Jan Geissler speaks about some of the key research into chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) that has been presented at ASH 2010. This includes papers on the second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors dasatinib, erlotinib and ponatinib, a poster presentation indicating that imatinib treatment does not increase the incidence of secondary cancers and research reiterating the importance of patients strictly adhering to their treatment programme.