Gleevec-Iris statistics

[Guest guest]

Data from the Iris trial and older data on resistant cells. You can read the

rest of the article here:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/573165 You will , however have to become a

member of Medscape to read the entire article. Takes only a minute and you will

be able to do some research here, it is a well respected web site used by

physicians.

Here is the interesting finding that was a bit unexpected. There was a

significant feeling in some people's minds that, because this is a targeted

therapy, at some point a mutation would occur or something would happen to

confer resistance, and that if you wait long enough, maybe everybody is going to

start to fail.

We still do not have 10- and 20-year data, so we do not have really long-term

follow-up, but what is fascinating is that the failure rate appears to be

declining. This has led to the hypothesis that maybe what is happening is that

when patients are diagnosed, in some patients, there is a small clone of

resistant cells that you would not pick up by any normal technique, and that as

imatinib eradicates the sensitive clone, the resistant clone rises to the fore

and then the patient progresses relatively early. In patients who do not have

this resistant clone, maybe in fact these are the patients we are actually going

to be able to cure. You can see that in the sixth year, no patient has developed

accelerated phase or blast crisis with 6-year follow-up.

Have a wonderful read,

Lottie