This is the 19th EHA meeting, haematology meeting, and we have a lot of abstracts this year, more than ever, and also a lot of attendance. So it’s an important meeting for Europe and across. What are the important issues this year? I think what we are observing is a number of novel agents coming to our therapeutic arsenal for different diseases: CLL, multiple myeloma, acute myeloid leukaemia and other diseases as well. In addition, we also see an increasing number of abstracts showing interesting information on the genomics of the disease and which are the potential targets for future treatment.

So, to be more specific, there are exciting data, especially on ibrutinib, which is a Bruton’s kinase inhibitor, a novel agent that’s being used in CLL and shows an impressive response rate in relapsed refractory CLL patients but also in overall survival advantage. This is very important and this has rarely been observed in CLL. So this is an interesting agent.

We also see major advances with the epigenetic drugs like azacitidine in acute myeloid leukaemia presented in a late breaking abstract. New examples of targeted treatment also in AML with IDH2 inhibitors which is a real example of a targeted treatment in patients with the molecular abnormality harbouring IDH2. So I think we are making progress there, yes.

What about looking at thrombosis in cancer patients?

This year we have a co-operation with the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis and they will give a presentation on the incidence, occurrence and also the implications of thrombosis in cancer patients. This is a huge clinical problem which can be handled but you need to have experience, you need to know which agents to use. So it’s good that we have this co-operation and that we can bring in this experience from another society into the haematology, into EHA for the haematologists.

Can you give examples of how it is handled?

There are a number of factors that influence the cancer itself, in-dwelling catheters, other comorbidities and so on. So with the new anticoagulants being available or coming available now this is a new approach that can be used to prevent and also to treat thrombosis in cancer patients.