MDS-406 Prognostic Implication of the Molecular Profiles of Patients With Hypocellular Myelodysplastic Syndrome

Context: Hypocellular myelodysplastic syndrome (hMDS) is a subset of MDS that has not been fully characterized. This study aimed to better identify the clinical characteristics and molecular profile of hMDS and study the prognostic impact of mutations in hMDS. Design: We conducted a retrospective review of patients with newly diagnosed MDS in a single tertiary cancer center registry from 2010 to 2021. Results: Of 1,899 patients with MDS, 176 (10%) patients had hMDS. The median follow-up period was 19.5 months. hMDS patients were more likely to be younger and have therapy-related disease and more thrombocytopenic and neutropenic than normo/hypercellular MDS (non-hMDS). All other clinical characteristics were comparable. The distributions of IPSS-R cytogenetic scores (≥3, or <3) were comparable. hMDS patients had similar overall survival (OS) to non-hMDS (median 28.3 vs. 29.0 months) or AML transformation rates (23% vs. 19%). These findings were maintained after multivariate adjustment. Hypocellularity did not affect survival in either de novo or t-MDS. We further analyzed 1,352 (71%) pts with mutation data available. Patients with hMDS had less frequent ASXL1, RUNX1, TET2, or IDH1 mutations, whereas the frequency of TP53 and RAS pathway mutations were comparable. In de novo MDS, hMDS patients had less frequent RUNX1, SRSF2, or TET2 mutations. In t-MDS, hMDS pts had less frequent TP53 or U2AF1 mutations. The survival of hMDS can be stratified by IPSS-R with some overlaps. In hMDS, mutations in the RAS pathway or TP53 were associated with inferior OS, whereas TET2 mutations correlated with superior OS. Based on the mutation data, patients were stratified into 3 groups: (1) with TET2 mutations, (2) with TP53 or RAS pathway mutations without TET2 mutations, and (3) without TET2/TP53/RAS mutations. The TET2 mutant group showed marginally better mOS (HR 0.50, P=0.081), and the TP53/RAS pathway group showed inferior mOS (HR 2.74, P=.005) compared with the group without TET2/TP53/RAS pathway mutation. Conclusions: Patients with hMDS had similar outcomes to patients with non-hMDS but exhibit distinct molecular profiles; hMDS had less frequent driver mutations commonly seen in non-hMDS. The integration of molecular profiles into risk stratification in hMDS could be a study of interest.