More on CML

[Guest guest]

Pat Elliot sent me an email about someone she knows who has a blog and I am

passing it on to you (thanks Pat), so that you may also share in this new

knowledge that is ongoing in research. We need to learn and back up the people

doing the research to encourage them to continue in their quest, so that we

might live longer and have a better quality of life. Find out who they are and

thank them for their work on our behalf. Remember the book that was given to

Dr. Druker for all his work and all the people who sent in money so he could

contine his work, and that he does. He believes he is on to something and we

have to believe it with all our hearts, too. Here is the information:

" Gleevec tamed a disease that was always fatal into one that is managed like a

chronic illness, much the same way that that diabetes or hypertension is

managed: daily medication. Today, most people taking Gleevec survive and live

normal lives.

" So why have some targeted therapies been more successful than others? Dr. Wicha

explains that cells have circuits, or pathways, in them, much like circuits in a

transistor. He describes circuits as " kind of like a network, diagrammed like a

spider's web. " Using this analogy, genes send signals to each other along

pathways within the spider's web. If one pathway is interrupted, the signal

takes another. This means that the circuits have to be interrupted wherever

signals travel, and it may take a combination of drugs to accomplish that

mission.

" Finding the right combination of drugs will also require analyzing the tumor of

each individual patient for specific genetic abnormalities, and that in turn

requires a huge amount of computing potential. Fortunately, Dr. Wicha tells me

that technology is increasing at lightning speed, and programs are being

developed that condense huge amounts of complicated data into forms that will

tell physicians, " based on this data, you need to block X, Y and Z and use these

three medicines to treat this particular patient. That's the key to the future, "

he says. And it's called personalized medicine, which is one of the main focuses

of the North Campus Research Complex, the old Pfizer property of two million

square feet that U of M recently purchased.

" So the excitement in cancer therapy, Dr. Wicha tells me, is understanding the

circuits. What's fascinating, " he says, " is that some of the circuits that are

wrong in one type of cancer are also wrong in others. " Scientists have already

discovered that CML and a rare cancer found in the gastrointestinal tract (GIST)

share a genetic abnormality and that Gleevec turns off the proteins that cause

the cancer cells to multiply in both.

" And there's another frontier: cancer stem cells, which merits its own,

soon-to-be written column. For now, it's not known that stem cells exist in all

malignancies, but they are well established in CML, and U of M's Dr. Dale Bixby

is trying to convert the disease from one that is chronic, managed by Gleevec,

to one that is curable. Read on........

http://tinyurl.com/4sxcpof

FYI,

Lottie Duthu