ASH Meeting on Hematologic Malignancies 2026

Clinical associate professor in the Division of Hematology at Stanford. Program director for the Stanford Hematology Fellowship and associate chair of diversity and inclusion for the Department of Medicine.

Hematologist specializing in disorders of thrombosis and hemostasis. Director of the Women’s Thrombosis and Hemostasis program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor of medicine and senior advisor to the president of Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute. Vice President of ASH.

Senior advisor at the David Geffen School of Medicine for Research and Innovation. Former director of UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Assistant professor focused on identifying molecular mechanisms of megakaryocyte development and platelet production.

Professor at UNC Chapel Hill. Chairs the ASH Committee on Scientific Affairs and directs the T32 translational medicine training program.

Immunotherapies have transformed the treatment landscape for several malignant hematologic diseases and are emerging as promising options for non-malignant hematologic diseases. Dr. Bollard will discuss T cell Therapies for Patients with Blood Disorders. Cell therapy performs an ever-increasing role to prevent and treat relapse in patients with blood cancers. Outside of T-cell engineering using chimeric antigen receptors and artificial T-cell receptors, T-cell therapies (especially in the BMT setting) have utilized ex vivo expanded antigen-specific T-cells targeting viral antigens and non-viral tumor-associated antigens. The application of antigen-specific T cell therapeutics post BMT is evidenced by donor lymphocyte infusion strategies, selective depletion, and ex vivo expansion of antigen-specific T cells. In this presentation the evolving history of T cell therapies for blood cancers with a specific focus predominantly on lymphomas will be discussed. An overview how antigen-specific T-cell therapy targeting virus and/or tumor associated antigens may contribute to enhanced overall survival especially in the BMT setting and how such approaches have broadening applicability in the field will be reviewed. In addition, the history and development of CD19 CAR T cells will be reviewed from the initial approval in the pediatric setting to the approvals in the NHL setting and comparing the evolving real-world data in the NHL setting to the results observed in the pivotal trials.

Dr. Catherine Wu will discuss how multiple lines of evidence have convincingly demonstrated tumor neoantigens as an important class of immunogenic tumor antigens and have motivated the development of personalized cancer neoantigen targeting approaches. Neoantigens arise from amino acid changes encoded by somatic mutations in the tumor cell and have the potential to bind to and be presented by personal human leukocyte antigen molecules. As a field, we have now successfully moved beyond the first wave proof-of-concept studies that have demonstrated the safety, feasibility, and high immunogenicity of these personalized vaccines. An imperative now is to address the challenges of discovering and optimizing the selection of antigens to target, the delivery approach, and extending this promising approach to a broader array of cancer settings.

Dr. Ira Mellman will discuss our emerging understanding of how 'checkpoint inhibitors' work, and how this impacts the design and implementation new immunotherapeutic approaches in hematologic and solid tumors. Checkpoint inhibitors have transformed outcomes in several cancers. However deeper understanding of how they work is critical for developing the next generation of immune-based therapies and combinations.

Dr. Phillip Scheinberg will review the mechanism of action of antithymocyte globulin (ATG), including the different formulations. Despite the mechanism of action of these polyclonal sera not being fully understood, they have been quite successfully applied in marrow failure syndromes and the conditioning regimens in transplantation, both bone marrow and solid organs. There are two main commercially available formulations, horse and rabbit ATG, which differ in their potency and effects on the immune system. Their introduction as therapy started decades ago, and they remain one of the few non-chemotherapeutic lymphocytotoxic agents. Their applications in different disease scenarios will be summarized.

Dr. Dean Lee will discuss the growth in interest and progress in adoptive transfer of NK cells over the past few years, particularly given their low risk of alloreactivity, and therefore potential as an off-the-shelf therapeutic. NK cells have been much more difficult to genetically modify than T cells, but several recent advances have solved this, making genetically engineered off-the-shelf products possible.

Dr. Aude Chapuis will discuss her lab’s work on target identification, generation of high-affinity TCRs, cell process methodologies to translate these constructs into effective products for patients, clinical trial development and execution, and sophisticated high dimensional immune-monitoring to maximize the information that can be derived from each treated patient. Based on challenges encountered and lessons learned from previous adoptive T cell therapy trials, her lab is focusing on strategies that include eliciting increased tumor expression of the targeted HLA/peptides for better T cell recognition, maximizing T cell activation/proliferation/survival by engaging TCR-tethered co-stimulatory signals in CD4 and CD8 T cells. Dr. Chapuis will discuss the most recent strategies geared towards favoring localization and countering dysfunction of adoptively transferred TCR transgenic cells in vivo.

Dr. Stacy Croteau will present on the use of the novel therapeutic approach of substitution therapy for hemophilia prophylaxis, namely bispecific antibody technology. Therapeutic development and clinical implications of both licensed and investigational therapies in this category will be discussed.