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heblaj01 · 06-15-2006, 01:30 PM

Maryann,

Here is a piece of news which may be usefull to you:
Reported June 15, 2006
Two New Drugs Beat Leukemia, Too

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Most people with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) respond well to the breakthrough drug Gleevec, with 93 percent still doing well five years after treatment.

Now there's new hope for the minority of patients whose cancer can't be cured by the drug. Researchers publishing two new papers report promising results for the drugs dasatinib and nilotinib (also known as AMN107).

In the dasatinib study, conducted among 84 patients who had developed a resistance to Gleevec, 68 responded favorably to the treatment. The nilotinib study involved 119 patients with either CML or another form of leukemia known as acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), all of whom were also resistant to Gleevec. The drug improved outcomes in all of the CML patients, with 11 out of 12 of those with the chronic form of the condition experiencing a complete remission of the disease. It proved less effective, however, in the ALL patients, with only 2 of 13 responding.

Dasatinib and nilotinib caused relatively few side effects in the studies, although nilotinib was linked to heart problems in a few patients in that study, a result researchers note will call for careful monitoring of patients.

The authors of both studies believe these new drugs will have an important role to play in treating CML and may one day even replace Gleevec as the standard treatment. For now, however, they plan additional studies to take a closer look at long term effects of the drugs to ensure their safety for a wider range of patients.

SOURCE: New England Journal of Medicine, 2006;354:2531-1541, 2542-2551
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/354/24/2531
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/354/24/2542

Good luck

06-15-2006, 01:30 PM	#108
heblaj01 Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 543	Maryann, Here is a piece of news which may be usefull to you: Reported June 15, 2006 Two New Drugs Beat Leukemia, Too (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Most people with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) respond well to the breakthrough drug Gleevec, with 93 percent still doing well five years after treatment. Now there's new hope for the minority of patients whose cancer can't be cured by the drug. Researchers publishing two new papers report promising results for the drugs dasatinib and nilotinib (also known as AMN107). In the dasatinib study, conducted among 84 patients who had developed a resistance to Gleevec, 68 responded favorably to the treatment. The nilotinib study involved 119 patients with either CML or another form of leukemia known as acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), all of whom were also resistant to Gleevec. The drug improved outcomes in all of the CML patients, with 11 out of 12 of those with the chronic form of the condition experiencing a complete remission of the disease. It proved less effective, however, in the ALL patients, with only 2 of 13 responding. Dasatinib and nilotinib caused relatively few side effects in the studies, although nilotinib was linked to heart problems in a few patients in that study, a result researchers note will call for careful monitoring of patients. The authors of both studies believe these new drugs will have an important role to play in treating CML and may one day even replace Gleevec as the standard treatment. For now, however, they plan additional studies to take a closer look at long term effects of the drugs to ensure their safety for a wider range of patients. SOURCE: New England Journal of Medicine, 2006;354:2531-1541, 2542-2551 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/354/24/2531 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/354/24/2542 Good luck