exception for abstracts submitted to other ASH meetings in the Eligibility section above.) Read the Annual Meeting “Embargo Policy” webpage for more details.

• After the submission deadline, all completed and eligible abstracts will be made available to the ASH Abstract Reviewers for double-anonymized review and scoring, and final decisions will be made by the Program Committee in mid-November 2023.
• Abstracts will be evaluated and scored solely on their scientific merits.
• The same study must not be submitted as multiple abstracts. Abstracts that are simply different versions of a single study will be rejected.
• Abstracts will be peer-reviewed according to the subject categories. Authors must indicate the appropriate review category (one only) during online submission. Please use the list of abstract review categories, when selecting the abstract classification. Please read through all the categories and select the category most closely associated with your abstract. Authors will not be able to reclassify their abstracts after the abstract submission site closes. The ASH Secretary may move abstracts between categories as deemed appropriate, however, abstracts submitted to an inappropriate category may be scored in that category and are often ranked poorly.
• On average, only six late-breaking abstracts will be considered for an oral presentation. All other abstracts will be rejected and not published. The Late-Breaking Session features the top six abstracts. These are formal oral presentations, each followed by a brief discussion.

• Notification regarding acceptance or rejection of abstracts will be sent via e-mail to the presenting authors no later than November 20, 2023; consequently, providing an accurate e-mail address at submission is critical. If you have not received an e-mail by November 20, 2023, contact [email protected].
• To ensure that you can receive e-mail correspondence from ASH, please make sure that your e-mail software can receive mail from the confex.com and hematology.org domains. You should add [email protected] and [email protected] to your Safe Senders list and/or address book. If after completing your submission you don't receive a confirmation e-mail from the abstract system, you must contact your system administrator and make sure that both the confex.com and hematology.org domains are added to your permitted e-mail address list.
• The decision of the ASH Program Committee regarding the acceptance and presentation of abstracts is final.

• Authors can withdraw the late-breaking abstracts by the submission deadline of October 26, 2023. Abstract withdrawal requests received after the deadline will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• ASH reserves the right to withdraw abstracts that are in violation of the Society’s policies and guidelines, such as those that have been previously published or presented, have been deemed scientifically unsound, or have been found to include inaccurate data, etc.

• The six late-breaking abstracts accepted for presentation at the ASH annual meeting will be published online on November 21 as part of the online annual meeting program, as well as in the online-only, Late-Breaking Abstracts November supplemental issue of Blood.
• Late-breaking abstracts not accepted for presentation will not be published in any form.

• ASH is committed to ensuring the integrity of its scientific, educational, and research programs. The ASH Conflict-of-Interest Policy requires disclosure of any financial or other interest in the biomedical industry that might be construed as resulting in an actual, potential, or apparent conflict, regardless of the relationship’s pertinence to the abstract, or abstracts if the author is associated with more than one abstract submitted to ASH.
• As a continuing medical education (CME) provider accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), ASH must ensure balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all presentations at the ASH annual meeting.
• ASH abides by rules formulated by the ACCME that require that you disclose any financial relationship you or your spouse/partner have had within the past 24 months with an ineligible company (formerly commercial interest) as defined by the ACCME
  • Ineligible companies are those whose primary business is producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. Examples of such companies can be found on the ACCME website.
• For this purpose, “financial relationships” are those in which the individual benefits by receiving a salary, royalty, intellectual property rights, consulting fee, honoraria, ownership interest (e.g., stocks, stock options, or other ownership interest, excluding diversified mutual funds), or other financial benefit. Financial benefits are usually associated with roles such as employment, management position, independent contractor (including contracted research), consulting, speaking and teaching, membership on advisory committee or review panels, board memberships, and other activities from which remuneration is received, or expected. Research funding from ineligible companies should be disclosed by the principal or named investigator even if that individual’s institution receives the research grant and manages the funds.
• By completing this section of the online abstract submission, you agree that you have read the ASH Conflict-of-Interest Policy and that you understand and support its intent.
• This policy is not intended to prevent a presentation; it is merely intended to openly identify potential conflicts so that audience members may form their own judgments about the presentation with a full disclosure of the facts.
• Appropriate disclosure will be stated in the special online-only late-breaking abstract issue of Blood. Abstracts will not be considered for the program without completion of disclosure information for all of the authors.

