John P. Leonard

John P. Leonard, MD is the Richard T. Silver Distinguished Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Associate Dean for Clinical Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, where he serves as a globally recognized leader in lymphoma research and clinical trial development. He is best known for leading the AUGMENT trial — a phase III randomized study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (2019) that established lenalidomide plus rituximab (R2) as a chemotherapy-free standard of care for relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma, demonstrating significantly superior progression-free survival compared with rituximab monotherapy and leading to FDA approval of the R2 regimen. Dr. Leonard has been at the forefront of characterizing the biology of indolent lymphoma, including natural history studies defining the optimal timing of therapy initiation, watchful waiting strategies, and transformation risk. His laboratory and clinical program has investigated immunomodulatory mechanisms of lenalidomide in the lymphoma microenvironment, PI3K delta/gamma inhibitor toxicity management, checkpoint blockade combinations, and bispecific antibody development in follicular lymphoma. He has led multiple cooperative group trials through the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and serves on editorial boards of leading hematology journals, as well as on the boards of the Lymphoma Research Foundation and the American Society of Hematology.