Dr. Nagalla on Efforts to Predict Risk of Thrombosis in Patients With MPNs

Srikanth Nagalla, MD, director of the Hematology Oncology Fellowship Program at Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, and associate professor of medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, discusses efforts to predict which patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms will develop thrombosis.

Similar to other diseases, investigators are working on putting together an algorithm to predict what patients with MPNs are going to develop thrombosis, says Nagalla. If the risk of developing thrombosis can be predicted, that could prevent unnecessary use of certain drugs.

Investigators are not only examining clinical factors; they are also looking at next-generation sequencing data as a way to identify genes that are being overexpressed or under expressed to see whether that can be used to predict which patients with a particular cancer might develop thrombosis. As science continues to evolve, investigators might be able to do a better job of predicting which patients are at risk of recurrent clots and be able to treat them accordingly with better drugs that have lower rates of bleeding, concludes Nagalla.