I’m representing ERIC, the European Research Initiative on CLL, which is a partner of HARMONY and we are, of course, in charge of CLL which is chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Our project is to collect thousands of data from thousands of patients in order to define new prognostic markers in our patients.

What progress have you made so far?

We are really at the end of the project, I would say. So by the end of the year we will be finishing collecting all the data and we will be analysing them so next year we hope and plan to have a submission of abstracts to congresses and publications.

How many patients will be involved?

At the end it will be more than 4,500 patients.

What benefits will they see?

The project is aiming to screen thirteen different genes that nowadays are known to have a prognostic value in CLL and we want to build a model of how to integrate these different genes in order to better predict clinical outcome.

When are they likely to see these?

Probably next year with a publication we will give some hints.

Is this a rare opportunity to have such a large number of data?

Yes indeed. ERIC is already a large pan-European network but being involved with HARMONY helps because we are part of a larger network on haematological malignancies. So the future will be to integrate our results with those from other diseases in order to benefit all patients.