A TV ad for future cancer conferences may go like this, "You're a drug company with important research data. Where are you going to go?"

Answer: "I'm going to Chicago for the foreseeable future."

After holding its annual meeting in Orlando for the past five days, the American Society of Clinical Oncology has signed a long-term contract with Chicago's McCormick Place to host the conference for the next ten years.

The only possible setback is that Chicago is trying to host the 2016 summer Olympics, so that year is "up in the air," according to ASCO.

Next year's meeting will take place from June 4-8.

The economic impact of the conference on the Orlando area wasn't immediately clear, but the involved physicians will likely welcome a break from the muggy central Florida city.

 
   Wave of the Future

Change was on the lips of many attendants of this year's confab, and the host was clearly making efforts to be as progressive as possible.

Reporters were provided with flash drives with all the vital information for the meeting, and attendants who opted to use an electronic version of the massive books of study summaries were offered an "I Choose Green" ribbon to hang on their ID badge.

Other Jetson-like advancements include certain ASCO staff members zooming around the massive convention center on Segways, the launch of iPhone and Blackberry applications before the meeting, and ASCO-backed Twitter feeds.

 
   Driving Exhibition Traffic

Industry promotional changes have stopped drug-themed tchotchke giveaways, but other methods were used to try to drive traffic to exhibition booths at the meeting.

The ASCO foundation, a non-profit group, unveiled its "Passport" program that gave a small gift to attendees, and entered them into a sweepstakes, if they got every page stamped at a corresponding exhibit.

The booklet was designed to increase traffic because of the lack of giveaways, ASCO said, and included such drug giants as Amgen Inc. (AMGN), Celgene Corp. (CELG), Roche Holding AG's (RHHBY) Genentech, and Wyeth (WYE).

Companies were included on a first-come, first-served basis, and didn't pay to be included. Company interest was oversubscribed once they realized the potential benefit, ASCO said, and it is considering repeating the program next year.

 
   Soda Finds Cancer Niche

Exhibitors sometimes provide a little cookie or snack to get attendees to linger around their booth, but one company was literally giving away their product: Reed's Ginger Brews.

The company representative said their first ASCO appearance comes after a study showed that cancer patients taking ginger supplements, along with drugs that lower nausea and vomiting, had less of those side effects than those without ginger.

The company prominently displayed media coverage of the findings and had a brochure touting its potential "post chemo nausea relief."

 
   Setting the Stage

Amgen has filed for Food and Drug Administration approval of denosumab for osteoporosis, but the drug is also being studied as a treatment for various aspects of cancer.

The company had a large exhibit at ASCO giving ample data on "RANK ligand" - the target of denosumab - and how cancer patients are at risk for bone loss and problems related to cancer spreading to the bone.

But denosumab wasn't mentioned anywhere, and booth workers behaved as if the drug didn't even exist - something that would make regulators happy.

 
   Comprehending a Trillion

Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist with the National Institutes of Health and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, put into perspective the more than $2 trillion spent on healthcare in the U.S. every year.

"People don't have any idea of what a trillion is," said Emanuel, pointing out that healthcare's steady increase will theoretically consume the entire economy one day.

He gave a shocking math lesson:

How long ago was a million seconds?

Less than two weeks ago.

How long ago was a billion seconds?

About the time when President Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974.

How long ago was a trillion seconds?

30,000 B.C. - which was 15,000 years before the first human stepped on North America.

-By Thomas Gryta, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2053; thomas.gryta@dowjones.com