Pharma Strategy Blog

I've been getting a lot of enquiries lately about what I think will be interesting at ASCO this year, so next week will see a couple of posts on this topic after some research has been completed with the crystal ball this weekend.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will be in Chicago rather than Orlando in June for the next 10 years and have announced that this year's hashtag is #ASCO10.  You can follow all the chatter around the topic on Twitter for the next 2 months, no doubt.  

It will be interesting to see what they are doing with social media after the success their cousins at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) have been having, particularly with the warmth with which they (AACR) have encouraged and embraced science bloggers and Tweeters.

What I liked about AACR's approach is that they did a great job sharing and rolling out the science for those who were following via podcasts and webcasts both on their site and also in iTunes. When EU presenters were unable to attend key presentations due to the Volcano, they didn't miss a beat and improvised with teleconferences to live slides.  Great job!

In comparison, I confess that I was a little disappointed to see ASCO are charging $100 a pop for podcasts and $75 for the virtual meeting with no audio. Clearly a much more commercial organisation.

Still, it's usually an interesting meeting packed with data and a great opportunity to see what's coming through in early phase I trials from preclinical research.

In the meantime, if you have any specific requests, please add them to the comments below and I'll do my best to include them in the pre-meeting analysis.

Watch this space!