What is the oncogene that Gleevec addresses?
The oncogene is called “BCR Able” and it actually came out of a very similar style of experiment to what the ras oncogene came from. There was this animal virus that caused tumors called “V-Able” and ultimately that led to that identification of this “Able” oncogene. In chronic myeloid leukemia, researchers were able to identify an oncogene that drives the growth of that particular leukemia. What Gleevec does is bind to that oncogene which normally is sitting in the cell to grow continuously and completely shuts it down. What is the future of cancer in relation to Gleevec? The hope for Gleevec is that it really represents a new way of treating cancer and that way of treating cancer is based on specific knowledge of what’s broken in the cancer, in targeted cancer cells specifically. In a broader sense, it really ties into the paradigm of can we diagnose cancer earlier, can we treat it earlier, can we treat it more specifically, and to me that’s what I see for the future is the more we u
