Novartis marks five year Glivec milestone with strong CML data

Swiss drug major Novartis says that recent data, marking four and a half years since Gleevec/Glivec (imatinib), its treatment for rare cancers, has been in use, show that more than 90% of patients taking the drug continued to survive and were free from progression to advanced disease.

According to the Basel-headquartered giant, a five-year update from the IRIS study (International Randomized Interferon versus STI571), the largest clinical trial to date for newly-diagnosed adult patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive (Ph+) chronic myeloid leukemia, will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting on June 3, marking a milestone in the development of targeted cancer treatments.

Novartis noted that the drug's unprecedented outcomes in Ph+ CML patients includes reduced annual progression rate with long-term use in newly-diagnosed CML patients, as well as less than 1% progress to more advanced stages in the fourth treatment year. The firm stated that no other drug for this disease has ever established such a proven and durable track record of efficacy and safety.