Key lessons from EHA 2026: Translating evidence into impact
This year’s European Hematology Association (EHA) Congress highlighted a field rich with scientific progress – and an increased focus on how that progress translates into better care decisions.
Across four days in Sweden, EHA 2026 offered a clear view of the future of blood cancer care, with some of the most important discussions focused on how to apply innovation in ways that meaningfully improve patient care.
That matters because patient need is substantial. A 2026 analysis of global cancer burden data estimated that, in 2022, haematologic malignancies accounted for 1.31 million new cases worldwide and more than 700,000 deaths. For patients, families, clinicians, and health systems, scientific progress only becomes meaningful when it helps shape clearer decisions, more manageable care, and better outcomes.
Novel approaches have expanded what is possible for clinical efficacy, but it increasingly sits alongside questions about sequencing, depth of response, treatment duration, real-world management, and the overall patient experience. For companies developing oncology medicines, including AbbVie, this means designing programmes around practical questions that matter to patients from the outset, with the goal of generating evidence that not only supports further development, but also real-world use access and implementation.
From that lens, three themes stood out at this year’s congress.
1.
A sharper lens is changing how response is measured
EHA 2026 showed that precision medicine is increasingly about more than matching a treatment to a biomarker. It is also about understanding depth of response, durability, and how those insights may inform future treatment decisions.
One example is the role of measurable residual disease, or MRD. MRD refers to the small number of cancer cells that may remain after treatment and can often be detected only through sensitive testing. In blood cancers, MRD is increasingly being studied as a way to assess depth of response and, in some settings, help estimate relapse risk.
Across the congress, MRD was featured as part of wider discussions on monitoring, treatment duration, and relapse prediction. Presentations explored blood and bone marrow testing, next-generation sequencing, and molecular monitoring approaches.
Real-world management is also becoming a greater focus. One prospective observational study examined how treatment for newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukaemia is managed in patients considered unfit for intensive chemotherapy, including questions around antimicrobial prophylaxis, growth factor usage, and treatment initiation setting.
These topics may seem operational on the surface, but they have a direct impact on patient outcomes. Success depends not only on whether a therapy works, but also on how it is initiated, monitored, and supported in clinical practice.
2.
Patient experience is becoming an integral part of evidence generation
A second major takeaway was the evolving prominence of patient-centric care as a core component of how innovation is evaluated.
Patients with blood cancers may live with disease and treatment for many years. For them, progress is not measured only in survival curves or response rates, but also in fatigue, treatment burden, hospital visits, emotional well-being, work, family life, and confidence about the future.
That perspective was visible throughout congress discussions on patient-reported outcomes, access, education, quality of life, and patient involvement in research and decision-making. The common thread was clear: treatment success is increasingly being understood through both clinical endpoints and what care means in daily life.
For patients, efficacy is only part of the equation. Clinicians and patients also need to understand what treatment means in practice – including frequency, monitoring requirements, adverse event management, treatment duration, and day-to-day functioning.
Health-related quality-of-life and symptom analyses were presented alongside efficacy, safety, and disease-monitoring studies, including in relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma. Research in rare and difficult-to-treat blood cancers also highlighted continued efforts to study settings where patient need remains high, including relapsed disease after prior targeted therapy, light chain AL, and BPDCN.
3.
As treatment options expand, so do questions around sequencing
One of the clearest takeaways from EHA was the pace and breadth of innovation across haematology, from common blood cancers to rare malignancies, where evidence can be difficult to generate.
That breadth was reflected in AbbVie’s own EHA programme, which included multiple presentations across multiple myeloma (MM), follicular lymphoma (FL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), amyloidosis (AL), and blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN).
The presentations showcased increasingly complex sequencing decisions shaping blood cancer care. What should be used earlier? What should be reserved for relapse? When should combinations be used? And how can evidence keep pace in rarer malignancies, where clinical trials are harder to conduct?
As treatment pathways become longer and more layered, the field needs studies designed not only to show clinical activity, but to clarify where each therapy belongs in a patient’s treatment journey to meaningfully impact care.
Additional options translate into even more meaningful progress when the evidence generated helps clarify which approach is most suited to which patient and when.
From data volume to decision quality and patient impact
The real test after EHA 2026 is not simply how much data the field can generate. It is whether that data can help clinicians, patients, and health systems make better decisions.
Some findings may inform near-term clinical discussion. Others will require longer follow-up, regulatory review, and health-system adoption before their impact is clear. But across the field, the direction is consistent: evidence needs to be generated with the end decision in mind.
Ultimately, success for patients is not simply about having more treatment options. It is about having confidence that the right option can be identified, delivered, and accessed at the right time.
About the author
Dr Eleni Lagkadinou is the vice president of oncology early development (OED) at AbbVie. In her role, she is responsible for leading a cross-functional group focused on rapidly advancing early-stage research and development efforts that drive innovation in oncology and bring novel treatment options to patients. The OED group is committed to delivering high quality early data that helps accelerate development programmes and enables the initiation of registrational studies faster. Prior to joining AbbVie, Dr Lagkadinou served as the executive leader of early development oncology at Roche Pharma AG. Prior to her role at Roche, she served as VP of clinical development oncology and infectious diseases at BioNTech SE, where she led clinical development and approval with Pfizer of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccine. In a career spanning over 25 years, Dr Lagkadinou has cared for cancer patients in the clinic and her research work has led to significant advancements in cancer research, including understanding of the role of Bcl-2 in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and development of treatments that exploit the presence of DNA damage in human cancers. Dr Lagkadinou received her MD and PhD from the University of Patras in Greece and continued her academic work at James Wilmott Cancer Center at the University of Rochester.
