The European Hematology Association (EHA)

Research

SWG Educational Activities

EICML

The 2023 EICML meeting took place in Naples in May 2023. Fifty-five physicians and scientists met at the Palazzo Alabardieri in central Naples to spend two days discussing emerging data and developing collaborations.

Topics under discussion included:

  • News and views
  • News from the labs
  • First and second-line treatment
  • Beyond second-line treatment
  • Side effects and quality of life
  • Treatment discontinuation
  • Challenges of advanced phase disease 

ELN Meeting, March 2023

The family of the ELN community met in Mannheim to continue this remarkable collaboration of individuals and national study groups. CML is addressed within Working Party 4 and participants discussed the following:

  • AlloHCT in CML patients in the era of 3GTKI: a retrospective analysis from the CMWP of the EBMT (Y Chalandon)
  • Steric structure of BCR::ABL1 and prediction of response to asciminib according to the mutation profile: a EUTOS project (O Hantschel)
  • The Harmony registry on treatment free remission (T Dahlen)
  • The Harmony genomic registry in CML: clonal hierarchy (T Ernst)
  • WHO classification 2022: CML (A Hochhaus)
  • EURO-SKI, final analysis (S. Saußele)
  • EUTOS 2022 cooperation in CML biology (A. Hochhaus)
  • Management of children and adolescents in blast phase: international pediatric expert panel recommendations (M Metzler)

ESH-iCMLf

The ESH-iCMLf John Goldman meeting took place in Mandelieu-La Napoule, France, in October 2023.

During this meeting:

  • The John Goldman Memorial Lecture was delivered by Francois Guilhot
  • The Janet Rowley Prize Presentation was delivered by Jerry Radich
  • The Tessa Holyoake Memorial Lecture was delivered by Ivan Dikic
  • The iCML prize was awarded to Iryna Dyagil and Kostyantyn Kotlyarchuk from the Ukraine

Delegates gathered from across the world to join the scientific sessions. Workshops for non-clinical scientists on imaging and single-cell analysis were well attended by both scientists and physicians.

Hot topics were the subjects of stimulating and provocative debates, including ‘Genomic screening is essential before frontline therapy?’ (Jane Apperley vs Giuseppe Saglio).

The top-scoring abstracts addressed diverse topics including:

  • The inhibition of serotonin transporters to target c-MYC dependent and inflammatory CML stem cells
  • The effect of leukemia exposure on phagocytosis in bone marrow-derived macrophages
  • A potential targetable role of calcium and calcium-sensing receptors in leukemia
  • The impact of clonal hematopoiesis mutations detected at the time of therapy discontinuation on the success of TFR
  • The latest results from the randomised TIGER study of nilotinib vs nilotinib plus interferon, updates from ASCEND
  • A frontline study of monotherapy with asciminib, and the FASCINATION study of asciminib in combination with ATP-competing TKI

'Meet the Expert' sessions included:

  • The pharmaceutics of cell therapy manufacturing – Halvard Boenig (Frankfurt)
  • Third-line approach – Delphone Rea (Paris)
  • Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential: basic aspects and clinical implications - Steffen Boettcher (Zurich)
  • Targeting BCL2 family members in myeloid leukemia – Caroline Heckman (Helsinki)
  • Identifying and testing people at risk of inherited susceptibility to hematological malignancy  – Lucy Godley (Chicago) 
  • General aspects of optimal dosing strategies for TKIs – Jorge Cortes (Augusta)

EUTOS

The funding allowed the successful renewal of the long-running European Treatment Outcome Study (EUTOS) in 2022.

Objectives

The overall objectives of this scientific research are to sustain and foster the collaboration between academia and industry. In particular, the research aims to facilitate the collection of baseline, treatment, and outcome data of representative samples of CML patients in major European countries.

How the objectives will be achieved

  • Implementation of cytogenetic, genomic, and proteomic technologies. These will be used to evaluate the clonal hierarchy of CML prior to and during the course of the disease. In particular, they will be used in the prediction of the efficacy of the specific BCR::ABL1 (STAMP) inhibitor asciminib in 3+ line of therapy.
  • Modelling the structural changes of the BCR::ABL1 protein with distinct mutations to optimize combination therapy with asciminib and ATP competing drugs.
  • Continuing the research on persisting stem cells after asciminib therapy in CML patients in deep molecular response. This data will be translated into clinical trials targeting persisting disease after discontinuation of TKI.
  • Modelling the effect of asciminib on normal hematopoiesis to reveal causes of cytopenia.

Cooperation

The project will continue to make use of the existing cooperation structures between local and regional leukemia study groups in the field of CML. It will do this to:

  • Accomplish its objectives
  • Disseminate and exploit project results