ASCO 2026¶

62nd ASCO Annual Meeting — McCormick Place, Chicago, IL · May 29 – Jun 2, 2026. ~40,000 attendees, the largest oncology meeting of the year.

Status: Built post-meeting (meeting ran May 29 – Jun 2, 2026; Plenary May 31). 46 trial dossiers with verified results + 5 day digests + cross-cutting themes, reconciled against ASCO press releases, company releases, simultaneous journal publications (NEJM / Annals of Oncology / Lancet), and trade-press recaps as embargoes lifted. Start at the trials index or the day digests. A handful of readouts (revumenib post-HSCT, KN026-004, persevERA, JSKN016) were still partly embargoed or undisclosed at writing and are flagged inline.

Why this is in the vault¶

ASCO is the clinical-translation counterpart to AACR 2026. Same investigators, one phase later: where AACR shows the biology and the early-phase signal, ASCO shows whether it works in patients at randomized phase 3 scale. Strong overlap with AACR's clinical-trials axis — multiple plenary trials at ASCO 2026 (PROTEUS, LIBRETTO-432, HARMONi-6, Rasolute-302) have AACR 2025/2026 mechanism-of-action sessions backing them.

Format note (and the design decision behind this vault): ASCO is clinical, not tools-focused. The per-tool template that loads the EuroBioC2025 / GBCC2025 / ISMB 2026 vaults does not fit here — there are no Bioconductor packages debuting on the Plenary stage. The primary artifact for ASCO 2026 is the per-trial / per-readout entry. See trials/index.md for the schema.

The closest sibling vault in shape is JPM 2026 — also non-tools, also public-coverage-driven (no slide decks public for many sessions), also synthesis-by-day. The ASCO vault borrows JPM's "themes + day-by-day digest" pattern, but adds a per-trial detail page that JPM doesn't need (JPM doesn't have randomized phase 3 readouts).

What we have / will have to work with¶

Source	Coverage	Notes
ASCO Meeting Library	abstract full-text (regular) post-May 21; LBA full-text on day of presentation	asco.org/abstracts — primary source for the per-trial pages
ASCO 2026 Program page	session grid, Plenary slate, Discussant assignments	asco.org/annual-meeting/program — Plenary is Sun May 31
ASCO Daily News	first-pass post-session recaps, official ASCO editorial	dailynews.ascopubs.org
The ASCO Post	weekly recap issues June – August 2026	ascopost.com
OncLive / Targeted Oncology / CancerNetwork	discussant-level depth, "expert reaction" video stand-ups	onclive.com, targetedonc.com, cancernetwork.com
Evaluate / ApexOnco / BioPharma Dive / Endpoints / STAT	analyst framing, sponsor stock reactions, M&A read-through	sub-required for some; STAT runs a real-time blog
Company press releases	toplines (often pre-embargo), full presentation decks (post-presentation)	wire-service syndication via PRNewswire, BusinessWire
Plenary livestream + replay	full talk video + discussant	ASCO Virtual; replay typically free for ~3 months post-meeting
Social	#ASCO26 on X / Bluesky	useful for real-time room reactions; not primary

The ASCO Meeting Library is the load-bearing primary source — every accepted abstract has a permalink with title, authors, affiliations, methods, results, and conclusions. Per-trial pages should cite the abstract DOI / permalink, not the company press release.

Program shape¶

ASCO 2026 runs Friday May 29 (Education Day) through Tuesday June 2 (closing), five days, McCormick Place West / South. The structure:

Plenary Session — Sunday May 31 (the practice-changing slot). Five clinical-science abstracts: LBA1 PROTEUS (Erleada/apalutamide, prostate, perioperative), LBA2 SARC041 (abemaciclib, dedifferentiated liposarcoma), LBA3 LIBRETTO-432 (selpercatinib, adjuvant RET+ NSCLC), LBA4 HARMONi-6 (ivonescimab, 1L squamous NSCLC, China-only), LBA5 RASolute 302 (daraxonrasib, 2L pancreatic PDAC, RAS). The clinical-science Plenary was five LBAs (no sixth materialized); see each trial page for the named discussant.
Opening Session (Sat May 30) — Presidential Address + Karnofsky Award lecture.
23 Oral Abstract Sessions + 25 Rapid Oral + 13 Clinical Science Symposia — ~450 oral abstract presentations.
>7,000 abstracts total (orals + posters + online-only publications).
Tracks dominating the corpus: GI (CRC, pancreatic, gastric), GU (prostate, RCC, bladder), Lung (NSCLC, SCLC), Breast (HR+/HER2-, TNBC, HER2+), Heme (DLBCL, MM, AML), Melanoma, GYN, Sarcoma, Symptoms/Survivorship. Cross-cutting: ADCs, bispecifics, radioligands, RAS-class inhibitors, perioperative IO.
Press program (separate, embargoed media briefings) Fri-Tue mornings; ASCO Daily News and STAT have AM newsletters during the meeting.

