During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2020 Annual Meeting and Exposition, several abstracts provided important updates for the management of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), including clinical trial data for emerging therapeutic options for MDS.

In this podcast, we hear from three leading experts in MDS, who discuss the key updates presented at this year’s virtual ASH Annual Meeting. Uwe Platzbecker, MD, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, shares the results from the ongoing Phase II IMerge trial of imetelstat for transfusion-dependent patients with lower-risk MDS. We are also joined by Jacqueline Garcia, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, who discusses the results of a Phase Ib study evaluating venetoclax in combination with azacitidine for patients with higher-risk MDS requiring treatment and not immediately undergoing transplantation at the time the study started. Additionally, Daniel DeAngelo, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, outlines the results of a Phase I trial investigating whether decitabine, a hypomethylating agent, increased the efficacy of CTLA-4 blockade with ipilimumab in patients with relapsed/refractory MDS or acute myeloid leukemia with or without prior allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation.