Word: glivec
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...Despite all these caveats, Glivec is still a breakthrough?not only for what it does but, more important, for the revolutionary strategy it represents. A full 30 years have passed since President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer and called for a national commitment comparable to the effort to land on the moon or split the atom. But over those three decades, researchers have come up with one potential miracle cure after another?only to suffer one disappointment after another. Aside from surgery, which almost invariably leaves behind some malignant cells, the standard treatment for most cancers continues...
...Those are only two drugs that keep EGF from doing its job. Glivec, 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. Glivec, 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 Glivec, 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 Glivec has been taken off the U.S. 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...