Dr Lee Highlights the Treatment Landscape for Patients With MDS, AML

Sangmin Lee, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, New York, highlights the current treatment landscape for patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), including novel therapies in development in combination with hypomethylating agents.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Sangmin Lee. I'm at Weill Cornell Medicine. I'm an assistant professor, part of the leukemia program.

My presentation was regarding myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), and for high-risk MDS patients, the current standard of care is still hypomethylating agent.

There are 2 that have been traditionally available, azacitidine and decitabine. What is new recently is that oral formulation of decitabine, along with a combination of cytozuradine, has been approved, so there is a more convenient option for patients with high-risk MDS, because there is an oral formulation available for MDS.

What's, of course, exciting in addition for MDS is that there are a number of novel therapies that are in development in combination with hypomethylating agents that are in develop for MDS. One is venetoclax. That has already been approved for AML. That is being studied in MDS with promising preliminary results.

The other agents are magrolimab, sabatolimab, and pevonedistat that are also in development for MDS in combination with azacitidine.

It remains to be seen. All of these agents have preliminary data, but it remains to be seen if combining azacitidine with any of these novel agents would add benefit for our patients with high-risk MDS.

Novel agents I mentioned are in clinical trials in a phase 3 setting. There was a phase 3 study of pevonedistat plus azacitidine compared to azacitidine high-risk MDS that will be presented at upcoming ASH, so I look forward to looking at the data from the data set. The other novel agents are still in clinical trials, so when they accrue, we look forward to seeing the results from those clinical trials.

There are a lot of combination therapies. In AML, the standard is using venetoclax plus HMA for older patients, and combinations in addition to venetoclax are currently being studied.

In MDS, venetoclax is not approved, but certainly, it's being studied in MDS, and certainly looks promising.

We will see if the phase 3 pans out and if venetoclax also offers benefit in MDS patients. I think in upfront setting, in combination with hypomethylating agents, combination therapies have potential to add benefit for our patients.

For MDS, I look forward to looking at the details of the data for the study involving pevonedistat plus azacitidine. Although the trial did not meet its primary endpoint, I still look forward to looking at the analysis from this clinical trial.