A Word from President Krishna Komanduri, MD
Dear colleagues,
I hope this finds you and your families doing well. In Miami, the lovely dry air of spring has given way to the humid breezes of summer, with spectacular but brief thunderstorms again punctuating our afternoons. The poinciana and jacaranda trees have exploded in orange and purple, respectively, and the avocados and mangoes in local yards are getting larger on their way to their June and July harvests. I know that for some of you, May was less kind, with snowflakes making recent fleeting but unwelcome appearances in Omaha, Denver and Minneapolis.
This was another busy month of travel for me on behalf of the ASBMT. I had the pleasure to travel to London last month to attend the meeting of our partner, the ISCT. One of the delights of that meeting was joining Cath Bollard (former ASBMT board member and current ISCT President) to announce the fellows selected to attend our 2nd ASBMT-ISCT Cell Therapy Training Course. It was a sincere pleasure to announce the winners of the very competitive selection, and I look forward to joining Cath (and our CTTC co-chairs, John Barrett and Dave DiGiusto) to meet the winners in Seattle in October.
The joy felt in London gave way to sadness later in the month, as the ASBMT lost one of its exceptional educators. Dr. H. “Jean” Khoury, a longstanding faculty member of our other signature academy, the annual Clinical Research Training Course. While more complete remembrances of Dr. Khoury will be written by his close colleagues in e-News and in BBMT, I want to express my condolences to his family and many friends in the ASBMT. While of little consolation to those who are feeling the pain of his loss, there will be a special recognition of Jean’s contribution to the CRTC that will be announced by the ASBMT at a later date.
In happier matters, I discussed in last month’s column that the ASBMT has been considering how it can be most effective in the evolving landscape of cellular immunotherapy. As noted there, the ASBMT executive leadership, and near uniform majority of those we polled, felt it important that the Society tackle the broad challenges of this treatment modality from science to clinical practice and the regulatory and financial frameworks that will be needed to ensure its success.
Related to these latter issues, the ASBMT held a meeting entitled “Value Assessment in Engineered T Cell Therapies” in Boston in late May. Following requests by commercial partners and other stakeholders, we convened a group of more than 90 individuals consisting of ASBMT leaders, over a dozen biotech and pharma partners developing cellular immunotherapies and a diverse group of individuals including representatives of the payer community and our partner organizations (e.g., CIBMTR, FACT, Be the Match, ISCT and others). While there were numerous aspects of immunotherapy that we could have discussed, we focused our meeting on how we define the value of emerging engineered T cell therapies. In my introduction, I emphasized that the ASBMT hopes that these therapies will expand widely and with utmost safety and noted that the availability of a broad range of products will drive down costs and ensure the evolution of increasingly effective therapies for our patients.
I don’t want to oversimplify the complex discussions of the day, and will note here that summaries of our meeting will be published by the ASBMT Value and Health Economics Special Interest Group (SIG). However, there was clear consensus that the lessons learned by the HCT community to date will also be instructive as cellular immunotherapies reach the commercial marketplace. Specifically, many individuals from the academic and payer communities expressed the viewpoint that the HCT framework of data transparency in registries and self-regulation had served our patients well and that it was logical for analogous processes to support non-transplant T cell therapies. There was clear respect for the ASBMT’s role in contributing to the scientific and clinical evolution of HCT and its potential role as an honest broker in the cellular immunotherapy space.
While there were no a priori expectations for how we will proceed, I remain confident that the ASBMT, including its committees and SIGs, will help to light the way ahead for the broader hematology/oncology community. It was clear that the leadership of our nascent Value and Health Economics SIG will embrace the challenge of defining the financial models that will be needed and provide guidance regarding formal steps the Society may consider moving forward. Given the broad issues that will need to be addressed, I expect additional actions to be considered by several of our committees and I look forward to hearing from many of you as we consider how the ASBMT leadership can support these activities. This past month, I began a regular quarterly call with our SIG leaders and cellular therapies will be one of the topics for our next discussion.
While celebrating the success of this forum, I want to thank our members and partners whose contributions were critical and to express my gratitude to the ASBMT staff, who worked under a tight schedule to choreograph the day. Special thanks are needed for our two newest members, Stephanie Farnia (Director of Health Policy and Strategic Relations) and Angie Dahl (Director of Development) without whom this meeting simply would not have been possible.
While the coming months will be busy for me and for the ASBMT, I’m also looking forward to the release of our four children from school and to a nice family vacation planned for June. I hope that many of you will also get a bit of a break. As always, I look forward to your feedback and to hearing how I and your other ASBMT leaders can facilitate your success in the months ahead.
All the best,
Krishna
Read the entire June 2017 ASBMT eNews here.