Dasatinib is New Drug Option for Treatment of Leukemia

Gleevec is the standard treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia. When patients failed to respond to this treatment, an experimental drug called Dasatinib, under development by Bristol-Myers Squibb was able to reverse the signs and symptoms of the disorder.

These findings from the phase I clinical trial that evaluated the safety and toxicity at different dose levels of Dasatinib (BMS-354825) in a small number of volunteers were reported by researchers from University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Bristol-Myers Squibb in Princeton, NJ, in the June 15, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

“(The studies) provide immediate hope for patients in whom CML cells have developed resistance to imatinib,” wrote HHMI investigator Brian J. Druker of Oregon Health and Science University in an accompanying editorial in NEJM. “They show that the pace of new drug development can be impressively rapid.”

Read more at HHMI News.