Novel Prognostic Models for Myelodysplastic Syndromes

Myelodysplastic syndromes are disorders of clonal myelopoiesis having a range of clinical manifestations, from benign and indolent to aggressive with very poor prognosis. Classifying the likely trajectory of disease within a patient largely guides therapeutic decision making and therefore survival. Traditional methods of risk-stratification systems rely on clinical features: simple blood tests, peripheral smears, bone marrow biopsies, and cytogenetics, but do not adequately predict disease severity for a substantial proportion of patients. This article reviews the state of stratification at use in the clinic, describes emerging systems that leverage large-scale genomic data, and summarizes efforts toward truly personalized prediction models.