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Prof. Maher Gandhi: Establishing a new prognostic score for Follicular Lymphoma to rationalise therapeutic decision-making and improve patient outcomes

Maher Gandhi
Professor Maher Gandhi, The Mater Research Institute (Brisbane)

Follicular lymphoma is an ‘indolent’ or slow growing lymphoma and is the most common indolent Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL), accounting for 25-30% of all NHL cases and its incidence is increasing.

It is divided into early and advanced stages. Early stage follicular lymphoma is potentially curable, by contrast advanced stage follicular lymphoma is incurable and current therapy is designed to control symptoms and disease burden. Currently there is no robust way to predict if someone will respond to treatment or not.

This research aims to understand the basis of lymphoma; to devise new treatments which are less toxic and more effective; to establish new biomarkers which will help determine the most effective treatment strategies and to monitor response and relapse and understand the development of lymphomas. Professor Gandhi aims to develop a combined immuno-clinical-genetic prognostic core to help predict which patients are high risk and may benefit from more aggressive treatment, and which patients are at lower risk and their treatment can be scaled back minimising drug related toxic side-effects.