Just exactly how prestigious is it to be selected for an Oral Presentation at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO)?
Very prestigious.
Way, way prestigious.
One statistic clearly makes the point: this year out of over 7000 submitted abstracts only around 250 (~3%) were selected for an oral presentation.
These are extremely long odds, and many in academia or the pharmaceutical industry wait their whole careers for a chance, which maybe never comes, to shine on oncology’s biggest, and brightest stage.
And such a big stage it is given the over 40,000 attendees that descend on Chicago (ChicASCO?) where the conference is held every year.
This makes ASCO the largest cancer conference by a mile, a Magnificent Mile, to be precise, the upscale section of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.
Basically, an ASCO oral presentation is to an oncologist what a Tony award is to a Broadway actor.
We use that comparison advisedly since two of the key names on the submitted abstract that the ASCO committee selected for an oral presentation are Tony: Dr. Tony P. Conley, sarcoma specialist from the MD Anderson Cancer Center and lead investigator on the AdAPT-001 Phase 2 clinical trial and Dr. Tony R. Reid, CEO of EpicentRx, and inventor of AdAPT-001.
However, behind every successful drug stands a great team – in this case, great teams, plural, from EpicentRx, MD Anderson, and Cleveland Clinic – and great patients who make clinical research not only possible but worthwhile.
The two Tonys, Tony Conley and Tony Reid, are always the first ones to acknowledge that.
Which makes us all Team Tony.