Friday 9th and Saturday 10th October, 2020
Report written by Dr. Patrick Hayden, Secretary CMWP, Department of Hematology, St. James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
The first virtual, web-based CMWP scientific meeting took place on Friday, 9th October, 2020. Linda Koster in the Leiden Office had send around a GoToMeeting link earlier in the week and the meeting kicked off at 10am. CMWP chairs from the six subcommittees (MDS, MPN, Plasma Cell Diseases, CML, CLL, and Practice Harmonisation and Guidelines) chose key current studies to discuss with colleagues. We were fortunate to be joined by transplant fellows presenting proposals for new studies in MPN, myeloma and CML. The Working Party continues to focus on Data Quality Initiatives in diseases such as CML and the data office plays a vital role in advancing these projects. Johannes Schetelig updated us all on Registry developments and highlighted the work being done to ensure the safe migration of PROMISe to a new database platform.
The EBMT Education & Events Department organised the educational meeting on Saturday, 10th October and Anna Bea in their office ensured that it all worked seamlessly. A number of reminder emails had been sent to EBMT members and registration for the educational session on the website was straightforward. Anna ensured that the speakers were facilitated in scheduling the recording of their talks with the virtual platform providers. I had recorded my update on the Practice Harmonisation and Guidelines subcommittee over the previous weekend and was brought through the process by a very patient software expert in Montreal!
Following an introduction by working party chair, Ibrahim Yakoub-Agha (Lille), Yves Chalandon (Geneva) chaired the session on plasma cell disorders in which Stefan Schoenland (Heidelberg) gave a comprehensive update on advances in the treatment of systemic AL amyloidosis. After a short break, Tomas Czerw (Gliwice) chaired the myelofibrosis session. Juan-Carlos Hernández-Boluda (Valencia) provided a case-based masterclass on the use of risk scores in patients undergoing allo-HCT for myelofibrosis. Donal McLornan (London) then gave a wide-ranging overview of relapse and graft failure following allo-SCT in myelofibrosis. This talk highlighted how many of the key studies in this field have emerged from our working party. Donal finished with some advance details of the forthcoming CMWP recommendations on disease assessment and monitoring in myelofibrosis and also referred to parallel guidelines on operational definitions of relapse and graft failure in myelofibrosis. In the final session on myelodysplastic syndromes chaired by Marie Robin (Paris), Francesco Onida (Milan) gave a masterful overview of the management of patients with CMML with a particular focus on how best to select patients for allogeneic transplantation. Each of these three sections were followed by Questions-and-Answer sessions during which the speakers were able to speak at more length on key clinical questions raised by attendees.
In summary, this first entirely virtual CMWP scientific and educational meeting was a great success. All of us in the CMWP would like to thank both our Leiden office colleagues and the EBMT Education & Events Department for having helped the whole process flow so smoothly. It's a measure of how much we've all learned about remote working since March that the two-day event took place without any IT glitches or communication difficulties. We look forward to our next meeting in January and committed to having the Autumn 2021 meeting in person in Milan.
