Nicola Gökbuget

Nicola Gökbuget, MD is Professor of Hematology at Goethe University Frankfurt and Head of the German Multicenter Study Group for Adult ALL (GMALL), one of Europe's most influential cooperative ALL research groups. She is a leading international authority on MRD-guided treatment strategies in adult ALL, having demonstrated through successive GMALL trials that MRD positivity after induction chemotherapy identifies patients at very high risk of relapse who benefit from treatment intensification, including allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Dr. Gökbuget was the principal investigator of the pivotal BLAST trial, the first randomized phase II study establishing that blinatumomab — a bispecific T cell engager (BiTE) antibody construct targeting CD19 and CD3 — can induce complete MRD response in adult ALL patients with MRD persistence after standard chemotherapy, leading to improved relapse-free and overall survival. Her work bridged the concept of MRD-guided therapy with novel immunotherapy, establishing blinatumomab as a standard MRD-directed consolidation option. She has also championed the integration of MRD monitoring into GMALL protocols for both B-ALL and T-ALL, and her research on long-term outcomes of adult ALL treatment has informed European and global treatment guidelines.