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Updated: Mar 7, 2026
Use of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation to Assess the Origin of Myelodysplastic Syndrome
Published on: October 3, 2018
Prognostic Mutations in Myelodysplastic Syndrome after Stem-Cell Transplantation
R Coleman Lindsley1, Wael Saber1, Brenton G Mar1
1From the Department of Medical Oncology, Division of Hematological Malignancies (R.C.L., C.C., J.H.A.), and the Departments of Pediatric Oncology (B.G.M.) and Biostatistics and Computational Biology (R.R., D.N.), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Division of Hematology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School (P.V.G., B.L.E.) - all in Boston; the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (W.S., T.W., Z.-H.H., S.J.L.); the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, National Marrow Donor Program-Be the Match (M.D.H., S.R.S.), and the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation Center, University of Minnesota (M.R.V.) - both in Minneapolis; the Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle (S.J.L.); Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (K.H.); and the Institute for Experimental Cellular Therapy, University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany (K.F.).
Background:
Genetic mutations drive the pathogenesis of the myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and are closely associated with clinical phenotype. Therefore, genetic mutations may predict clinical outcomes after allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation.
Methods:
We performed targeted mutational analysis on samples obtained before transplantation from 1514 patients with MDS who were enrolled in the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research Repository between 2005 and 2014. We evaluated the association of mutations with transplantation outcomes, including overall survival, relapse, and death without relapse.
Results:
TP53 mutations were present in 19% of the patients and were associated with shorter survival and a shorter time to relapse than was the absence of TP53 mutations, after adjustment for significant clinical variables (P<0.001 for both comparisons). Among patients 40 years of age or older who did not have TP53 mutations, the presence of RAS pathway mutations was associated with shorter survival than was the absence of RAS pathway mutations (P=0.004), owing to a high risk of relapse, and the presence of JAK2 mutations was associated with shorter survival than was the absence of JAK2 mutations (P=0.001), owing to a high risk of death without relapse. The adverse prognostic effect of TP53 mutations was similar in patients who received reduced-intensity conditioning regimens and those who received myeloablative conditioning regimens. By contrast, the adverse effect of RAS pathway mutations on the risk of relapse, as compared with the absence of RAS pathway mutations, was evident only with reduced-intensity conditioning (P<0.001). In young adults, 4% of the patients had compound heterozygous mutations in the Shwachman-Diamond syndrome-associated SBDS gene with concurrent TP53 mutations and a poor prognosis. Mutations in the p53 regulator PPM1D were more common among patients with therapy-related MDS than those with primary MDS (15% vs. 3%, P<0.001).
Conclusions:
Genetic profiling revealed that molecular subgroups of patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation for MDS may inform prognostic stratification and the selection of conditioning regimen. (Funded by the Edward P. Evans Foundation and others.).
