How can we tailor treatment to improve outcome in MDS?

During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MDS Hub spoke to Valeria Santini, University of Florence, Florence, IT, about tailoring treatment to improve outcome in MDS.

Santini starts by saying that, despite significant improvements in the tools available to physicians to select the optimal MDS therapy, the results obtained are still not always satisfactory. She highlights that the first step for a tailored treatment is stratifying patients prognostically, depending on their risk level and somatic mutation evaluation.

Santini then discusses tailoring anemia treatment according to the MDS subtype and mutations present. She also points out that the number of somatic mutations correlates with overall survival, and that being able to identify the number of somatic mutations allows healthcare professionals to speed up the decision and choice of treatment. Azacitidine or decitabine represents the standard of care, but a proportion of patients do not respond. However, these patients can respond quite well to azacitidine combinations. Therefore, Santini highlights the studies looking at azacitidine combinations to increase responsiveness.

Santini concludes with a remark on how bright the future is looking for treating patients with MDS given the abundance of new therapeutic options and the development of a novel prognostic system.