Hagop KantarjianLeukemia research and cancer drug policy

The Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO)

8 Mar 2017 · 3 min

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2:34

In this presentation, the speaker explains why the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) was founded: existing major societies either focus on solid tumors (ASCO) or devote much of their agenda to benign hematology (ASH), leaving a gap for specialists in hematologic malignancies. SOHO began as a meeting in Houston about a decade ago and was formally established as a society four years ago. It now hosts an annual five‑day conference each September‑October dedicated exclusively to advances in hematologic malignancies. The society’s core missions are: (1) to advance research on hematologic cancers; (2) to educate and attract trainees—fellows, students, residents—by offering free registration and airfare when they present research, fostering long‑term membership; and (3) to build an interconnected, multi‑institutional and multinational network that facilitates collaborative programs and provides a hub for visiting researchers from the U.S. and Europe.

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The Society of Hematologic Oncology, or SOHO, was created out of a need. The need was the following: the American Society of Clinical Oncology focused on solid tumors and paid little attention to the hematologic malignancies, and the American Society of Hematology is a very big meeting which where half of it is dedicated to benign hematology. So we thought that those 2 meetings do not fulfill the need of experts and researchers who want to dedicate their career to hematologic malignancies only. So we created the Society of Hematologic Oncology. It started as a meeting in Houston about 10 years ago. Then we established SOHO about 4 years ago. And now it's a very solid meeting, about 5 days. Every year around September, October, and it focuses essentially only on hematologic malignancies. What is new in hem malignancies? What we try to do is bring young people such as fellows and students and residents, and once they have put a bit of their research into the meeting, we can take on their stay for the meeting, free registration, even airfare tickets, and that allows them to become familiar with the society and continue to be members of SOHO in the future. The other 2 aims of the society is to create interconnected networks where researchers can work together on, for example, programs which are multi-institutional or multinational, and also serve as receptors for people who want to visit from different places in the United States and Europe. So I think SOHO has a very important mission, which is focusing on research in hematologic malignancies, an educational mission for the young people to attract their attention to the possibility of research in hematologic malignancies, and to allow students opportunities to visit the United States and to become familiar with the research And finally, it is a network for researchers in hematologic malignancies to be able to collaborate together.