Medical-affairs spaces are usually much less showy than commercial booths. But this year’s ASCO featured an emphasis on medical platforms to drive specific messaging.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is the cancer community’s biggest stage for sharing potentially practice-altering updates in research, treatment and diagnostics.
According to some medical marketers who attended the five-day Chicago conference, though, the most memorable image wasn’t some oncologist’s slide visualizing a therapy's survival benefit, for instance, or an effect on tumor spread. It was an image of a booth in the #ASCO2025 exhibit hall – a vacant one.
“A very visible sign of the times we are in,” was how one attendee described the empty stall, which had been reserved for representatives from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
ASCO's plethora of clinical trial readouts in breast, colon and other cancers, along with M&A announcements and highlights of cutting-edge anti-cancer modalities, were – as usual – the main attractions.
But this was no ordinary year. Worries about sweeping cuts to federal funding for academic research, including some grants for cancer studies, loomed large in the minds of conference goers. Many people were wondering to what extent private industry could step in to fill that void, although companies are grappling with concerns of their own about the potential hit from tariffs.
Against that backdrop, the exhibit hall can be seen as a barometer of biopharma’s shifting oncology agenda (and in one case, its relations with regulators). Read on for observations from industry execs on how that agenda came more into focus on the convention floor.
A med-affairs ‘stunner’
The experience of strolling through the ASCO exhibit hall is "a feast for the eyes. It's like being in Times Square,” noted Chris Moniello, EVP and creative director for RevHealth.
There’s a lot to gawk at, most noticeably the big-money installations from major pharma players and brands, fronted by LED displays and other technology. The majority of the commercial booths are heavy on flash but not always substance.
Moniello said he tries to find the “hidden pockets of inspiration.” That is, interactive exhibits that don’t just use technology for technology’s sake but use it to make their story “stickier.”
Such locations aren’t always found on "ASCO boulevard,” so to speak, but on the periphery. This year, for example, some of the medical-affairs booths were "stunning” in their aesthetic, said Julianne Dunphy, PhD, EVP and managing director of medical strategy for RevHealth.
“I suspect it's a trend for medical affairs to be going more creative and bigger,” Dunphy explained. “That was delightful to see, because med-affairs is so often seen as very dry and not so creative.”
Companies often separate their commercial from their med-affairs booths, housing them under the same roof as one divided structure. Others, such as cancer-focused biotech Exelixis, featured their medical booth in an entirely different area of the show floor.
Pivot to unbranded
The greater emphasis on medical booths stems from clients’ evolving approach to education and promotion, observed Cali Howitt, president of Real Chemistry Medical Communications.
Especially in light of the “pressures around potentially less direct-to-patient promotion being allowed, potentially less information coming out of the government anymore,” she said, “over the last few years medical groups and unbranded communications are becoming more and more important.”
For cancer powerhouses like AstraZeneca, Novartis, Bristol Myers Squib and Merck, the medical versus commercial balance is close to 50-50, said Brandon Pletsch, who leads Real Chemistry’s scientific visualization practice.
Their more prominent medical presence “shows the health of the company, the investments they're making in therapeutic areas,” he said. “It also acts as a way of recruiting potential investigators for clinical trials.”
As such, this year’s exhibit floor was “buzzing with excitement and enthusiasm around novel mechanisms and novel pathways to a degree that I don't feel like I've seen as much of in the last few years,” Pletsch added.
As one example, he singled out #radioligandtherapy (RLT), a type of therapy designed to deliver radiation specifically to cancer cells. Novartis has pole position in the space, with RLT brands Pluvicto and Lutathera indicated in advanced prostate cancer and gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NET), respectively.
“The biggest thing holding back [RLT manufacturers] is the logistical application of this technology in smaller clinics that aren't set up to receive radioactive material,” Pletsch said. “There's a huge amount of emphasis on trying to help community oncologists have access to this new therapy.”
'The new race’
Indeed, in precision oncology, as in other relatively new therapy areas like CAR-Ts, which are highly personalized, the commercial infrastructure is still catching up to the medical innovation.
“This more individualized patient care yields greater efficacy, but it comes with its own set of challenges to drive adoption for the right set of patients,” said Dennis Fournogerakis, a partner at Beghou. “The patient becomes central to the commercialization efforts, which introduces the need for increased sophistication in commercial data strategies and platforms.”
It follows that “the new race,” as Pletsch put it, among companies is "how do we authentically show up as patient-centric, and how do we make our exhibits a reflection of that?”
To that end, logistics and infrastructure are becoming a “huge differentiator,” said Howitt, with companies leveraging booths to demonstrate their seamless experience for getting drugs in the hands (or veins) of patients, or at least with fewer pain points.
"We get a lot of requests for creating animations about manufacturing or fulfillment processes," said Pletsch. “We've done installations that were only about that, interactive timelines for healthcare professionals to say, ‘Oh, it’s nice that this company has that worked out.’”
Companies also used the medical sides of their booths to remind the 35,000 or so attendees of their commitment to the cancer space, their environmental sustainability (some tout the reusability of exhibits, for instance), and to showcase pipelines burgeoning with anti-cancer modalities. These ranged from #antibodydrugconjugates (ADCs) and multi-specifics to RNA-based therapies and combinations of immunotherapy with other older kinds of treatments that attack tumors via different pathways at the same time.
All the tech (and food)
As anyone who’s ever walked around the ASCO exhibit hall knows, “It's like five Best Buys combined. With all the lights on,” joked Pletsch. "It's like Vegas.”
That’s thanks to concessions – from coffee to food – and a lot of kitschy tech. Whether it’s spinny fan holograms, kinetic sculptures or virtual reality (VR) headsets, companies tend to rely on whatever’s trending.
“This year there were three instances of a giant LED sphere, which must have been this new version of an LED display that all the exhibit companies got wind of and all pitched to their clients," quipped Pletsch.
While that may be the case in the commercial spaces, the areas devoted to med-affairs are more judicious in their use of eye candy (think molecules rendered in 3D, interactive OLED displays and animations designed to surprise and delight).
“Year over year, we've been adding more of that creative presentation layer to the experience on the medical side,” said Moniello. “We’re building user interfaces that break up the information in a different way,” rather than showing just the raw data.
A noticeable absence
It was likely too early for the concerns around tariffs or the cutting of funding by the Trump administration to be reflected in the ASCO exhibit hall, which is planned months in advance.
Eventually, though, Dunphy said she believes the government-level actions are "going to filter down and have an impact in the longer term on new assets and licensing-in from universities.”
But there was one palpable sign. Conference goers who walked down one of the aisles were struck by an empty stall reserved for the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).
The vacancy may not have indicated a complete lack of FDA’s presence or involvement at the meeting. Nevertheless, it became “an unlikely crowd magnet,” wrote one reporter.
"There was a spot set up for the FDA/CDER, but they never came and so the placeholder sign and booth spot were taken down,” explained Stephanie DeViteri, North American president at Inizio Evoke Comms.
It became one of the meeting’s most enduring visuals, according to DeViteri, who said she found the scene “so symbolic.”
Earlier this year, Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off about 3,500 full-time FDA workers, or 20% of the agency’s staff.
And during a Senate Appropriations hearing this month, new National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Jay Bhattacharya was grilled about biomedical research cuts to the tune of $18 billion, or roughly 40% of its funding, that appear in the agency’s 2026 budget request.
That said, the zeitgeist among ASCO attendees was anything but doom and gloom.
“I was really pleasantly surprised both with the attendance on the exhibit floor and the amount of engagement that I was seeing in the booths,” said Pletsch, “and just the general enthusiasm and buzz, not just from industry but from all the attendees.”
As published here
