Unified classification and risk-stratification in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Dr. Elli Papaemmanuil et al. published the paper Unified classification and risk-stratification in Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Nature Communications. In it they use use comprehensive molecular profiling data from 3,653 patients to characterize and validate 16 molecular classes describing 100% of AML patients. Each class represents diverse biological AML subgroups, and is associated with distinct clinical presentation, likelihood of response to induction chemotherapy, risk of relapse and death over time. Secondary AML-2, emerges as the second largest class (24%), associates with high-risk disease, poor prognosis irrespective of flow Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) negativity, and derives significant benefit from transplantation. Guided by class membership they derive a 3-tier risk-stratification score that re-stratifies 26% of patients as compared to standard of care. This results in a unified framework for disease classification and risk-stratification in AML that relies on information from cytogenetics and 32 genes. Last, they develop an open-access patient-tailored clinical decision support tool.

You can read the paper in Nature Communications here.