Joshua F. Zeidner, MD, discussed the role hypomethylating agents (HMAs) have played in the treatment of higher-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in a recent OncLive report. He shared data that shows promising emerging agents like pevonedistat that can be combined with HMAs to improve outcomes for certain patient subsets.
“We really have not had any new agents for patients with higher-risk MDS available [since the advent of HMAs] decades ago. We have all been yearning for novel therapies and combinations that can really improve patient survival and responses to HMAs alone,” Zeidner said in the report. “It is an evolving area, and I’m very hopeful that not only will we find new combinations that will be effective for MDS, but we will be able to pinpoint which subgroups of patients will be able to respond to different therapies. I hope that we may even have a menu of options available. That way, we can select based on specific genomic factors and other patient characteristics and we will not treat patients with a one-size-fits-all approach, such as azacitidine alone.”