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NCCN Updates Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) Guidelines

JENKINTOWN, Pa., February 26, 2007 — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) announces important updates to the NCCN Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) Guidelines. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™ are widely recognized and applied as the standard of care in oncology in the United States in both the community and the academic practice settings. These guidelines are updated continually and are based upon evaluation of scientific data integrated with expert judgment.

One of the major changes to the 2007 version of the guidelines was the addition of darbepoetin alfa (Aranesp®, Amgen) as a recommendation for anemic patients with low-intermediate risk MDS. Studies indicate that darbepoetin is an active, safe and well-tolerated treatment for anemia offering patients an overall improvement in quality of life.

The panel also added single agents azacytidine (Vidaza®, Pharmion) and decitabine (Dacogen™, MGI Pharma) to the guidelines as primary treatment for patients with INT-2 and high-risk MDS who are intensive therapy candidates but have no available donor for hemopoietic stem cell transplant.

NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™ are developed and updated through an evidence-based process with explicit review of the scientific evidence by multidisciplinary panels of expert physicians from NCCN Member Institutions. The most recent version of this and all the guidelines are available free of charge at www.nccn.org.