TML Helps Predict Time to Treatment in CLL and its Precursor, Study Shows
This article was originally published by AJMC
Tumor mutational load (TML) can be used as a prognostic indicator in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and high-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis (HC MBL), according to a new study.
The findings suggest that performing a focused mutation panel on recurrently mutated CLL genes could help risk-stratify patients and more accurately predict time to treatment (TTT).
Most patients who are newly diagnosed with CLL do not require therapy for a number of years, but some patients will require therapy right away. CLL’s precursor, HC MBL, will progress to CLL at a rate of 1-5% per year, but it can be difficult to predict how soon an individual patient will progress.
In hopes of better predicting patient progression, investigators from the Mayo Clinic conducted a study to analyze the total number of recurrently mutated CLL genes (TML) and the individually mutated genes beyond the CLL international prognostic index (CLL-IPI) in newly diagnosed patients with CLL and HC MBL.
To do so, they recruited 557 patients, 445 of whom had CLL and the remainder of whom had HC MBL, and sequenced 59 genes in the patients. Their goal was to identify links with TTT, adjusted for CLL and sex.
The authors found that TML correlated with shorter TTT. Among patients with low/intermediate risk, the link was even stronger when patients were stratified by CLL-IPI. Their results are published in the American Journal of Hematology.