International Consortium for MDS (icMDS)

Many congratulations to dr Alan List for receiving the 2026 Life Achievement Award from the International Consortium for #MDSsm @ic_MDS in #iwMDSMPN2026 workshop for all the amazing contributions & his lifelong dedication to help patients with myelodysplastic syndromes @VJHemOnc

An outstanding day at the #iwMDS & #iwMPN @ic_MDS with superb faculty & talks

Happy to share our newest paper on behalf of the International Consortium for Myelodysplastic Syndromes #MDSsm (@ic_MDS ) using our multi-center VALIDATE database published in @BloodCancerJnl. Recently, the randomized phase III VERONA study evaluating azacitidine plus venetoclax (VEN) versus azacitidine plus placebo in newly diagnosed higher risk (HR)-MDS showed no difference in overall survival (OS) between the two arms. However, whether the addition of VEN to HMA improves outcomes among subsets of patients with HR-MDS remains debated. We analyzed 1907 patients with HR-MDS from 31 centers in 9 countries who were treated with HMA monotherapy or HMA/VEN in the frontline setting (HMA monotherapy: n = 1773; HMA/VEN: n = 134). Responses were assessed centrally by two investigators using the IWG 2023 response criteria. Addition of VEN improved composite complete remission (cCR) rates (48.8% vs. 27.7%; p < 0.001) but not CR rates (17.1% vs. 11.7%; p = 0.16). In multivariable logistic regression analysis, cCR remained favorable for HMA/VEN vs. HMA monotherapy (Odds Ratio [OR]: 2.49; 95% CI: 1.56-3.96; p < 0.001). However, we did not observe a statistically significant difference in OS for HMA/VEN vs. HMA monotherapy (Hazard Ratio [HR]: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.64-1.07; p = 0.15). In subgroup analyses, patients with TP53 wild-type disease (HR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.29-0.74; p = 0.002) had a significant improvement in OS and those with ≥10% bone marrow blasts (HR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.53-1.01; p = 0.06) had a trend towards OS benefit with HMA/VEN. You can download free copy here doi.org/10.1038/s41408-026-0…

Proud of our collaborative work between @ic_MDS with @HumanitasMilano which was just published in @Hemasphere_EHA. #MDSsm are biologically diverse cancers and need personalized treatment approaches. The IWG_PM introduced the MDS taxonomy, that categorizes patients into 16 genetic subgroups.