On September 14, 2026 Bionano Genomics, Inc. (Nasdaq: BNGO) reported three new independently authored, peer-reviewed publications demonstrating the clinical utility of OGM in high-risk hematologic malignancies — myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and therapy-related myeloid neoplasms (t-MN). The studies, published in Modern Pathology, the International Journal of Cancer, and npj Precision Oncology, reinforce a growing body of evidence that OGM can detect prognostically important structural genomic alterations that elude standard karyotyping, FISH, and targeted sequencing panels.
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MD Anderson Cancer Center: Chromoanagenesis by OGM defines an ultra-high-risk MDS subset.
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, led by Guilin Tang, PhD, used OGM to study 332 samples from subjects with MDS, identifying chromoanagenesis (CAG), a catastrophic single-event genomic restructuring process, in 15.9% of cases overall and 17.6% of newly diagnosed subjects. The study, published in Modern Pathology (Wei et al., 2026), found that:
CAG-positive by OGM subjects had a median overall survival of just 9.9 months, significantly shorter than non-CAG subjects where median survival was not reached.
CAG by OGM showed the potential to confer prognostic information beyond existing risk-stratification systems, potentially enabling the identification of patients for early allogeneic transplantation or TP53-targeted clinical trials.
University of Oulu: Cryptic structural variants uncovered in "normal karyotype" AML.
A separate study from the University of Oulu and collaborators, led by Tuomo Mantere, PhD, used OGM to analyze 48 samples of cytogenetically normal AML (CN-AML) — a subgroup that appears unremarkable on standard karyotyping but is clinically heterogeneous. Published in the International Journal of Cancer (Turtinen et al., 2026), the study found that:
OGM detected clinically relevant structural variants or copy-neutral loss-of-heterozygosity in 46% of cases classified as "normal" by conventional karyotyping.
Recurrent alterations included KMT2A partial tandem duplications (10% of cases), RUNX1 disruptions, NF1 deletions, and a novel putative FOXP1:EYA2 fusion not previously reported in the literature.
Subjects with OGM-detected abnormalities had significantly worse overall survival than those without (p = 0.005).
Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute: OGM refines risk in therapy-related neoplasms and younger MDS.
A multicenter Spanish study led by Mar Mallo, PhD, and Francesc Solé, PhD, at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in collaboration with a Spanish hospital network applied OGM to two clinically distinct: 48 subjects with therapy-related myeloid neoplasms (t-MN) and 65 subjects with younger-onset MDS (yMDS, age ≤60). Published in npj Precision Oncology (Mestre et al., 2026), the study found that:
OGM was interpretable in 100% of samples, including all 8 cases where conventional banding analysis (CBA) failed due to lack of dividing cells, and identified 134 additional genomic alterations.
OGM refined cytogenetic classification in 52.0% of karyotypically abnormal cases and detected clinically relevant structural alterations in 9.8% of cases with a normal karyotype, including reclassification of subjects into the therapeutically relevant MDS with isolated 5q- category.
OGM-defined genomic complexity was independently associated with overall survival; chromoanagenesis emerged as the strongest independent predictor of inferior survival in multivariable analysis (HR 9.26), exceeding even TP53 mutation status.
Integrating OGM findings into IPSS-R and IPSS-M scoring shifted 16.7% of t-MN and up to 12.8% of yMDS subjects into higher-risk prognostic categories, which could have implications for treatment planning, including identification of biallelic TP53 inactivation.
Key highlights across all three studies:
Three independent academic centers, spanning the U.S., Finland, and Spain, each show the potential for OGM to identify clinically actionable genomic complexity that conventional cytogenetic workups miss.
All three studies link OGM findings directly to overall and/or disease-specific survival.
Findings support a potential role for OGM in refining prognostication beyond IPSS-R/IPSS-M and ELN2022 classification systems, including in patients who otherwise appear lower-risk by standard testing, and in cases where conventional karyotyping fails outright due to lack of dividing cells.
Across all three cohorts, chromoanagenesis and TP53 disruption consistently emerge as markers of a biologically distinct, ultra-high-risk disease subset best captured by genome-wide structural variant detection.
"These three independent studies, spanning MDS, AML, and therapy-related myeloid neoplasms, all point to the same conclusion: a meaningful fraction of high-risk genomic complexity in myeloid malignancies is simply invisible to conventional karyotyping," said Al Luderer, PhD, chairman and interim chief executive officer of Bionano. "As OGM adoption continues to expand, we expect to see more of this kind of evidence connecting structural variant detection directly to potential patient outcomes and treatment decisions."
(Press release, Bionano Genomics, SEP 14, 2026, View Source [SID1234670855])