Promising drug cuts tumor metabolism
By Ben Harder
From Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research
Early safety trials of an experimental medicine suggest that it could be used for treating several serious cancers.
Gastrointestinal stromal tumor, or GIST, is an unusual but highly lethal form of cancer. Two years ago, George Demetri of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and his colleagues demonstrated that the drug imatinib, also called Gleevec, can dramatically shrink tumors in people with GIST (SN: 5/26/01, p. 328: Available to subscribers at New drug takes on intestinal cancer). That drug has since become standard therapy for people with the disease. After treatment for an average of about 18 months, however, GIST becomes resistant to imatinib and tumor growth accelerates.