Over the last 25 years Prof. Jordi Sierra and his team have been designing treatment protocols for chemotherapy and hematopoietic progenitor transplants, or just chemotherapy, according to factors of prognosis.

Two decades ago the global survival rate for patients reaching the age of 60 was 15% and now it is between 40% and 50%. Nevertheless, further research is necessary to improve this percentage and to reduce the level of mortality for patients over the age of 60 because, for this group of patients, little progress has been made in recent years. Many patients can not undergo a bone marrow transplant, suffer a relapse, or both.

Further research is required into improving transplantation focusing, above all, on the prevention of infectious complications and the study of graft-versus-host disease, a common, post-transplant complication in which the organism recognises the donor's hematopoietic progenitors as being hostile.

Research into factors of prognosis for the disease will enable patients to receive personalised treatment. Prof. Jordi Sierra's team is engaged in a study for 20 hospitals, in Spain and abroad, in which they send samples to the research group. The samples are then studied, and as a result the best treatment protocol to adopt, given the patient's level of risk, can be determined.

Thanks to techniques used by the research group, such as next generation sequencing, many mutations and genetic translocations can be studied at the same time, and for many patients. This speeds things up and reduces costs.