A clinical trial update on long term research carried out on patients with advanced gastro intestinal stromal tumours
10% of patients with advanced and aggressive GIST cancer have survived more than 10 years after treatment with one of the first successful targeted cancer drugs. They are living free of any progression of their cancer.
These are based on long-term results from a major international clinical trial of patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST) a decade after first taking the targeted drug imatinib, also known as Gleevec.
According to the Institute of Cancer Research update, Imatinib was the first example of a small-molecule targeted cancer treatment – a drug designed to hit specific cancer proteins – to be approved for use in patients, and the second successful targeted therapy overall, after the breast cancer drug Herceptin.
The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and was carried out by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and other international trials groups. The trial was supported by Novartis.
Read the full update here
