Novartis AG's cancer drug, Gleevec, has been reworked to avoid a rare heart related side effect and to more specifically target a type of stomach cancer according to researchers at Rice University in Houston and University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Researchers believe their work is important because it shows that relatively minor changes can be engineered into drug to eliminate potentially dangerous side effects yet still leaving them effective against disease. Gleevec has been on the market since 2001 and is used to treat some forms of leukemia and treat a rare stomach cancer called gastrointestinal stromal tumor. The re-designed drug curbs the life threatening side effect in which the drug can be toxic to the heart, potentially causing heart failure yet remains effective in treating the cancers.
Ariel Fernandez, a Rice bioengineering professor who worked on the research with M.D. Anderson's Gabriel Lopez-Berestein and others, said the redesigned drug is the same as Gleevec except that four atoms -- a carbon and three hydrogen atoms -- have been added at a key point. "The interest of this goes way beyond this particular drug and this particular side effect. The idea is we could demonstrate for the first time that you can take a drug with side effects and re-engineer it to curb those side effects. Side effects are the graveyard of most drug-discovery endeavors. So once a drug is shown to have side effects or potentially could have side effects, the drug company doesn't want to have anything to do with it," said Fernandez.
Novartis had no part in the research.
[Source: Yahoo News]
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