MDS 1L Management: How Do EPO Levels, Ring Sideroblast Status Influence Experts’ Treatment Decisions?

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

The panel, moderated by 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.

In this opening segment from the discussion, the experts spoke about their first-line management approaches for low-risk MDS. They described how patient serum erythropoietin (EPO) levels and ring sideroblast status influence their treatment decisions in this setting, as well as whether the new data presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting will lead them to change their approaches.