Drug offers leukaemia sufferers new hope
Until now the survival rate for people with a form of leukaemia called Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML) was around five years.
The availability of the Cork-made cancer medicine means that people with the disease can get on with their lives.
While the drug called Glivec has been available for five years, it is only now that medical experts are discovering just how effective it is at boosting survival rates.
And the results of a worldwide study presented at a recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Atlanta, Georgia, was even better than expected.
The study of more than 1,100 patients across 16 different countries found that over 90% of patients in the early, chronic phase of CML did not progress to the advanced stages of the disease.
And more than 80% survived with no evidence of disease progression at all at the five-year follow-up.
Glivec, made by Novartis at their Ringaskiddy plant just outside Cork city, works by blocking the production of cancerous white blood cells and is significantly better tolerated than standard chemotherapeutic treatments.
CML is a slow-growing form of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow. Around 40 new cases of the diseases are reported in Ireland every year.
Before the drug became available people with CML only had two treatment options — a bone marrow transplant, now called stem cell transplants, or Interferon. Severe side effects are experienced with both treatments.
Also, only a third of patients could get a bone marrow transplant. Many patients are either too old to undergo the procedure or a suitable donor was unavailable.
And while there is a 60% chance of a person being cured as a result of receiving a bone marrow transplant, this is at a cost of significant side effects.
Consultant haematologist Dr Michael O’Dwyer, who was involved in the original clinical trials of the drug five years ago, said Glivec was turning CML into a chronic disease like diabetes and high blood pressure.
“It does not go away but as long as you keep taking the medicine it keeps it under very, very good control and patients can get on with their lives,” said Dr O’Dwyer.
“Nobody is claiming that this treatment is a cure for this condition but it is able to reduce the amount of disease to a very low level and maintain it at that low level so that patients are not even aware that they have it,” he explained.
Dr O’Dwyer said that while the results of the first study were excellent the latest one confirmed the durability of the initial responses. Some patients responses had even improved over time.
He added that the success of Glivec has stimulated a race to develop similar target therapeutic approaches for a variety of different cancers.
