Colleagues and Friends,

It’s hard to believe, but another change in seasons has arrived. For those like me in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the season of autumn – a time for warm sweaters and possibly extra cups of warm tea. It’s nature’s time to prepare itself for renewal and growth to come. For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the season of spring to celebrate that renewal and growth. No matter where we are, for all of us in the ASTCT community, it’s time to start thinking about renewal, for our membership and our commitment to the ASTCT community in 2022.

As you reflect on the value of your membership, I hope you consider all the ways that ASTCT has advanced in the last few years. We’ve expanded the purpose and focus of our society to be about cellular therapy and everything that it represents, including the cutting-edge science and medicine our community advances every day. By remaining a part of the ASTCT community, you are directly contributing to these advancements.

Our upcoming AcCELLerate Forum is a great example of this. Held in conjunction with the CIBMTR^® and the National Marrow Donor Program^®(NMDP)/Be The Match^®, this forum is all about creating a sustainable ecosystem of cell and gene therapy. We hope to see many of you attending this virtual workshop to help bridge the gap among stakeholders, and identify ongoing needs and opportunities in the field for advocacy, measurement of value and impact, and sustainability.

Speaking of events, registration for Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR opens next month. This is our annual opportunity to come together as a community and showcase our latest scientific updates, new technologies, and innovative products to help advance cellular therapy and save and improve the lives of patients with blood-related disorders. I hope to see many of you there (safely and in-person!) in February.

Finally, I’ll add another plug for more submissions to our Transplantation and Cellular Therapy journal on the topic of cellular therapy. We all benefit so much from learning about the research, guidelines and opinions of our amazing community. I hope you’ll consider submitting an abstract.

Keep an eye out for more information coming soon on renewals, and please continue spreading the word about how valuable your ASTCT membership can be. We have more new benefits on the way – like our billing guide for CAR T treatments – and will continue to assess and grow our member value.

Our association is only as strong as our community – and judging by all the things ASTCT has accomplished this year, we have one strong community.

Stella Davies, MBBS, PhD

Tags: astct, CIBMTR, President, journal, Tandem, message, october, AcCELLerate Forum, Fall, NMDP, Be The Match