Cellular therapy continues to be a growing topic of interest within the Nursing Track and will be in the spotlight, along with pediatric fertility and social issues across the lifespan, at the 2025 Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT® and CIBMTR®, according to track planner Lenise Taylor, RN, MN, AOCNS. This year’s nursing sessions will be held Feb. 14-15 following the Nursing Track Reception on Feb. 13, from 3:30-5 p.m. in the Rooftop Garden of the Hawaiʻi Convention Center. 

Cellular therapy delivery will be the focus of one of the formal sessions and a roundtable discussion during the two-day track, including Hot Topics in Transplant and Cellular Therapy: Nursing Roundtables at 10:15 a.m. and Cellular Therapy Delivery: Does the Size of the Organization Matter at 2 p.m., both on Feb. 15.

The nursing program will also include annual updates on pharmacology and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), as well as an additional roundtable activity to discuss nursing roles. Pharmacology Updates and Clinical Pearls in Transplant and Cellular Therapy begins at 8:30 a.m. on Feb. 14.  What’s New in Graft vs Host Disease? begins at 8:45 a.m. on Feb. 15.

“We’ve included more information and more approaches to various topics so the sessions are applicable to multiple settings, not just the large academic centers that have always been the transplant centers,” Taylor explained. “Especially in the situation of cellular therapy, where we’re seeing more smaller centers come into play, we know that the operational challenges are different from a large academic setting to a smaller community setting, so any time we talk about any of these things, we’re trying to include all of those aspects so that there might be something that each person who’s attending can take back to their organization.”

During the roundtable sessions, conversation will be opened up by a facilitator, but attendees are encouraged to contribute as much as they want. Each session will feature several tables, and attendees will rotate to a new table every 25 minutes to hear input from a diverse cross section of their peers. In addition to the Feb. 15 roundtable mentioned above, Lunch and Networking Roundtables: Nursing Roles and Practice Locations will take place starting at noon on Feb. 14.

Both roundtable sessions are prime opportunities for networking, Taylor said.

“The ability to sit down with nurses who know what you do and do it every single day and have a conversation and not have to translate the lingo to somebody else is so important,” she said. “You form a community with the people in this track, and then you have somebody to reach out to when something new is happening in your organization.”

Fertility Preservation in the Pediatric Population, featured in a session beginning at 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 14, is a new topic in the Nursing Track agenda.

“We have a community discussion board where people are talking a lot about fertility preservation, so we felt like this would be a really good topic to further that dialogue,” Taylor explained.

Nursing Track planners have collaborated with the Social Work Special Interest Group to develop another session inspired by ongoing conversations within the nursing community. At 3:15 p.m. on Feb. 14, Patient and Family Dynamics: A Case Study Approach to Difficult Situations will address how to resolve difficult situations and how nurses can be resilient in the face of these trying scenarios.

“We increasingly hear from our colleagues about how they’ve been having difficulty with caregivers or training caregivers because the caregivers can’t come into the hospital,” Taylor said. “There’s financial difficulty — more and more financial difficulties — and so we want to focus on the impact that has on nurses’ resiliency if they are constantly being faced with these difficult situations and they don’t know how to address the patient or the family. We’re looking to not only talk about the situations but to hopefully give the nurse some tools that they can take back to their work.”

While many of the sessions in the Nursing Track address topics from a scientific perspective, Taylor said it was beneficial to address the operational issues nurses face in a transplant center too.

“We want to know how the science applies to the work that we do on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “The scientific piece is really important, but there’s more to caring for the patient than the science and the advances we’re making,” she said. “It’s also about the day-to-day operations and how those operations impact nurses. Other tracks may be talking about things from a regulatory standpoint or from a billing perspective or bringing a new drug into your organization. But we need to be looking at how we can operationalize that and what the impact to the nursing staffing is, what the impact of that patient is like.”

Nursing Track Agenda

The most up-to-date Nursing Track agenda and the full 2025 Tandem Meetings program are available on the online meeting platform. All Nursing Track sessions take place in Room 316 ABC of the Hawaiʻi Convention Center unless noted otherwise. Formal sessions will be available for on-demand viewing for registered attendees following the live presentations.

Thursday, Feb. 13

• 3:30-5 p.m. – Nursing Track Reception, Rooftop Garden

Friday, Feb. 14

• 8-8:30 a.m. – Welcome and Awards
• 8:30-9:30 a.m. – Pharmacology Updates and Clinical Pearls in Transplant and Cellular Therapy
• 9:30-10:15 a.m. – Nursing SIG & ASTCT Practice Guidelines Updates
• 10:15-10:30 a.m. – Morning Break, Exhibit Hall 2
• 10:30-11:15 a.m. – Nursing Best Abstracts
• 11:15 a.m.-noon – Infection Prevention: To Glove or Not to Glove
• Noon-1:15 p.m. – Lunch and Networking Roundtables: Nursing Roles and Practice Locations
• 1:15-2:15 p.m. – Fertility Preservation in the Pediatric Population
• 2:15-2:45 p.m. – Oral Abstracts: Enhancing Patient Care
• 2:45-3:15 p.m. – Afternoon Break, Level 3 Concourse
• 3:15-4:30 p.m. – Patient and Family Dynamics: A Case Study Approach to Difficult Situations
• 4:30-5 p.m. – Oral Abstracts: Preventing Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections

Saturday, Feb. 15

• 8-9 a.m. – Oral Abstracts: Program Devlopment
• 8:45-9:45 a.m. – What’s New in Graft vs Host Disease?
• 9:45- 10:15 a.m. – Morning Break
• 10:15-11:45 a.m. – Hot Topics in Transplant and Cellular Therapy: Nursing Roundtables
• 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. – Lunch, Exhibit Hall 2
• 1-2 p.m. – Donor Selection: Translating Research into Practice
• 2-3 p.m. – Cellular Therapy Delivery: Does the Size of the Organization Matter
• 3-3:15 p.m.– Afternoon Break, Level 3 Concourse
• 3:15-4:30 p.m. – AL and Non AL Amyloidosis: What’s Up with Those Beta Pleated Sheets?
• 4:30-6 p.m. – Nursing Track Debrief Meeting