The 49^th annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting is set to begin this Friday in Chicago. The largest gathering of its kind, the Annual Meeting brings together over 25,000 oncology professionals from around the globe. Attendees of the meeting, which takes place from May 31 through June 4^th, enjoy access to cutting-edge scientific presentations along with comprehensive educational content.

ASCO provides a venue for oncology professionals from a broad range of specialties to explore the cancer ecosystem. This year’s theme is “Building Bridges to Conquer Cancer”. The Annual Meeting will feature presentations and educational sessions packed with the latest trends and data from the rapidly evolving field of cancer research and treatments. It’s in this environment, rife with innovative energy, that oncologists and other practitioners can network with world leaders in the cancer field.

Scientific Program Committee Chair, Dr. Douglas Yee, had this to say about the conference, “This year we had a record number of abstracts. Over 5,300 abstracts were submitted to the meeting. That represents actually the most abstracts ever submitted and I think represents the importance of the ASCO annual meeting in the eyes of the cancer community.”

The buzz about ASCO 2013 just keeps growing. Experts speaking in advance of the conference claim that attendees will see research that “embodies a new era of precision medicine”. Precision medicine allows the treatment for cancer to focus more specifically on patient and tumor genetics. In the past, a cancer tumor’s location largely determined the mode of treatment. But precision medicine has afforded researchers with a more progressive understanding of cancer, allowing for safer, more highly targeted treatments.

So what does all of this really mean?

It means that the biggest buzz coming from the ASCO camp right now involves new breakthroughs in immunotherapy. For decades, researchers and physicians have theorized that the immune system has an effect on certain cancers. In fact, New York surgeon, William Coley, MD, reported that suffering a post-surgical infection seemed to help some cancer patients – and this was in the late 1800s, well before researchers understood the immune system with any true clarity.

Melanoma represents the sixth most common cancer in the US and the number of diagnosed melanomas is increasing each year. Presentations and educational content on new immunotherapeutics for treating melanoma will be seen at this year’s conference. These therapies give hope to patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

PD-1 and PD-L1 immunotherapies are causing quite the buzz at ASCO 2013. This follows the success of Bristol-Meyers Squibb’s PD-1 agent presented at ASCO 2012. The therapeutic agent now has a generic name: nivolumab. Researchers are studying its efficacy in combination with Yervoy’s ipilimumab in treating metastatic melanoma.

Watch a video from a Pharma Strategy Blog writer about BMS’s PD-1 agent.

Not surprisingly, other pharmaceutical companies have joined the fray with Roche studying their own PD-L1 antibody, currently known as MPDL3280A and Merck presenting lambrolizumab. As research in this area progresses, the excitement grows surrounding this subfield of oncology. Even with the many recent discoveries and ongoing studies, there’s still quite a bit to learn regarding which cancers patients will benefit most from these treatments and the duration of any positive response.

There are so many great topics to explore; it’s difficult to choose which presentations to put on your “must attend” ASCO schedule. Take advantage of the free ASCO 2013 iPlanner and customize your conference schedule according to the topics that interest you the most.

You won’t want to miss the extremely popular Plenary Session taking place on Sunday, June 2^nd. It’s sure to be jam-packed, so plan to get there early. The Plenary Session highlights the scientific research deemed to have the highest merit and the greatest impact on clinical oncology and practice. This year’s Plenary Session will include five practice-changing abstract presentations on these topics:

• Central nervous system tumors
• Cervical cancer
• Gynecological cancer
• Thyroid cancer
• Breast cancer

After the main Plenary Session, you may want to join the post plenary discussions. “One of the purposes of the post plenary sessions is to have a smaller, focused discussion group after the abstract,” explains Yee. He goes on to explain that the main Plenary Session itself is not a place for detailed discussions of findings. The post plenary sessions provide a more interactive environment where attendees can discuss findings in detail with presenters and investigators. Last year was the first year ASCO featured post plenary discussion sessions and they were very popular. Attendees liked having the ability to break out into the small sessions that focused on the abstracts they found most compelling.

As this year’s ASCO 2013 Annual Meeting gets underway, we’ll share more insights and highlights from the most ground-breaking sessions. Learn about which topics garnered the most buzz and which incited controversy and why. We’ll discuss the impact of the sequester on cancer patients with some insider quotes and feedback. If you’re on Twitter, make sure to follow along with all the ASCO buzz and get the news by following and using hashtag #ASCO13.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and topics of interest with us in the comment section below.