David Bodine, PhD
Catherine Wu, MD
What were your goals for creating this year’s Scientific Program?
Dr. Bodine: The big idea this year was to highlight what a broad and interactive field hematology is, and we worked very hard – Catherine Wu, MD, Jane Winter, MD, and I – to try to connect different parts of the hematology community and demonstrate how interconnected we are.
Dr. Wu: We were looking for presentations in realms of research where there have been fresh findings based on innovative new technologies that shed light on questions that have been motivating us as an intellectual community. We’re at a truly exciting time in hematology research. There have been advances in genomic, single cell, and spatial technologies that are giving us insights into the cellular interactions and phenotypes on a cell-by-cell basis. There’s intense interest in trying to harness machine learning and there are also exciting advances in clinical care. Overall, it’s been gratifying to see the vast diversity of studies being presented that fundamentally illuminate the how and why of blood diseases.
Did COVID-19 or any other consideration change the planning process for this year?
Dr. Wu: We still have to think about how COVID-19 is going to affect people’s travel. By now, we’re three years in, and I think we can all agree that COVID-19 is very inconvenient and always lobs new surprises at us. I’m impressed by how our Program Committee and staff have been so thoughtful about these potential surprises.
Dr. Bodine: It only made it easier, with vaccinations and people feeling a little bit more comfortable attending. This year, all of the presentations are going to be made in person, so the speakers will actually be there. There will be a live audience, and we think this is going to promote a great deal of interaction between not only the speaker and the audience, but different members of the audience. We’re looking at that as not necessarily in response to COVID, but it represents where we are in the pandemic. We hope that in-person attendance will increase dialogue and bring that cross-cutting theme to life.
Biology and Translation of NK Cells
Saturday, December 10, 2022, 2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m., Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, 293-294, Level 2
Joint Session: Cell Competition and Clonal Hematopoiesis
Sunday, December 11, 2022, 9:30 a.m. – 11:05 a.m., Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans Theater AB, Level 2
How does this year’s program differ from that of previous Annual Meetings?
Dr. Wu: One of the things that we’ve been wanting to expand this year is thinking about areas of intersection between distinct areas of classical (non-malignant) and malignant hematology. We wanted to make a richer program by having, for example, two committees come together and create a joint program that would be of interest to both and, hence, expand the scope and interest. I am happy to report that we have been able to successfully do that in several instances.
Dr. Bodine: We have four joint sessions that intersect between two fields of hematology. In our Scientific Spotlight Sessions, we’ve been able to put together some exciting programs, including one on the timely subject of fetal health. There is also a Special Interest Session on artificial intelligence, which highlights the machine learning, computational approaches that are coming into hematology and are going to revolutionize the field going forward, and we’re very proud to see that on the program. We also took a different approach in how we developed the Scientific Symposia and Spotlight Sessions this year. Crowd-sourcing the wider hematology community really helped us generate fresh new ideas and topics.
Can you talk a little bit about how these joint sessions came together?
Dr. Wu: It was stated up front that collaboration was a core mission of our program this year. And, as each of the scientific committees came forward with their proposals for topics to cover, some of them came forward already with a joint proposal. For others, as the proposals were developed, it became clear that it would be exciting to pull some of them together – it was a rather organic process. It was very fun for the scientific committee chairs in each of the areas of expertise to work together to come up with the best program that they could.
Dr. Bodine: We promoted the idea to the scientific committee chairs, made sure everyone realized that there were many positive benefits to be had, and then just sat back and watched it develop organically. The scientific committees came back with wonderful sessions. Even if they developed a joint session, many also developed an individual session, and some were selected for a Scientific Spotlight Session or Scientific Symposium. So, it was a win-win-win for all concerned. We were happy that the whole process seemed to be organic, that they took the idea to heart and did it without any prodding or pushing beyond the initial description of why this would be a great idea. These sessions are not to be missed.
Which sessions are you adding to your own agenda?
Dr. Wu: It’s a very exciting moment in time for adoptive cellular therapy, and there is a joint session between the lymphoid malignancies group and the transplant and cell therapies group, so that’s exciting. There’s also a Scientific Symposium on natural killer cell therapy, so I’m looking forward to that as well.
Dr. Bodine: I try to do as much as I can. I’m very excited to attend the artificial intelligence session, the session on fetal health, and all four of the joint sessions – I’m going to try to make every one of them. Even though some of the topics are not in my field, it’s cutting across fields that I do traffic in, so I think that intersection is just not to be missed.
