Simple Pill Zeroes In On Cancer Cells

THE PILL, known as STI 571, treats one kind of leukemia called CML that afflicts 4,500 Americans every year. Additional pills, designed to treat a variety of other cancers including advanced lung, colon and prostate cancers, are starting early trials.

“Some of these drugs are showing remarkable progress, perhaps more than any of us would ever have expected in these early phases of trials,” said Dr. Harold Varmus.

Varmus knows better than anyone about the incredible scientific struggle over the past decades that has led to these pills. He is now the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, but was formerly the head of the National Institutes of Health. He shared the Nobel prize for discovering the underlying reason cells become cancerous — the basis for these new pills.

Cancer Clinical Trials
• For more information on the cancer pill clinical trials
or other experimental treatments,

• Call the National Cancer Institute hotline at 1-800-4CANCER or visit their Website.

“It is exciting because for many of us who have struggled with the idea of what cancer is all about, that is, what kinds of precise damage is done to a cell to make it convert into a cancer cell, this shows evidence of being a fulfillment of the dreams that many of us have had,” he said.

And now dreams are fulfilled for patients and their families, too, like Judy Orem and her husband, Frank. She was one of the first to try STI 571 and is amazed that it is just a simple pill.

“That’s what everybody says to me: ‘You feel OK after you take it; how do you know it’s working?’” she said.

Like other who have taken the pill, Judy didn’t feel sick, her hair didn’t fall out and she wasn’t exhausted.

The pill has few side effects because, with the knowledge of how cancer cells grow, researchers at pharmaceutical companies designed the drugs to seek out and destroy them.

But even with pills in early testing, years of trials lie ahead — even though desperate patients want drugs now.

“It’s unfortunate, but if you’re going to ask whether we can extend life by months or years, it will take months or years to find out,” Varmus said.

Judy Orem feels lucky she got into the clinical trial, but is this a magic bullet?

“It is for me,” she said.

The “magic bullet” that could help thousands of others is expected to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration in about two years and could be the start of a new wave of revolutionary cancer treatments.

For more information on the cancer pill clinical trials or other experimental treatments, you can call the National Cancer Institute hotline at 1-800-4CANCER or visit their Website.

Reprinted from http://www.drugstore.com