A Triumph in the War Against Cancer?

April 25, 2011

A Triumph in the War Against Cancer

LaDonna Lapoosa was lying in a hospital bed in Olympia about to draw the

curtain. There was a lot to let go of: four grown children, several

grandkids, friends at church, a good marriage. Her life was about to

end.

Her spleen, normally tucked beneath the lowest left rib and no bigger

than a peach, was so engorged with white blood cells it was the size of

a cantaloupe. She could hardly walk. Her skin was ghostly, her blood

dangerously short of red cells. To breathe was a chore. Regular

vomiting. Stabbing aches deep in her bones, where the marrow was

frantically cranking out white blood cells. Recurring fevers. And cold,

strangely, unnervingly cold: she was freezing under the hospital

blankets.

She was too old and too sick to undergo a bone marrow transplant, a

grueling, highly risky treatment for her blood cancer, chronic myeloid

leukemia (CML).

" Within three weeks her spleen was back to practically normal, "

Druker said. " She was feeling great. White count had come down. A

Lazarus-like effect. It was truly miraculous. "

The honor of announcing the early clinical results fell to Druker. In

New Orleans on December 3, 1999, he told an auditorium full of

hematologists that all 31 patients in the study responded favorably to

STI571, with the white blood cell counts of 30 falling to normal within

a month. The pill's side effects – upset stomachs, muscle cramps –

were what oncologists term " mild to moderate. " Druker says he doesn't

remember the standing ovation.

The findings were " a molecular oncologist's dream come true, " wrote

Harold Varmus, who now heads the National Cancer Institute and was

awarded a Nobel Prize for research that laid some of the groundwork for

STI571's success. The drug, he recalls in his 2009 book, The Art and

Politics of Science, was " the best evidence to date that the most

fundamental aspects of cancer research had dramatic benefits for

patients with cancer. "

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