A Clinical Laboratory-Developed LSC17 Stemness Score Assay for Rapid Risk Assessment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients.

Leukemia stem cells (LSC) are linked to relapse in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The LSC17 gene expression score robustly captures LSC stemness properties in AML and can be used to predict survival outcomes and response to therapy, enabling risk-adapted upfront treatment approaches. The LSC17 score was developed and validated in a research setting. To enable wide use of the LSC17 score in clinical decision-making, we established a Laboratory Developed Test (LDT) for the LSC17 score that can be deployed broadly in clinical molecular diagnostic laboratories. We extensively validated the LSC17 LDT in a College of American Pathologists/Clinical Laboratory Improvements Act (CAP/CLIA)-certified laboratory, determining specimen requirements, a synthetic control, and performance parameters for the assay. Importantly, we correlated values from the LSC17 LDT to clinical outcome for a reference cohort of AML patients, establishing a median assay value that can be used for clinical risk stratification of individual patients with newly-diagnosed AML. The assay was established in a second independent CAP/CLIA-certified laboratory and its technical performance validated using an independent cohort of AML patient samples, demonstrating that the LSC17 LDT can be readily implemented in other settings. This study enables the clinical use of the LSC17 score for upfront risk-adapted management of AML patients.