How was Gleevec discovered?

My sister is doing a dissertation on something or other - hang on, let me find what she said to me in her email…

Ok here it is :

The role of protein structure in rational drug design.

Right. Ok. But right now she needs to know how the anti-Cancer drug Gleevec was discovered, but apparently there is very little info around on it, (I take it she already googled it, ok).

Do any of you guys have any information on this? (And don’t worry about keeping it simple, I will just copy and paste the information into email for her! I work as a settlements clerk, not a scientist…!)

Thank you so much,

Lil

I don’t have any specific information, but my understanding is that the drug was designed using computer models of the gene product of the Philadelphia chromosome.

Wasn’t Gleevec first isolated in a study of the addictive agents present in Slurm?

Seriously though, US Patent 6,645,972 gives background on the invention of Gleevec.

Bloody hell! And that makes sense to some people…??? Thank you for the link, I think I’ll point her to the page and let her make head or tail of it, she is BTW, way brainier than I originally thought if she understands that…!

Thank you very much for your help, anyone else who knows anything about it, do let me know!

Ta,

Lil

if read that patent correctly, it’s for a treatment for leukemia patients who don’t respond to gleevec anymore. i didn’t see anything on the development of gleevec, but maybe i missed it.

a while back i read up on gleevec and most pages, if they cover the topic at all, just say something about dr druker asking novartis if they had a drug that would inhibit a certain abnormal enzyme. this page give a bit more on it:

ps sorry about the lack of capitals, but my keyboard is misbehaving.

Wow, thanks dtilque, shall point my sister to this page, as, frankly, none of this makes a blind bit of sense to me. But there you go.

Ta,

Lil