Project description:Treatment options are limited for patients with anemia associated with lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (LR-MDS). The recent approval of luspatercept for the treatment of anemia associated with very low-to intermediate-risk MDS with ring sideroblasts (RS) or with myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative neoplasm with RS and thrombocytosis has provided adult patients and practitioners with a much-needed new therapeutic option. Luspatercept is a first-in-class erythroid maturation agent that exerts its effects on later stages of erythropoiesis. In the phase III MEDALIST trial of patients with LR-MDS with RS, luspatercept (starting dose 1 mg/kg) demonstrated substantial clinical benefit (38% of patients treated with luspatercept vs. 13% of those treated with placebo [p < .001] achieved transfusion independence for ≥ 8 weeks during the first 24 weeks of treatment) and a favorable safety profile. The most common adverse events (AEs), including fatigue, asthenia, dizziness, and diarrhea, were more frequent during the first 4 treatment cycles and subsequently declined. This review provides a comprehensive overview of luspatercept treatment administration, including the mechanism of action, efficacy and safety data, management of dosing, and AEs associated with luspatercept treatment of patients with LR-MDS.
Project description:Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a heterogeneous group of clonal hematological disorders. Treatment options are classified and defined by prognostic risk based on the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) and, more recently, the revised IPSS (IPSS-R). The treatment goal for lower-risk MDS is to correct cytopenias or their consequences, with the goal of maintaining or improving quality of life. Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) play an important role in treating anemia. Individuals with MDS who have a 5q deletion are particularly sensitive to treatment with lenalidomide; however, this comprises the minority of patients with MDS. Luspatercept was recently approved in the United States and the European Union for the treatment of ESA-refractory MDS with ring sideroblasts. Research into new treatment options, especially after ESA failure, is needed. In this review, we will focus on the current therapeutic options for MDS-related anemia.
Project description:Clinical trials frequently include multiple end points that mature at different times. The initial report, typically based on the primary end point, may be published when key planned co-primary or secondary analyses are not yet available. Clinical Trial Updates provide an opportunity to disseminate additional results from studies, published in JCO or elsewhere, for which the primary end point has already been reported.Luspatercept has high clinical activity in patients with transfusion-dependent lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (LR-MDS) and ring sideroblasts (RS) relapsed or refractory to erythropoietin. We report long-term luspatercept safety and efficacy in 108 patients with LR-MDS in the PACE-MDS study, including 44 non-RS and 34 non-transfusion-dependent or previously untreated patients. The primary end point was safety. Secondary end points included rates of hematologic improvement (HI) erythroid (HI-E), HI neutrophil, and HI platelet. Exploratory end points included erythropoiesis biomarker quantitation and mutation data. Median duration of luspatercept exposure was 315 days (range, 21-1,934 days). No new safety signals emerged. HI-E was observed in 53.7% of patients, including 36.4% of non-RS and 70.6% of non-transfusion-dependent patients. HI neutrophil and HI platelet were observed in 33.3% and 9.5% of patients, respectively. An almost three-fold increase in bone marrow late to early progenitor cell ratio accompanied HI-E response, irrespective of RS status. Lower baseline erythropoietin levels in non-RS patients (69.6 v 623.3 IU/L; P = .0077) and higher late to early erythroid progenitor cell ratio (10.44 v 4.48; P = .0106) in RS patients were associated with HI-E. This study highlights luspatercept's effects across LR-MDS subtypes, including untreated MDS-RS, serving as a platform for future trials.
Project description:Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a spectrum of clonal stem-cell disorders characterized clinically by bone-marrow failure. Resultant cytopenias are responsible for significant mortality and decreased quality of life in patients with MDS. In patients with low-risk MDS (LR-MDS), anemia is the most common cytopenia and erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESA) are usually used as first-line therapy. Those patients who become refractory to ESA have a poor survival. Available treatment options such as lenalidomide, hypomethylating agents, and immunosuppressive therapy can provide some hematologic response among selected subsets of patients, however durable responses are limited, and these agents can carry significant adverse effects. Chronic transfusions help to alleviate symptoms of anemia but still carry risks associated with transfusion and iron overload. Luspatercept, recently approved for those LR-MDS with ring sideroblasts refractory to ESA, was found to have an improvement in transfusion independence with a well-tolerated safety profile. While anemia is the most common cytopenia, thrombocytopenia and neutropenia management is challenging and the co-occurrence of these cytopenias with anemia may dictate the choice of therapy. In this article, we review LR-MDS and discuss the optimal use of current treatment options and explore new therapeutic options on the horizon.
