The highlight of the meeting is that we are facing a new era in the therapy of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. We know better the disease, we know better the genetic pathways by which a malignant lymphoid cell is growing and we have taken profit of our knowledge to design well-targeted therapies and together with other approaches such as immunotherapy will change the paradigm of the treatment of ALL.

Perhaps chemotherapy will be necessary, it’s really effective, but we need an improvement and this improvement will come from these exciting new approaches and the clever combination of these approaches will reach to the top, I hope, the results of the treatment of ALL.

We have to stimulate the basic research. If we don’t make a good basic research as the clinicians we will not improve. All the improvements will come from the basic knowledge of the mechanisms of the leukaemogenesis in ALL. That’s my message especially for young people – don’t forget the basic research, not focussing only in clinical research.