If you had been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in 1999, chances were that you would not be alive today. Just three out of ten patients survived for even five years. In the meantime, you had two daunting treatment options: a high-risk bone marrow transplant or daily injections of interferon, the side effects of which have been compared to "having a bad case of the flu every day of your life."
Today you can take a daily pill that has a good chance of driving your cancer into remission - normalizing your blood count with few, if any, side effects. The new medicine targets CML on a molecular level, so it affects only the enzyme responsible for the disease. The tremendous effectiveness and precision of the approach is heralded as the "wave of the future."
If you had been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in
1999, chances were that you would not be alive today. Just three
out of ten patients survived for even five years. In the meantime,
you had two daunting treatment options: a...
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PhRMA answered:If you had been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in 1999, chances were that you would not be alive today. Just three out of ten patients survived for even five years. In the meantime, you had two daunting treatment options: a high-risk bone marrow transplant or daily injections of interferon, the side effects of which have been compared to "having a bad case of the flu every day of your life."
