This month, Novartis Pharmaceuticals (maker of Gleevec) launched a new website designed to help optimize the outcome of GIST patients taking Gleevec. Some of the featured content is about blood level testing for GIST. In addition, the website prominently links to the Avantix labs website (www.bloodleveltesting.com) for testing Gleevec blood levels in CML and GIST.
Gleevec was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent Gastrointestinal Cancer(imatinib mesylate) for a new indication. This will keeping cancer from growing in patients following surgical removal of a gastrointestinal stromal tumor [...]
GIST patients face many decisions about their treatment. Many GIST patients have surgery to remove a primary tumor and do not have detectable metastases at the time of surgery. This large group of patients faces the decision of whether or not to take Gleevec to try to prevent or delay a recurrence. Adjuvant therapy refers to additional treatment given after a main mode of therapy (the main treatment is usually surgery). For example, Gleevec given after surgery in hopes of preventing or delaying a recurrence is called adjuvant therapy.
Nick Lydon, Ph.D. discovered and co-developed the leukemia drug Gleevec. In this discussion, which is part of the Frontiers In Cancer Research series of talks at UC Santa Barbara, Lydon talks about the scientific process of discovering this drug and how it was tested to determine its effectiveness in battling leukemia.
In case you were wondering what our philosophy is on finding a cure for GIST, this video sums it up quite nicely. Listen and enjoy.
Here is a video on Serum Imatinib (Gleevec) Levels Predict GIST Response. George D. Demetri, M.D., discusses how Gleevec levels predict GIST response. Higher circulating levels of imatinib (Gleevec) correlated with better clinical responses in patients with [...]
During the weekend of June 30, 2007, representatives of the worldwide GIST community convened in Frankfurt, Germany for the Patient Summit meeting. An important outcome of these deliberations is the "Bad Nauheim Declaration", a statement regarding minimum standards for the treatment of patients with GIST.
GIST patients with a particular genetic mutation are more likely to respond to Gleevec than those without the mutation, reported Dr. Michael C. Heinrich at one of the plenary sessions of the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, held May 14-17 in Orlando, Florida.
This is the second of a two-part series on KIT and PDGFRA mutations in GISTs, written collaboratively by Drs. Michael Heinrich and Christopher Corless, LRG research team members. Please refer to the May issue of our newsletter for the first part titled, “KIT & PDGFRA mutations in GIST: A to Z” by Dr. Heinrich.
