Is Gleevec a Magic Bullet?
This is exciting stuff for the future, but what’s even better is that some patients – those with chronic myeloid leukaemia – are benefiting now from taking Gleevec. “It’s an unusual disease in that it’s caused predominantly by one gene, the BCR-ABL gene, which is joined by two bits of DNA coming together when they shouldn’t because of damage inside the cancer cell,” Prof. Workman explains. “These form a new gene that makes a protein that’s much more active than it should be, and this is what makes the leukaemic cells become leukaemic. They then proliferate, divide and prove fatal if not treated. The protein this gene makes is a kinase, called the BCR-ABL. Gleevec is a kinase inhibitor. It blocks the BCR-ABL, the protein that drives the cancer, and patients then go into long-term remission.
