Following ponatinib’s approval, leukemia drugs jockey to be first-line therapies
In June 2008, Beth Galliart was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. At the time, her doctors put her on Gleevec (imatinib), a small-molecule drug available since 2001 that is often touted as the poster child of personalized medicine. Marketed by Switzerland’s Novartis, Gleevec specifically targets the tyrosine kinase enzyme that is overactive in the white blood cells of people with leukemia. For close to nine months, the drug worked wonders for Galliart, and her blood counts returned to normal levels. But she soon started to feel tired again. A blood test confirmed that her cancer had returned. Read more
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