Word: gleevec
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...encouraging article about new cancer treatments [CANCER UPDATE, May 28]. However, you said, "If you have cancer today, these treatments are likely to come too late to help you." I respectfully disagree. I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia more than seven years ago, long before the development of Gleevec. While previous attempts to defeat the leukemia were not totally successful, they did keep me alive long enough to be accepted as a participant in one of the studies of Gleevec. This new drug worked its wonders, and in just three months I achieved complete hematological and cytological remission...
Those are only two drugs that keep EGF from doing its job. Gleevec, which reversed Reiter's and Ferber's leukemia so dramatically, is another; so is Tarceva, a drug from OSI Pharmaceuticals in Uniondale, N.Y., which is showing promise against some lung tumors as well as head and neck cancers. Neither of these compounds keeps EGF from docking with cells; instead, each worms its way inside the cells, where it intercepts growth messages percolating in from the surface. Astra Zeneca, headquartered in London, is testing a similar compound, Iressa, against some lung, stomach and prostate cancers...
...that's just the start. Gleevec, Tarceva and Iressa all break one of the most common signaling pathways by blocking an enzyme known as a tyrosine kinase. But the message that encourages a cancer cell to grow involves hundreds of biochemical signals that can travel by hundreds of different pathways. Each of those pathways represents a target, a link that could be interrupted with the properly designed drug...
That dream comes at a price. Staying on Gleevec, for example, may end up costing patients like Victoria Reiter as much as $2,400 every month--nearly $30,000 a year--for the rest of her newly prolonged life. While the National Cancer Institute funds basic research into cancer biology, the bulk of drug development is done by for-profit pharmaceutical firms. These companies claim that it costs them between $500 million and $1 billion to bring a single new medicine to market--partly because it can take 15 years for the exhaustive testing in animals and humans required...
...that Gleevec has been taken off the experimental list, insurance companies will probably pick up the tab. Cancer most often strikes the elderly, however, and Medicare's role in paying for prescription drugs is still undecided. President Bush's drug plan would add $153 billion for Medicare drug benefits through 2011. Democrats call the amount "inadequate," and even congressional Republicans agree it is not enough. The final numbers will be hammered out later this year...