A large international study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering has immediate clinical relevance for risk assessment and treatment of people with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia.

Prof. dr. Arjan van de Loosdrecht from the Department of Hematology at Amsterdam UMC has contributed to this publication.

Read more here in Dutch

For the research see Nature Medicine and the press release from Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Considered the “guardian of the genome,” TP53 is the most commonly mutated gene in cancer. TP53’s normal function is to detect DNA damage and prevent cells from passing this damage on to daughter cells. When TP53 is mutated, the protein made from this gene, called p53, can no longer perform this protective function, and the result can be cancer. Across many cancer types, mutations in TP53 are associated with worse outcomes, like disease recurrence and shorter survival.

As with all our genes, TP53 exists in duplicate in our cells. One copy we get from our mothers, the other we get from our fathers. Up until now, it has not been clear whether a mutation was needed in one or both copies of TP53 to affect cancer outcomes. A new study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering definitively answers this question for a blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a precursor to acute myeloid leukemia.

“Our study is the first to assess the impact of having one versus two dysfunctional copies of TP53 on cancer outcomes,” says molecular geneticist Elli Papaemmanuil, a member of MSK’s Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department and the lead scientist on the study, published August 3 in the journal Nature Medicine. “From our results, it’s clear that you need to lose function of both copies to see evidence of genome instability and a high-risk clinical phenotype in MDS.”

The consequences for cancer diagnosis and treatment are immediate and profound, she says.