Word: tarceva
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors - for which there had been no effective treatments. In a matter of months, patients who were out of options had their lives back, and while their cancer was not cured, it was under control, at least for a while. Other new drugs, including Tarceva and Iressa, also halt tumor growth by messing with tyrosine kinase. The key to developing such drugs, says Glaspy, is "torturing cancer cells, and getting them to confess to us which pathways they are dependent...
...anticancer drugs that target cancer cells more precisely and with less toxicity had been approved by the FDA. (Two more have since been approved.) Jacobs' doctors at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston enrolled her in a clinical trial for a combination of two of those agents, Tarceva and Avastin, last August. "The difference is like night and day," says Jacobs. "I take a pill every day, and every three weeks I go in for an infusion, which takes about 30 minutes." After nearly a year on the experimental cocktail, she has seen her primary lung cancer shrink more...
...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...
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...