Has ASCO peaked?

We’re just weeks away from the biggest annual gathering of oncologists and, in a departure from years past, there’s a vacuum where the buzz is supposed to be.

The meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists has for years been the staging ground for practice-changing data on new drugs, paradigm-shifting scientific presentations, and market-moving news for biotech. But this year’s iteration, which begins May 31 in Chicago, hasn’t generated nearly the anticipation ASCO usually brings.

That could be because the hype cycle in cancer treatment is in a bit of a trough.

The early days of immuno-oncology, when drugs like Keytruda and Opdivo were doing unprecedented things, led to a surge of interest in a newfangled space. That led to a virtually unquantifiable number of combination studies whose promising early results made ASCO a must-attend event. But then a string of failed trials took some of the luster off the next generation of therapies, and biotech seems to have adopted a show-me mind-set when it comes to purported breakthroughs at the conference.

ASCO 2019's test will come later today, when we'll see abstracts from the meeting's scheduled presentations.