Press Release, Vienna, 10 June 2022
EHA2022 Abstract: S130
The HARMONY Alliance will present new results in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) at the annual congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA2022). HARMONY Partner, Dr Alberto Hernández-Sánchez of Hospital Universitario de Salamanca, will give an oral presentation. The novel insights can be used to identify high-risk patients with greater reliability and might guide treatment choices in the future”.
The clinical course and prognosis of AML is variable. Many genetic mutations are known to be involved in the development or course of AML, either alone or in combination. This knowledge is already used to stratify patients in clinical practice.
Patients with an expected good prognosis usually receive less intensive treatments as they generally do not undergo allogeneic stem cell transplantation in first line.
Mutations of the NPM1 gene are usually considered as a favorable prognostic marker. However, most patients carry several additional mutations that might influence the prognosis. Large numbers of patients need to be studied to unravel the combined effect of multiple co-mutations on the disease prognosis.
The HARMONY Big Data Platform provides an excellent infrastructure to address this problem because it collates clinical and genomic data from almost 7,000 AML patients from approx. 6 European countries. In total the HARMONY Alliances has identified over 115,000 data sets for various blood cancers, of which already over 62,000 data sets are collected. The HARMONY data lake is one of the largest databases of its kind.
Dr Alberto Hernández-Sánchez of Hospital Universitario de Salamanca, HARMONY Alliance Partner:
“Analysis of large databases allows the discovery of co-mutations with prognostic value in AML. This might improve patient treatment choices in the future”.
At EHA2022, Dr Alberto Hernández-Sánchez will present the results of the HARMONY research project investigating gene-gene interactions in AML. HARMONY researchers studied anonymized data of 1.001 patients with mutation in NPM1 gene. Based on their analyses, they propose a new genetic stratification model for this subgroup of AML patients, discerning three risk groups with different overall survival and relapse-free survival. Their model improves the existing risk stratification model as it is able to reclassify 33% of patients into their correct risk category. The new model may be used by physicians to identify high-risk patients with greater reliability and might help improve treatment choices in the future.
#bigdataforbloodcancer: Accelerating Better and Faster Treatment for Patients with Hematologic Malignancies.
The HARMONY Alliance (HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS) is a public-private European Network of Excellence for Big Data in Hematology. Our mission is to unlock and spread valuable knowledge on hematologic malignancies (blood cancers) among a large number of stakeholders, with the goal to harness and mine Big Data to speed up the development of improved treatments for patients and more effective treatment strategies.
Contact: Ellen de Waal, HARMONY Communications Lead: e.dewaal@ehaweb.org
www.harmony-alliance.eu | www.bigdataforbloodcancer.eu | @HARMONYNetEU
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Public-private partnership for Big Data in Hematology
HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS are funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. Funding is received from the IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement for HARMONY No. 116026 and grant agreement for HARMONY PLUS No. 945406. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
HARMONY Coordination Office
Institute of Biomedical Research of
Salamanca (IBSAL)
Salamanca, Spain
HARMONY Communications
European Hematology Association (EHA)
The Hague, The Netherlands
