follow up paper for those who saw Dr Talpaz online presentation

[Guest guest]

First I really encourage everybody to listen to Dr Talpaz presentation

Zavie posted about, very encouraging. Thanks Zavie. To followup on the

presentation, Leukemia (one of Nature journals) has just released a

paper reviewing the latest in CML research, specifically new therapies

that do not rely on ATP interference like most of the current drugs

(gleevec, sprycel, tasigna). ATP is a molecule that activates the

proteing that our bug produces and all our drugs work by interfering

with ATP activation. Lots of information on the strategies to get us a

cure and, although the article is pretty technical, if you have even a

very basic background in biology (my last biology class was in high

school, although I ve learnt a lot more since it became very relevant

to me) it gives some sense of how much the cml research has some very

busy bees. Lets just hope the big pharmaceuticals remain interested in

our bug.

the link is :

http://tinyurl.com/2nqy5u

If you can't access it here's the title and abstract (or I ll send it

offline if you ask) :

Experimental non-ATP-competitive therapies for chronic myelogenous leukemia

A Quintas-Cardama

Abstract :

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is a hematopoietic stem cell

malignancy driven by the BCR-ABL fusion tyrosine kinase. The central

role played by BCR-ABL1 in the pathogenesis of CML facilitated the

development of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) imatinib mesylate,

the first actual targeted therapy in cancer history. Imatinib competes

with ATP at the active site of BCR-ABL1 kinase. Despite outstanding

clinical results, imatinib as well as other BCR-ABL1 TKIs have been

associated with limited rates of complete molecular response and the

development of mutations within the kinase domain of BCR-ABL1 that

impairs TKI binding. To override such drawbacks, an array of novel

non-ATP-competitive therapies with distinct mechanisms of action is

undergoing preclinical, and in some cases, early clinical stages of

development. This review focuses on the most promising among such

therapeutics.

Marcos