ASH President Reflects Before Annual Meeting on Hematology
Robert Brodsky, MD, thinks back on his year as president of the American Society of Hematology and the latest advances in treating blood disorders.
https://www.webmd.com/cancer/cancer-in-context/video/brodsky-ash?src=soc_yt
— TRANSCRIPT —
JOHN WHYTE: Welcome, everyone. I’m Dr. John Whyte. I’m the chief medical officer at WebMD. Hematology is an area of medicine that’s really quite fascinating. It involves genetics, epigenetics, immunology, immunotherapy, infectious disease. And there has been quite a lot of advancement in the past year to treat hematologic conditions.
Joining me to discuss what the clinical landscape has looked like and is going to look like is Dr. Robert Brodsky. He’s the president of the American Society of Hematology. Dr. Brodsky, thanks for joining me.
ROBERT BRODSKY: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
JOHN WHYTE: It has been an exciting couple of years in the field of hematology. I wanted to get your thoughts. What have been the key highlights for you, especially over the past year while you’ve served as president?
ROBERT BRODSKY: Yeah, as you say, it’s a very exciting area for treating hematologic disorders and incredibly fast-paced. I mean, some of the areas that I would highlight the immunotherapies that you mentioned, areas of CAR T cells and bispecific antibodies are hugely exciting. Gene therapy is coming into fruition.
But at the same time, there’s a yin and a yang with all of these. I mean, we thought CAR T cells was going to be the end-all. And then the bispecifics come in. And they’re being challenged. And we don’t– certain diseases are going to be more bispecific. Others may be CAR T cell.
Gene therapy might be overshadowed by the enormous advance that’s come out in bone marrow transplant. We used to think that most patients with sickle cell disease didn’t have a donor. Now, everyone has a donor. So all of a sudden, bone marrow transplant comes back into play. And the gene therapy is not just have to be there, but they have to beat bone marrow transplant. Tough order.
JOHN WHYTE: Yeah. And it’s all about precision therapy and personalized medicine. But at the same time, you really have labeled off all these advances that have occurred and are occurring. How do doctors keep up?
I mentioned, you’re the president of American Society of Hematology. How do you continue to educate people about this? There’s national meetings, but at the same time, those occur only a couple of times a year. How do we educate folks to make sure that they’re up to date on the latest information?
ROBERT BRODSKY: Yeah. It’s getting harder and harder to stay up to date in a wide area. And I think one of the things that you’re seeing in hematology– when we were going through training, everyone said, hem/onc like peanut butter and jelly.
I don’t think you’re going to see that anymore. I mean, one of the things that ASH has done is start these hematology focused fellowship training programs, where people are just training in hematology, both benign and malignant or what we call classical hematology and malignant hematology. And focusing on that.
It’s very hard to stay up to date on everything in hematology and everything in oncology. And I don’t think the oncologists can do it anymore either. So I think there’s going to have to be some focus in there. And even within hematology, you see people focusing more on classical hematology versus malignant hematology.
ASH has played a big role in education. They are coming out with guidelines. They come out with webinars. ASH-SAP or self-assessment program has been a really big means for people to stay up to date on things. But as you say, it’s a challenge.
JOHN WHYTE: You mentioned hematology oncology. When we think about oncology, blood cancers– 10% of cancers, but someone’s diagnosed every 3 minutes. Someone dies every 9 minutes of a blood cancer. A lot of the discussion lately has been around community oncology, academic oncology. How do they keep up in terms of making sure that they’re giving the best therapies at the right time based on the tumor types?
ROBERT BRODSKY: Yeah, and I think you’re seeing some subspecialization there, even in the community practices for exactly the reasons you’re mentioning. And it’s very hard to stay current. We’re very fortunate in some of our academic medical centers. You have a lymphoma conference. And you have a myeloid disorders conference. And you have coag conference. And you can go to that.
Transcript in its entirety can be found by clicking here:
https://www.webmd.com/cancer/cancer-in-context/video/brodsky-ash?src=soc_yt