Dr. Michael Williams on Treating Subtypes of MCL

Michael E. Williams, MD, ScM, Byrd S. Leavell Professor of Medicine and Professor of Pathology, University of Virginia Health System, discusses personalized medicine in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

An important area of interest in MCL is the tailoring of treatment to individual subtypes, says Williams. MCL is not one disease, but a spectrum of disease. About 20% of patients have very indolent disease that can be observed without treatment, while others have blastoid variant MCL, a very aggressive subtype of the disease.

These subtypes need to be taken into account as therapy is crafted for individual patients, and there will not be a one-size fits all approach, says Williams.