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Patients who¡¯ve been successfully treated for breast, colon and other cancers can go on to develop an often-fatal form of leukemia, sometimes years after completion of treatment, due to a genetic mutation leading to secondary malignancies known as therapy-related myeloid neoplasms (t-MNs).

A study conducted by researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center revealed pre-leukemic mutations, called clonal hematopoiesis, may predict whether patients develop t-MNs. Clonal hematopoiesis appears to function as a biomarker for patients who develop t-MNs, a leukemia recognized for its extremely poor prognosis. The study findings were published in  and presented at the annual meeting of the  in San Diego.

¡°Therapy-related myeloid neoplasms occur in about five percent of cancer patients who were treated with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy,¡± said  chair of Genomic Medicine. ¡°In most cases, it is fatal, and currently there is no way to predict who is at risk or prevent it.¡±

Being able to detect t-MNs earlier is crucial given that the disease usually occurs three to eight years following chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.

Futreal¡¯s team studied 14 patients with t-MNs and found traces of pre-leukemic mutations or clonal hematopoiesis in 10. To determine if pre-leukemic mutations could reliably predict whether the patients would develop leukemia, the researchers compared prevalence of pre-leukemic mutations in the 14 patients with 54 patients who did not develop t-MNs after therapy.

¡°We found that prevalence of pre-leukemic mutations was significantly higher in patients who developed t-MNs (71 percent) versus those who did not (26 percent),¡± said Futreal. ¡°We also validated these findings in a separate cohort of patients. Based on these findings, we believe pre-leukemic mutations may function as a new biomarker that would predict t-MNs development.¡±

Read more about this study in the MD Anderson Newsroom.