• The presenting author is responsible for obtaining financial disclosure information from all co-authors.
• All authors and co-authors are required to provide any information concerning personal or professional circumstances and financial relationships with ineligible companies that might reasonably be expected to affect the author’s view on the presentation.
• This includes funding or other support provided by commercial entities to carry out the research being presented, or other relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, biomedical startups that have begun a governmental regulatory approval process, or other companies whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the presentation topic. If no financial relationships with ineligible companies exist, this must be stated as well.

• Please disclose any relationships with ineligible companies regardless of the relationship’s pertinence to the content of the abstract, or abstracts if the author is associated with more than one abstract submitted to ASH. Disclosure includes relationships held by you or any individual with whom you directly share income, such as a spouse or partner.

You must disclose the relationship type and the name of the ineligible company for each of the following areas in which you maintain a relationship. Exact dollar amounts are not necessary. You will have the option to (a) note that there are no financial relationships to disclose or to (b) provide relationship information. Disclosed information may include the following areas:

• Employment (current or ended)
• Consultancy
• Equity holder in publicly traded company
• Equity holder in privately-held company (including stock options, but excluding indirect investments through mutual funds and the like) in a publicly traded company
• Research or clinical trial funding or other support (including grants received by your institution)
• Honoraria directly received from an entity
• Patents and royalties
• Paid expert testimony
• Membership on an entity’s board of directors, speaker’s bureau, or its advisory committees
• Any other financial relationship with an ineligible company

• You will be required to note whether your presentation will include discussion of off-label use of products. If so, please use the Off-Label Disclosure section of the abstract form to identify the product(s) and off-label use(s).

During the disclosure submission process, you will also be required to indicate your compliance with the following statements, which include measures to ensure clinical content validity:

• Any recommendations for patient care must be based on current science, evidence, and clinical reasoning, while giving a fair and balanced view of diagnostic and therapeutic options.
• All scientific research referred to, reported, or used to support or justify a patient care recommendation must conform to the generally accepted standards of experimental design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
• If I discuss new and evolving topics for which there is a lower (or absent) evidence base I will clearly identify it as such within the individual presentations.
• The presentation of the information with which I am involved will avoid advocating for, or promoting, practices that are not, or not yet, adequately based on current science, evidence, and clinical reasoning.
• The presentation of the information with which I am involved will exclude any advocacy for, or promotion of, unscientific approaches to diagnosis or therapy, or recommendations, treatment, or manners of practicing healthcare that are determined to have risks or dangers that outweigh the benefits or are known to be ineffective in the treatment of patients.
• The content I am responsible for will only use generic names of products, or if trade names appear, the use of those trade names will be justified (e.g., product is known more widely for the trade name or the product does not have a generic name).
• The content I am responsible for will be free of logos or other corporate identifiers of healthcare industry companies, specifically those whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
• I will remove all patient identifiers (name, birth date, address, phone number, medical record number, account number, social security number, etc.) from my presentation materials. I will not use identifiable photographs of patients unless I have obtained written permission from the patient.
• If I have been trained or utilized by an ineligible company (commercial interest) or its agent as a speaker (e.g. speakers’ bureau) for any commercial interest, the promotional aspects of that presentation will not be included in any way with this activity or publication.

