Gleevec is different from earlier chemotherapies, which basically poisoned every cell in the body in an attempt to kill the cancer. Gleevec turned off the light switch and only killed the cancer cells… during clinical trials we saw this miracle: Once the patients were up to effective doses, we got a 100 percent response rate.
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Interesting. This is the “turn off the switch” approach as opposed to the “bombard the body” approach.
This is especially interesting in light of other posts I have seen here, to the effect that despite an enormous amount of money and research very little progress has been made against cancer, taking a traditional approach.
The researcher who helped develop Gleevec never saw a penny from the development. The compound was already patented.
The drug represents a new generation of cancer therapies. Despite it extremely high success rate, and much better side-affect profile, public health advocates criticized its (then) high cost of several thousand per month.