Take a prognosis of three years, multiply it by 10, and what do you get? A staggering improvement in the survival of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), and a crucial steppingstone on the road to the targeted treatment of cancer.
Brian J. Druker, MD, director of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, was the driving force behind those accomplishments when, in May 2001, his research led to the FDA’s approval of imatinib (Gleevec), an oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) initially indicated for patients with CML that proved to be one of the earliest and most successful targeted therapies in the oncology armamentarium.
Today, patients with CML who take imatinib are projected to survive an average of 30 years, Druker said, a far cry from the 3- to 5-year prognosis that was standard when he began practicing medicine in the 1980s. And, imatinib has been approved for the treatment of additional tumor types, including Philadelphia chromosome– positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL) and KIT (CD117)-positive gastrointestinal stromal tumors.
On a broader scope, the insights that led to the development of the drug have helped lay the groundwork for the creation by other labs of several approved treatments for imatinib-resistant CML, as well as targeted therapies for other cancers including the TKIs vemurafenib, erlotinib, gefitinib, and crizotinib.
Most recently, Druker helped to develop ponatinib (Iclusig), initially granted accelerated approval by the FDA in December 2012, and now indicated for the treatment of patients with CML or Ph+ ALL who harbor the bcr-abl T315I mutation or for whom no other TKI therapy is indicated.
See more at:
http://www.onclive.com/publications/oncology-live/2014/march-2014/hittin...