With close to half a million new cases and over 300,000 deaths a year globally (Globocan 2022), leukemias and related diseases are together the deadliest blood cancer and the first childhood cancer, the average 5-year survival being only 25%. Thus, they represent a huge medical need, of major interest for the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic solutions. A majority of them will emerge from successful academia-industry collaborations.

France’s long-standing expertise and rich research and innovation ecosystem in the field, led OPALE, The Organization for Partnerships in Leukemia, to design LEUKEMIA 360, a meeting to be organized every year in France. For the first edition of this event to be held in Paris, our institute has succeeded in bringing together virtually all of France’s research expertise and scientific excellence in leukemia and related diseases, together with top level international specialists.  For the first time, 40+ academic organizations will showcase innovations, state-of-the-art scientific offers and R&D capacities with no international equivalent in this area.

After hearing the voice of a leading patient organization, scientific opinion leaders from Europe, the United States and China will share their views on hot scientific topics for researchers and developers of therapeutic and diagnostic solutions. Several examples of public-private partnering success stories will be presented by researchers and partner companies. Round tables will allow participants to listen to leukemia R&D experts on ways to accelerate together innovation and its market access. OPALE entities representatives will display the institute’s comprehensive R&D offer in interactive satellite sessions. Finally, 1:1 meetings throughout the day will allow the actors (academia, industry, patient representatives, investors, institutions) of this vibrant scientific area and dynamic market to discuss possible collaborations. Of course, other networking opportunities will also be available during the meeting.

We expect the 2024 edition of LEUKEMIA 360 to foster value-added R&D partnerships between industry and academia and accelerate innovation in the field of leukemia and related diseases. I would like to thank France’s National Cancer Institute and our industrial, institutional, academic and patient representatives partners for their support of this new and unique event. 

See you in Paris on November 13!

Pr Hervé Dombret
OPALE’s Chairman