New Drug Has Potential To Destroy Leukemia

Essay, Research Paper

New Drug has Potential to Destroy Leukemia

White blood cells are the body’s foot soldiers in its everyday battle against infections and diseases. Even when we are feeling well, they are working together in a carefully orchestrated manner to target and destroy dangerous substances in our body. Any disease that prevents the white blood cells from doing their job puts us at great risk for infection and illness. Leukemia is that kind of disease. It happens when our body’s system for making white blood cells malfunctions, resulting in the uncontrolled production of abnormal white blood cells that cannot protect us against disease. If left untreated, leukemia can cause death in a matter of months. Simply put, leukemia is a cancer of the blood cells. It usually involves the white blood cells, but in rare cases involves the red blood cells and platelets as well. The disease originates in the bone marrow. Like all cancers, it is characterized by the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. When these defective cells accumulate in the bone marrow where they are produced, it inhibits the production of blood cells of every kind. All blood cells pass through many stages on their way to complete maturity, beginning within the bone marrow as immature cells called blasts. Leukemia can occur at any of these stages of development, affecting one of the two major categories of white blood cells: lymphoid cells or myeloid cells. According to J. Gordon McVie author of “Cancer Treatment: The Last 25 Years,” states that each year, nearly 27,000 adults and more than 2,000 children in the United States learn that they have leukemia. It affects 13.2 per 100,000 men and 7.7 per 100,000 women in the United States. Chronic leukemia comprises 35% to 50% of all cases of leukemia (324). With such a great number of people becoming infected with this rapidly spreading disease, medical science has worked almost endlessly to improve the outlook for leukemia patients. Chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML s probably the most well known and studied type of leukemia. According to the Leukemia Insights Newsletter CML is a cancer of the blood cells. Blood cells are produced in the bone marrow, the spongy interior of the bones. Normally, blood cells are made in an orderly, controlled way. When CML develops, the bone marrow produces large numbers of normal-appearing and normal-functioning blood cells. However, all the circulating blood cells arise from one abnormal cell and contain the Philadelphia chromosome that causes the disease. In the early stage of CML called chronic phase, the only possible complication of the disease is poor blood circulation because of too high blood cell counts. This complication can be completely prevented by controlling the blood counts with a variety of drugs (hydroxyurea, interferon, busulfan). Cure of CML is possible during chronic phase with bone marrow transplantation (BMT). This stage of CML lasts an average of 4-5 years, after which it advances to accelerated phase or blast crisis. This final phase of CML resembles an acute leukemia with increasing numbers of abnormal immature “blast” cells that crowd out the normal blood cells, and is very difficult to treat, however if treatment is admitted early, remission is possible (1,5). Especially with the great advances the medicine is making daily in cancer research.

Each leukemia is different, just as individual responses to treatment are different. The newest form of treatment recently released in the article “New Leukemia Drug Gives Patients Hope” in The Herald Leader is directed toward chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML. The drug STI-571 is an experimental pill that is still in its earliest form of testing. In a study which Dr. Brian J. Dunker of the region Health Sciences University discusses in this article he states that when 31 patients were given a minimum of 300 milligrams of STI-571 a day, the white and red blood cell counts sustained a normal count for eight months. The most crucial aspect of this study was the remarkable speed of the drug. About 30 patients who received treatment regained normal blood count within the first month of treatment (McConnaughey 1-2). Unlike traditional, toxic chemotherapy remedies, which kill both cancerous and healthy cells, STI-571 specifically targets an enzyme found only in leukemia cells, meaning patients suffer minimal side effects. An article recently published in The Lancet by Lalit Kumar and Subhash C. Gulati states that CML is known to scientists as the defect with the “Philadelphia chromosome.” The Philadelphia chromosome results when chromosomes 9 and 22 exchange genetic material. This translocation fuses two genes that shouldn’t be together. This fusion releases an enzyme that spurs lethal growth of white blood cells, usually beginning in adulthood. Kumar and Gulati state that STI-571 inhibits the activity of this enzyme, rapidly killing the leukemia cells. The drug only targets the cancer cells because only those cells contain the specific enzyme that STI-571 inhibits. Dr. Moshe Talpaz of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas has some intense feelings about STI-571. “It’s fantastic! These people who have been treated with traditional methods and failed still have hope. Although their doctors said they didn’t have long to live, now most are feeling well with good blood-cell counts” (984-985). Author Bradley Somer states that current therapeutic options