News & Events
10th Blood Cancer Network Ireland (BCNI) Annual Symposium: Advancing Discovery for Patient Benefit
Jul
21
2026
Posted: 12:30 IST
The 10th Annual Blood Cancer Network Ireland (BCNI) Symposium highlighted major advances that are reshaping blood cancer treatment and patient care.
Preclinical studies demonstrated that next-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-expressing invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT) can outperform conventional CAR-T cells and achieve durable remissions in high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, while new immunotherapeutic strategies targeting TIM-3 and Menin are progressing towards clinical application in AML.
Clinical data challenged established treatment paradigms by showing that complete remission before allogeneic stem cell transplantation is not essential for successful outcomes in relapsed AML, shifting attention towards disease biology and post-transplant graft-versus-leukaemia effects.
Other presentations identified previously unrecognised myeloma progenitor cells that may drive relapse, revealed mechanisms of resistance to NK-cell immunotherapy, and demonstrated how circulating tumour DNA and single-cell transcriptomics can transform disease monitoring.
Finally, studies highlighted the importance of patient-reported outcomes and national registries for delivering more personalised, evidence-based care, illustrating how advances in biology, diagnostics and therapeutics are converging to improve outcomes for patients with blood cancers.
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