“By considering each patient’s genetic make up in the IPSS-M we can now truly deliver patient tailored risk stratification,” says Dr. Elli Papaemmanuil of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “This will enable optimized treatment decisions tailored to those most in need of intervention, and sets a biological framework for the design of future clinical trials.” 

For more than two decades, MDS patient risk stratification at diagnosis was based on diagnostic blood counts, morphology, and cytogenetics through the International Prognostic Scoring System. In recent years, a complete catalog of the genes mutated in MDS has been discovered. However, even though patients increasingly receive panel gene testing at diagnosis, there were no guidelines as to how this information could be used clinically to guide risk stratification and treatment decisions.

The creation of an effective set of prognostic guidelines was especially important for MDS because current clinical courses are very heterogeneous. In this absence of targeted therapies, risk stratification at diagnosis is critical in guiding treatment decisions.