Finding Meaning in the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition

I start with a heartfelt thank you to the IMF for bringing the patients to science so we can bring the science to the patients!

When I first attended American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition in 2024 with the IMF it was the first time in my myeloma journey that I allowed hope to creep in. 

I was two years into my diagnosis, having presented with plasma cell leukemia (PCL), a very aggressive form of multiple myeloma in which plasma cells circulate in the bloodstream. The trauma of that diagnosis, combined with a rocky start to treatment, kept hope firmly at bay. I wanted to hope, but instead I chose to be cautiously . . . very cautiously . . .  optimistic.

Even with everything I had learned in the years leading up to ASH, hope continued to elude me. It wasn’t until I attended the multiple lectures at ASH, read countless abstracts, and sat in on the International Myeloma Working Group breakfast that something finally shifted. In those moments, I truly understood what my specialist told me the very first day we met:

“The longer I keep you alive, the longer I can keep you alive.”

At ASH, I saw that statement come to life.

I was fortunate enough to attend ASH again in 2025, and that feeling wasn’t just repeated, it was solidified!

I had originally planned to write a blog covering everything I learned at ASH, but since then there have been numerous post-ASH presentations that have thoroughly captured the highlights. So instead of trying to recap it all, I want to offer a brief synopsis and then focus on why I now carry real hope.

My 2025 ASH Synopsis

Earlier, stronger immune therapy is moving from what was the last resort to an earlier strategy. CARTITUDE-4 and MajesTEC-3 are good examples of this.

Depth of response and how that effects progression free survival was continuing to emerge as an important endpoint. This can be seen with the focus on MRD negativity and deep, durable responses. IMMUNOPLANT study is a good illustration of this.

There was also important work looking at consolidation and maintenance strategies. The STEM trial asked an important question: if CAR-T gets you into a deep remission, can a targeted consolidation help keep you there longer? And can a bispecific antibody be used to do that?

Bispecific antibodies and their use in earlier lines was a big topic. These off-the-shelf treatments are powerful and showing remarkable efficacy as seen in MajesTEC-3 and TecLille.

A focus on safety with CAR-T and neurotoxicity and other serious side effects can be seen in an abstract looking at modifiable risk factors for these rare but serious side effects. If they can predict who is at risk earlier maybe they can intervene earlier. And then there’s the iMMagine trial where early results are showing Anito-cel to have deep and durable responses with a very good safety profile.

And lastly the future is here with 3 patients being treated with an in vivo (inside the body) CAR-T in the inMMyCAR study. KLN-1010 is a new “in vivo” CAR-T therapy that creates CAR-T cells inside the body without chemo or cell collection, and early results in the first patients show deep MRD-negative responses with manageable side effects. This one’s in the very early stages but I’m very excited to learn more about it.

That’s my quick synopsis. So back to the focus on why I have hope.

Coming off ASH, it isn’t just that I know more about new treatments coming down the line. I now see the multiple avenues myeloma research is taking. I listened to highly scientific abstracts and learned more about proteins, enzymes, and cellular mechanisms, not just for developing new treatments, but for making existing ones more effective and less toxic. It’s not just about treating the biological aspects of myeloma, but the human ones, too!

For patients, this matters. It means progress isn’t a single breakthrough waiting somewhere in the distance, it’s happening in parallel, on many fronts, right now. It’s happening in earlier lines of therapy, in gentler approaches, in smarter combinations, and in strategies designed for durability and quality of life, not just survival curves.

The message from ASH for me this year is not that myeloma is curable (yet), but that hope is real, progress is steady, and time is increasingly on our side! 

Be well,
~Terry Glassman