Project description:BackgroundThe lower-risk (low and intermediate-1 risk based on IPSS) myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) has a negative impact on patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) instruments, which are used to collect patients' HRQoL data, should have established content validity in the target population to ensure that the instrument is comprehensive and comprehensible. The present study was conducted to evaluate the content validity of the Quality of Life in Myelodysplasia Scale (QUALMS) and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Anemia (FACT-An) PRO instruments in patients with lower-risk MDS.MethodsIn this cross-sectional, qualitative study, 16 patients aged ≥18 years with lower-risk MDS, who were RBC transfusion dependent, literate and fluent in US-English were interviewed. Interviews were semi-structured comprising of two parts: concept elicitation (CE) explored symptoms and impacts important to patients, and cognitive debriefing (CD) assessed understanding and relevance of the QUALMS and FACT-An. A conceptual model was developed, which was used to map the concepts that emerged during CE onto the QUALMS and FACT-An to assess concept coverage and suitability of the instruments.ResultsThe median age of participants was 67.5 years (range: 51-91), with half being female (n = 8). Nine (56.2%) participants had intermediate-1-risk MDS and 10 (62.5%) were relapsed or refractory to erythropoiesis-stimulating agent treatment. Fatigue/tiredness (100.0%), shortness of breath (87.5%), weakness (81.2%), and low energy (75.0%) were reported most commonly and were the most bothersome symptoms as well. Of seven high-level HRQoL domains identified, activities of daily living (n = 16, 100.0%), physical functioning (n = 15, 93.8%), emotional wellbeing (n = 13, 81.3%), social functioning (n = 12, 75.0%), sleep disturbance (n = 9, 56.3%), and impact on work (n = 9, 56.3%) were the most commonly reported. For CD, the QUALMS and FACT-An were found to be mostly relevant and very well understood; response options were easy to use, and recall period was appropriate.ConclusionBoth QUALMS and FACT-An demonstrated a strong face and content validity in patients with lower-risk MDS, suggesting that these instruments are appropriate for assessing HRQoL in this population.
Project description:Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a heterogeneous group of hematopoietic stem cell disorders characterized by ineffective hematopoiesis with abnormal blood cell development (dysplasia) leading to cytopenias and an increased risk for progression to acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Patients with MDS can generally be classified as lower- (LR-MDS) or higher-risk (HR-MDS). As treatment goals for patients with LR-MDS and those with HR-MDS differ significantly, appropriate diagnosis, classification, and follow-up are critical for correct disease management. In this review, we focus on the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment options, as well as the prediction of the disease course and monitoring of treatment response in patients with LR-MDS. We discuss how next-generation sequencing, increasing knowledge on mechanisms of MDS pathogenesis, and novel therapies may change the current treatment landscape in LR-MDS and why structured assessments of responses, toxicities, and patient-reported outcomes should be incorporated into routine clinical practice.
Project description:Lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes are defined using prognostic scoring systems that incorporate data on bone marrow blast percentage, degree and numbers of cytopenias, and cytogenetic abnormalities. Increasingly, these are incorporating molecular abnormalities to further refine risk. Therapy is geared toward predominating cytopenias, with erythropoiesis-stimulating agents luspatercept and lenalidomide used to ameliorate anemia, romiplostim and eltrombopag tackling thrombocytopenia, and hypomethylating agents and antithymocyte globulin palliating pancytopenia. Newer agents on the horizon are abrogating the downstream sequelae of specific molecular mutations. One challenge for the future is in further modifying response criteria to align with improvements that are clinically meaningful to patients.
Project description:The majority of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) patients belong to the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) and IPSS-revised (IPSS-R) lower-risk categories. Their precise diagnostics and prognostic stratification is often a challenge, but may ensure the optimization of therapy. The availability of diverse treatment options has significantly improved the quality of life and survival of this group of patients. Anemia is the most relevant cytopenia in terms of frequency and symptoms in lower-risk MDS, and may be treated successfully with erythropoietic stimulating agents, provided a careful selection is performed on the basis of IPSS-R, endogenous erythropoietin levels, and transfusion independence. Doses and duration of therapy of erythropoietic-stimulating agents (ESAs) are critical to determine efficacy. In case a patient fails ESA treatment, the available options may include lenalidomide (approved for del5q positive cases), hypomethylating agents, and a rather large number of experimental agents, whose clinical trials should be offered to a larger number of MDS patients. The choice for second-line treatment must take into account biologic, cytogenetic, and molecular-identified characteristics of individual patients, as well as frailty and comorbidities. Other cytopenias are less frequently presenting as isolated. Specific therapy for thrombocytopenia has been proposed in experimental clinical trials with thrombomimetic agents that have shown good efficacy, but raised some safety concern. Although neutropenia is targeted symptomatically with growth factor supportive care, the immunosuppressive treatments are indicated mainly for pancytopenic, hypoplastic lower-risk MDS; they are not widely used because of their toxicity, despite the fact that they may induce responses. Finally, hematopoietic stem cell transplant is the curative option also for lower-risk MDS and timing should be carefully evaluated, balancing toxicity and the possibility of survival advantage. Finally, even when considered suitable for lower-risk MDS, transplant application is limited to the rarer fit and younger MDS patient.
Project description:The efficacy of azacitidine (AZA) on survival of lower risk (LR) - myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) is controversial. To address this issue, we retrospectively evaluated the long-term survival benefit of AZA for patients with LR-MDS defined by International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS). Using data from 489 patients with LR-MDS in Nagasaki, hematologic responses according to International Working Group 2006 and overall survival (OS) were compared among patients that received best supportive care (BSC), immunosuppressive therapy (IST), erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESA), and AZA. Patients treated with AZA showed complete remission (CR) rate at 11.3%, marrow CR at 1.9%, and any hematologic improvement at 34.0%, with transfusion independence (TI) of red blood cells in 27.3% of patients. and platelet in 20% of patients, respectively. Median OS for patients received IST, ESA, BSC, and AZA (not reached, 91 months, 58 months, and 29 months, respectively) differed significantly (P < .001). Infection-related severe adverse events were observed in more than 20% of patients treated with AZA. Multivariate analysis showed age, sex, IPSS score at diagnosis, and transfusion dependence were significant for OS, but AZA treatment was not, which maintained even response to AZA, and IPSS risk status at AZA administration was added as factors. We could not find significant survival benefit of AZA treatment for LR-MDS patients.