Health

New 'Smart Bomb' Leukemia Drug May Fight Other Cancers

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 31, 2002 / 8:41 AM EST / CBS

More good news about a newly approved, pioneering leukemia drug approved earlier this week by the Food and Drug Administration.

Top cancer doctors meeting today in San Francisco now think the breakthrough drug will help in the battle against other types of cancers. Cancer researchers rarely utter the word "miracle" but among those gathering this weekend in San Francisco--it's starting to slip out.

"I don't know what a miracle drug would be, but this is about as close as any drug has come," says Dr. George Demetri, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Tomorrow, Demetri's colleagues will announce that Gleevec--a pill approved by the FDA last Thursday as a treatment for a rare form of leukemia--may be just as effective against a rare stomach cancer known as GIST.

In clinical trials, 85% of the patients saw their tumors shrink, and in more than half the cases the tumors shrank by at least 50%.

But even more dramatic is the revelation that Gleevec could hold the key to treating at least four other cancers, including breast, prostate, and some forms of lung cancer.

"We are excited about the possibility of this drug being able to treat other types of cancers with at least some hope of good results," says Demetri.

Doctors are calling Gleevec the equivalent of a "smart bomb"--a magic bullet that strikes only cancer cells, while leaving healthy ones alone.

It does it by targeting proteins that signal cancer cells to multiply. Gleevec seems to block those signals. Without them, the cancer cells die fast and with few side effects.

"Chemo is the worst," says cancer patient Anita Scherzer.

Anita Scherzer's was given 18 months to live. Chemotherapy had failed to reduce the growing tumors in her stomach, so she and her husband decided to renew their wedding vows before time ran out.

"We did it on the occasion of our 39th wedding anniversary because we were not going to make 40," says Norman Scherzer.

Gleevec changed that. As part of the trial, she took six pills every morning, and within just 13 days her tumors began to dissolve.

"I knew it was working already, and then when I went back for my CAT scan, the radiologist was like--'Whew!'--he couldn't believe it," says Anita.

Some are calling it the most important advance in medicine since antibiotics, but researchers still won't call Gleevec a cure. What they will say is that it's the first of a new class of drug--a molecular approach to the disease--likely to forever change the way some cancers are treated.