Luspatercept in First-Line MDS Care: Real-World Data and the Real-World Clinical Experience

Blood Cancers Today hosted a virtual roundtable of clinical experts in management of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). This expert panel’s discussion explored how low-risk MDS is managed today and assessed the impact of new research presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, held in Chicago, Illinois.

The moderator, Saeed Sadeghi, MD, of UCLA Health in Santa Monica, California, was joined by Clark Alsfeld, MD, of Ochsner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Jefferson, Louisiana, Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, MA, of Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina, and Raji Shameem, MD, of Orlando Health Cancer Institute in Lake Mary, Florida.

A retrospective study of real-world outcomes data on luspatercept use in first-line MDS care was presented at the Annual Meeting and has been reviewed by the expert panel. In this segment of the roundtable discussion, the panelists react to these data and describe the value such real-world data hold for their own practices.

The experts also remark on the growing use of luspatercept in the first-line MDS clinical setting. In the process, they relate their experiences using this agent in their own practices and describe what the agent has meant for addressing patients’ quality-of-life needs.