Cancer Treatment Today

Gleevec is a drug initially approved for Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. It wasrecently  studied for P. Vera by Richard Silver at Weil-Cornell and the study was published in 2011. It described 37 patientswith an overall response of 49%. Thirty percent had a complete response, and 19%, a partial response. However, a previous study by Nussenzveig et al, did not show much activity in 27 patients. Overall, 4 (17%) patients responded: one had a complete

Many chemotherapeutic drugs cause neutropenia and guidelines now uniformly recommend G-CSF(granulocyte growth stimulating factors) prophylactically and therapeutically for chemotherapy. However, non-chemo drugs can also cause neutropenia. Among them are bcr-abl directed drugs used for CML, such as Gleevec. Depending on the stage, up to 70% of the patients treated with imatinib for CML experience an NCI grade 3 or 4 neutropenia or thrombocytopenia

There have been no studies that demonstrate that followup with BCR/ABL assists with actual clinical management of CML but it has become standard based on a guideline recommendation.It is not clear what the best monitoring stategy of imatinib might be; however, bcr/abl analysis would be a part of any finally accepted strategy. Unfortunately no trials of such strategies have been eprfomred but there is guidance from expert consensus. Some physicians

Lay Summary: There is now evidence that GLeevec is very effective in Philadelphia chromosome positive ALL. Philadelphia-positive ALL is a very difficult disease to treat successfully. In the recent past, the standard approach was to use daunorubicin/vincristine/prednisone-based induction therapy to achieve remission and then, if the patient was a reasonable candidate and a donor could be found, to perform an allogeneic transplant. Now, the use of

Results from several randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials for patients with primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), a type of tumor usually found in the stomach or small intestine, showed that patients who received imatinib mesylate (Gleevec ®) after complete removal of their tumor were significantly less likely to have a recurrence of their cancer compared to those who did not receive imatinib. For example,  ACOSOG Z9001 trial

Chordomas are tumors originating from embryonic remnants of the primitive notochord. Metastatic spread is observed in 7-14% of patients and imatinib mesylate exhibits antitumor activity in some reports of patients with chordoma. Obviously, for a rare cancer like chordoma, there is not muche experi3nce with chemotherapy. Some patents have been reported to have received and responded to gemcitabine or navelbine. There are no drugs currently approved

Currently, interferon is the only approved adjuvant treatment for melanoma but it is unsatisfactory in several respects and intensive search for alternatives is ongoing. Among such options is Gleevec. Results of Phase II trials of Gleevec in metastatic disease have not been very impressive. One trial involving 26 patients did not produce any clinical responses, but the course of treatment was limited in most patients by drug toxicity. Data on expression

Follicular dendritic cell sarcoma is a rare, malignant, non-lymphoid cell-derived tumor that originates from B-lymphoid follicles of nodal and extranodal sites. These rare tumors form a spectrum within a rare and difficult to diagnose category of diseases known as histiocytic and dendritic cell neoplasms. It has been reported in around 100 cases in the literature, mostly for the head and neck region.As such, there are no standard treatmetn recommendations

Gleevec is in a clinical study: Therapy of HES, PV, Atypical CML or CMML, and Mastocytosis With Imatinib Mesylate, NCT00038675. The goal of this clinical research study is to see if Gleevec, known as imatinib mesylate (STI571), can improve the disease condition in patients with hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES), polycythemia vera, atypical chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) or CMML with PDGF-R fusion genes, or mastocytosis. There is significant supporting

Histiocytosis is an excessive number of histiocytes and it is used to refer to a group of rare diseases which share this as a characteristic. The histiocytes may infiltrate skin, bone, muscles, and vital organs, such as the liver, lung, spleen, and hematopoietic system. The disease is somewhat similar to cancer, and treatment often involves radiation and chemotherapy. It often possesses a c-kit mutation and there are several case reports of using