56th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting
December 6-9, 2014
San Francisco, CA, USA
As every year, world’s top research and medicine have met at this gigantic event. Over 26 or perhaps 27 thousand people have met and shared their ideas and opinions. The number of hematologists did not quite dissolve within the people and “normal” visitors of this lovely less-than-a-million city. Hematologists were distinguishable by time of occurrence at streets combined with the direction of locomotion, by poster tubes in the hands of some, by badges that failed to be taken off, by clustering with other hematologists, or by an admiration of cable cars with scientific enthusiasm. At lecture and poster halls, topics were dominated by next-generation approaches to previous-generations questions both in malignant and non-malignant hematology, by targeting any molecule you can think of genetically, immunologically or biochemically, and less frequently we could also listen to colleagues from neighboring disciplines. Our CLIP group has presented seven posters; we had a chance to spread their contents to others and to get a lot of inspiring feedback. Many people ask: “Is it still worth coming to such huge meetings?” Well, truth is that the amount of people was just about maximum possible, at least in the current setting of ASH. However, I still like journeys to the hematologic Mekkahs. You can hear the leading topics or your fine subspecialty. Nice thing about ASH is also the stress put on posters – they are indeed full scientific communications, rather than second league messages hiding in the corner. We can conclude that in San Francisco, you can be sure to meet some gentle people there; at least I did.
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