Dr. Mark Murakami is a physician-scientist dedicated to advancing curative treatments for follicular lymphoma. Based in the Division of Hematologic Neoplasia at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Murakami leads a research group focused on understanding how minute numbers of lymphoma cells survive the initial effect of treatment, persist even when patients are in clinical remission, and later expand to cause relapse. Eradication of these rare cells, called minimal residual disease, is felt to be the key to curing follicular lymphoma. Dr. Murakami has dedicated his career to developing methods for tracking, isolating, and analyzing minimal residual disease and understanding how these cells evade pharmacologic therapy as well as the anti-lymphoma immune response. He uses this information to devise novel treatments for rigorous evaluation – first in the laboratory and eventually in clinical trials run by clinical colleagues – that we hope will cure follicular lymphoma.