It gives me great pleasure to extend a warm invitation to you and your hematology colleagues to attend the 52nd Annual Meeting and Exposition of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. I hope you will agree that the 2010 program is of stellar quality and provides ample opportunity to learn about the exciting new advances in our specialty.

I am pleased to announce several new additions to the 2010 program. New this year are “Practice Makes Perfect Sessions,” which are geared toward the practicing hematologist. Presenters will discuss timely topics that practitioners won’t want to miss, including Pay for Performance, the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, new models for payment, and maintenance of certification (MOC). In addition, for hematologists who are due to recertify in the next few years, a special Friday morning session will provide an opportunity to collaborate with workshop leaders and your colleagues to answer questions included in the newest American Board of Internal Medicine MOC hematology module and earn recertification credit.

Another new offering is a special symposium that celebrates the 60th anniversary of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Chaired by Griffin P. Rodgers, MD, Director of NIDDK, and featuring presenters Kenneth Kaushansky, MD, Alan N. Schechter, MD, and Nancy C. Andrews, MD, the speakers will highlight historical advances made in three key areas of hematology research supported by NIDDK – hematopoiesis, hemoglobin, and iron – and discuss future opportunities for progress in these areas.

This year’s Education Program, chaired by Joseph R. Mikhael, MD, and Bradford S. Schwartz, MD, will offer nearly 30 sessions covering a variety of hematologic topics, including advances made in caring for special populations such as the elderly, pregnant women, and children, and military and civilian approaches to providing transfusion support to trauma patients. The Education Program will also offer two sessions of particular interest to hematology trainees: “Grant Writing for Junior Faculty” and “Junior- Faculty Development: The Economics of Academic Hematology.”

Leonard I. Zon, MD, will present the E. Donnall Thomas Lecture on stem cell self-renewal and differentiation. Those interested in this topic may also wish to hear the scientific committee session titled “Life Cycle of the Hematopoietic Stem Cell.” This is one of 17 sessions on a wide range of topics in this year’s Scientific Program chaired by Robert A. Hromas, MD, and David T. Scadden, MD.

On Monday, be sure to catch the presentation of the Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize, a two-part lectureship named for this past president of ASH who made many important contributions to the field in a career spanning more than 50 years. The lecture, “From the Mechanism of Platelet Aggregation to the First Rationally Designed Antiplatelet,” will be given by Barry S. Coller, MD, and Joel S. Bennett, MD. Together, the achievements of these two hematologists have enabled advances in basic science as well as in clinical science and translational applications. At the Ham-Wasserman Lecture, also named after two past Society presidents, Tsvee Lapidot, PhD, of The Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, will evaluate the inner workings of stem cell homing and mobilization.

Back for its fifth year, the “Special Symposium on the Basic Science of Hemostasis and Thrombosis,” presented on Tuesday by the Scientific Committees on Hemostasis, Platelets, and Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, will highlight seminal research advances made this year in the areas of thrombosis, blood coagulation and fibrinolysis, and platelet biology.

Also on the last day of the meeting, the Presidential Symposium will focus on “Innovations and the Future of Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation.” Featured speakers will be Eliane Gluckman, MD, of the Hôpital St. Louis in Paris, France, John Wagner, MD, of the University of Minnesota, and Joanne Kurtzberg, MD, of Duke University Medical School in Durham, NC. Dr. Gluckman performed the first successful human umbilical cord blood transplant, and I was privileged to collaborate with her on successfully proving that cord blood could be used as a source of hematopoietic stem cells. I have also had the good fortune to collaborate with Drs. Wagner and Kurtzberg in their initial work in this clinical field in which they also made major contributions.

Prior to the symposium, David T. Scadden, MD, will receive the William Dameshek Prize for his landmark contributions to stem cell biology, along with Sanford Shattil, MD, who will be honored with this year’s Henry M. Stratton Medal for his remarkable achievements in the area of platelet cell biology and signal transduction. On Sunday afternoon, before the Plenary Scientific Session, I look forward to honoring Volker Diehl, MD, for his pioneering research on Hodgkin lymphoma by presenting him with the Society’s highest accolade – the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hematology.

All in all, I think we can look forward to another outstanding program this year, and I hope you will join us in Orlando!

Sincerely,
Hal Broxmeyer, PhD
President

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