Unifying the Definition of High-Risk in Multiple Myeloma

Introduction: There is considerable heterogeneity in the clinical outcome of newly diagnosed multiple-myeloma (NDMM) with some patients having a good prognosis while others fail to respond or relapse quickly after therapy progressing rapidly to death. Using risk scores based on clinical, biochemical and genetic features it is possible to predict some of this variation giving an ability to segment the disease into risk strata. Clinical studies have suggested that patients with standard-risk disease have benefited more from the recent advances in therapy compared to those with high-risk disease. The development of clinical trials specifically recruiting patients with high-risk disease features offers the potential to improve the outcome of a subgroup of patients with a very poor clinical outcome. To perform such studies is it important to have a unifying definition of high-risk including standard parameters, group size and outcome of individual risk strata so that clinical trial rigor can be achieved (e.g., common entry criteria, statistical power). In order to understand the size and feasibility of such studies we analyzed the Myeloma Genome Project (MGP) dataset to assess multiple risk factors and scores to determine and compare how they perform as risk stratifiers with each other.