Organization¶

conferences/asco-2026/
├── index.md             # this page
├── program-notes.md     # pre-meeting prep: tracks, plenary preview, expected LBAs, discussant watch list, key dates
├── trials/              # PRIMARY artifact — one entry per trial / readout
│   └── index.md         # template + master trial index table
├── themes.md            # cross-day synthesis (deferred until post-meeting)
└── digest/              # day-by-day recap (deferred until post-meeting)
    ├── day-1-friday.md      # May 29 — Education Day, first LBAs (incl. LBA8500 WU-KONG28)
    ├── day-2-saturday.md    # May 30 — Opening, Presidential, first oral sessions, frontMIND
    ├── day-3-sunday.md      # May 31 — PLENARY (LBA1–LBA5); the load-bearing day
    ├── day-4-monday.md      # Jun 1 — ALCHEMIST, OptimUM-02 melanoma (LBA9503), more orals
    └── day-5-tuesday.md     # Jun 2 — closing orals, TRIPLEX SCLC

The trials/ directory is load-bearing. Each trial gets one Markdown file. Template at trials/index.md. Expected ~50–80 entries spanning the Plenary slate, top-polled LBAs, and the major track headliners.

What's different from AACR 2026¶

No biology, no posters-on-AI-platforms. Pure clinical readouts. The AACR template (mechanism + assay + scRNA-seq cohort + xenograft + clinical-translation appendix) does not apply.
Public coverage is the load-bearing source, not full transcripts. Like JPM, much of what happens in the room only reaches us via trade-press editorial. Unlike JPM, every claim is backed by an embargoed peer-curated abstract — the Meeting Library makes ASCO the most-citable non-journal venue in oncology.
Embargo discipline matters. Anything written pre-embargo about a regular abstract is reconstructed from titles + company toplines + analyst preview pieces. Plenary LBAs only release the morning of presentation. Flag everything pre-embargo as *expected, subject to embargo* and update post-presentation.
Drug names are the index, not tool names. Cross-linking goes through INN / brand / mechanism (e.g., "PD-1×VEGF bispecific" links HARMONi-6 ↔ Summit ivonescimab JPM 2026 entry ↔ AbbVie RC148 deal ↔ BMS pumitamig).

Cross-vault links¶

AACR 2026 — the mechanism / biomarker / discovery side of the same investigator network. Many ASCO 2026 plenary trials have AACR 2025 or 2026 mechanism sessions (e.g., RAS-inhibitor preclinical at AACR → Rasolute-302 at ASCO Plenary).
JPM 2026 — the financing / dealmaking layer. Multiple ASCO 2026 trial sponsors were on the JPM stage in January (Lilly Retevmo / Verzenio, Pfizer Padcev, Summit/Akeso ivonescimab licensing, Revolution Medicines daraxonrasib).
Conferences timeline — ASCO's position in the year's oncology cycle (AACR Apr → ASCO May/Jun → ESMO Oct → ASH Dec → JPM Jan).

Next step¶

Now (pre-meeting, May 11–21): populate program-notes.md with the expected-LBA shortlist (~25 trials), plenary slate, and discussant watch list as named. Pre-build trial stubs for the top 10 — Plenary LBAs + frontMIND + OptimUM-02 + ALCHEMIST + KEYNOTE-B15.
Embargo lift (May 21, 5pm ET): drop regular-abstract full-text into trial pages. ~7,000 abstracts go public at once — batch the priority shortlist first.
Live meeting (May 29 – Jun 2): real-time capture per day-digest. Plenary day (May 31) is the high-priority slot — LBAs 1–5 reveal in a single 3-hour session.
Post-meeting (Jun 3 – Jun 30): finalize themes.md. Expected threads: RAS-class drugs become real (daraxonrasib + KRAS-G12D early-phase), perioperative IO expansion (KEYNOTE-B15, ALCHEMIST, PROTEUS), PD-1×VEGF bispecific class read-through (HARMONi-6 OS, AbbVie RC148 echo), ADC durability (ASCENT-04 PFS2), endocrine-backbone resistance (persevERA miss, SERENA-6 PFS2).