• Late-Breaking abstracts submitted to the ASH annual meeting are embargoed from the time of submission.
• For the research to be eligible for presentation at the ASH annual meeting, information contained in the abstract, as well as additional data and information to be presented about the research at the annual meeting, may not be made public before the abstract has been published/presented at the ASH annual meeting.
• Prior to the embargo being lifted, the first author, co-authors, and sponsor of the abstract must not:
  • Publish the information or provide it to others who may make it publicly available.
  • Release the research/study to news media, or
  • Use the information for trading in the securities of any issuer or provide it to others who may use it for securities-trading purposes.
• An exception may be granted in cases in which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires a press release to comply with security laws. ASH will consider such requests on an ad hoc basis. More information on requesting such an exception can be found on the ASH website.
• Authors must notify ASH if, after the submission deadline (October 26), the work submitted for publication is accepted for journal publication and will be published online or in print before the ASH annual meeting. Authors should request a delay in publication in this instance. Publication before the meeting may result in the abstract being removed from the meeting.
• If the Embargo Policy is violated, the abstract may be withdrawn by ASH from presentation at the annual meeting and from publication.
• More detailed information about the Society’s Embargo Policy is located on the ASH website. Please contact ASH Communications Specialist Kira Sampson at [email protected] or 202-552-4927 with any questions.

• The corresponding author must provide their name, degree, institutional affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail address. All correspondence from ASH will be sent to the corresponding author during the submission period.
• If none of the abstract authors is an ASH member, the program will ask you to provide the name of the ASH member who is sponsoring the abstract.

• Names of co-authors and their institutional affiliations must be provided. Please proof your co-authors’ names carefully. 

• The abstract title should be brief and clearly indicate the nature of the abstract.
• The abstract title must be in title case. Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions (i.e., as, because, although). Except for the first word of the title, lowercase all articles, coordinate conjunctions (i.e., and, or, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length. Also, lowercase “to” when used as an infinitive.
• Additionally, keep letters lowercase if the lowercase letters have a specific meaning, such as pH or NaCl.
• Do not put a period at the end of the title.
• For example: Somatic Mutations in Schinzel-Giedion Syndrome Gene SETBP1 Determine Progression in Myeloid Malignancies

• Non-proprietary (generic/scientific) names should be used and should be lowercase.
• If necessary, you may include a proprietary name in parentheses directly following the generic name after its first mention in the body of the abstract; the first letter of the name of a proprietary drug should be capitalized. ASH reserves the right to replace proprietary names with generic names to adhere to this policy.

• Use standard abbreviations. Place abbreviations in parentheses immediately after the first mention of a term or phrase; the abbreviation can then be used throughout the abstract.

• Late-Breaking abstracts submitted for the ASH annual meeting are published in a special online-only November 2023 issue of Blood, a Journal of the American Society of Hematology. Abstracts will be typeset from the text submitted by the author without copyediting changes. IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE AUTHOR TO PROOFREAD THE ABSTRACT CONTENTS AND AUTHOR LIST CAREFULLY.
• The entire body of the abstract, excluding tables, must not exceed 3,800 characters. Spaces are not included in this number. Title, authors’ names, affiliations, figures, and tables are not included in the character count.
• The body of the abstract is to be pasted into the submission form. Tables and figures may be uploaded via photo file type.
• The abstract may be structured (i.e., abstracts divided into sections using terms such as Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions, etc.) or unstructured.
• Do not use bold type or underline formatting. Italic type is acceptable
• Text may be in multiple paragraphs.
• Special Greek and mathematical symbols are available in a character map within the submission system. Pay careful attention to superscripts, type case font sizes, and special characters when copy/pasting abstract text.
• Use numerals to indicate numbers, except when beginning sentences
• Abstracts may include no more than two panels of additional content i.e., figures or tables. A “panel” would be defined as a table or a single graphical representation of data (i.e. equivalent to a figure panel in a paper, not an entire multipaneled figure). Abstracts not complying with this policy may be rejected before review.
• All tables and figures must be uploaded as a single image file. Do not paste a table directly into the text of the abstract, but rather include it as an image in the appropriate place and use the upload method to submit your abstract. To convert a table to an image, we recommend taking a screenshot of the table. If using a PC, use the Snipping Tool or the Print Screen button. If using a Mac, press Command-Shift-4. An image can also be created by exporting your table in MS WORD to PDF format and then convert the file to an image.
• Any references should be noted as citations within the text and not as footnotes at the end of the abstract.

• Please refer to the list of this year’s abstract review categories, which provides detailed descriptions of each category, to assist you in selecting the correct abstract classification. Note that categories are frequently redefined; please read through each category before making your selection.