Why Gleevec can cure most of CML patients?
Gleevec can attack the philadelphia chomosome positive stem cell which is the root of CML.But It is still too early to say whether Gleevec can cure CML. Basically we don’t know final answer yet. One thing we saw is Gleevec can’t cure most of CML patients. Here are some unofficial/reasonable guess/explainations. 1. Leukemia cell is deviding much more actively due to BCR-ABL gene. It is possible that in CML patient, there are some leukemia cells has BCR-ABL with minor change, as it is different from BCR-ABL,with time goes on, these cells will be the resistance to Gleevec because Gleevec can’t kill them. 2. Most of the CML primitive stem cell are quiescent at any given time and are relatively invulnerable to BCR-ABL kinase inhibitor. This may cause Gleevec cant cure CML.
