The Survivors: How An Experimental Treatment Saved Patients and Changed Medicine

April 25, 2017

(STAT News) – This is a story of survivors — of patients who were expected to die more than two decades ago but didn’t. It was the summer of 1998, and Dr. Brian J. Druker was a few months into Phase 1, first-in-human trials of a promising compound that would later be known as Gleevec. Druker, a researcher at Oregon Health and Science University, knew from lab studies that the drug could disable a gene that controls certain leukemia cells, while leaving healthy cells intact. But he didn’t have answers to a lot of other questions, including what dose would be beneficial.