Milestones in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

The 10 year anniversary of a journal is not only a reason for celebration, but also provides an opportunity to assess progress in the field over a longer period of time. In our clinical world of incremental improvements, this is a relatively rare opportunity to reflect on what has happened on a larger scale than usual and determine how happy or hopeful that leaves us. About 10 years ago, the CLL field had just left the stage where CLL was treated with chlorambucil (CLB) monotherapy or lymphoma polychemotherapy with limited success for the aggressive variants of CLL for decades. Resurrecting CLL from being the “boring” leukemia, the field developed very relevant dynamics ([1]; Fig. 1). At the turn of the millennium, important biological insights, such as the recognition of recurrent FISH cytogenetic lesions [2], which had a very relevant prognostic impact, or the definition of two biologically distinct groups of CLL, i. e., those with mutated and unmutated IgVH status [3, 4] and again very