Learning from late-stage trial failures in higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes: towards adaptive and biomarker-enriched designs

Many new HR-MDS therapies are likely to deliver incremental survival gains rather than large overall survival improvements, particularly given an apparent survival plateau around 2 years. Future confirmatory programs should, therefore, plan for incremental improvements, prespecify handling of transplantation and post-protocol therapies, and integrate molecular stratification/enrichment to reduce variance. Adaptive designs should be used to stop futile programs earlier and to expand adequately powered trials when emerging data support clinically meaningful benefit.