By By D. Gary Gilliland, MD, PhD, and Alan F. List, MD

2009-01-01

Dr. Gilliland is an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. List is Executive Vice President and Physician-in-Chief at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, and Professor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

Earlier this year, ASH introduced the idea of hosting a research agenda-setting workshop into MDS. Several NIH institutes expressed an interest in working with ASH — individually and together - to further explore the research needs for MDS. As a result, the ASH Workshop on Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) was convened in Washington, DC, on November 20.

We had the privilege of jointly chairing the one-day workshop that assembled a group of more than 20 participants, including representatives from each of the relevant Institutes at NIH. The workshop was patterned after the model used for recent ASH research agenda-setting workshops concerning anemia and the elderly, thrombosis in the elderly, and sickle cell disease, and focused on four areas: identifying questions that need to be answered in this area, determining where gaps exist in the research, pinpointing the windows of opportunity in investigation of this topic, and establishing a list of priorities that may form the basis for a sustainable MDS research program at NIH.

Topics discussed at the workshop focused on improving the understanding of the biology and pathogenesis of MDS, and expert participants examined research priorities in areas that included the role of senescence in the predisposition to MDS, the genetic and epigenetic changes associated with MDS, therapeutic targets and strategies in MDS, the immunobiology of MDS, and the relationship between normal stem cells and MDS stem cells.

A workshop writing committee is developing a summary of the meeting’s deliberations and will produce a report identifying research priorities, recommendations, and next steps. Once finalized, the document will be shared with the ASH membership and NIH.

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